The news has shocked the people in Britain and in many other countries. A young 20-year-old mother died after drinking just a little more paracetamol, than she had been prescribed.
The young woman was prescribed paracetamol as a pain-killer medication after a surgery on her breast. Her name was Desiree Phillips, and a benign tumor in her breast had been removed at the beginning of this year. But the woman continued to feel discomfort and pain. To cope with the pain, she was prescribed paracetamol.
Desiree suffered from pain and allowed herself a few extra pills of paracetamol. During the first 9 days after the surgery, her liver had been almost destroyed by paracetamol drugs. The doctors tried to save her by means of a liver transplant, but it did not work, and the new organ was rejected by her body. The young woman died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
The girl’s parents were shocked. The father said his daughter had been prescribed 8 paracetamol tablets a day. But she took a little more. Externally, the overdose did not reveal itself, the woman looked fine and felt good. However, it should be remembered that even two extra paracetamol tablets per day can cause tremendous harm to the liver if the overdose lasts for 2-3 weeks. That is exactly what happened to the 20-year-old Desiree. The diagnosis of “liver failure” turned out to be irreversible for the young woman. Desiree had a one-year-old son and a husband.
Now the friends and the relatives of the deceased woman make every effort to inform a greater number of people about the dangers of paracetamol. They are outraged that doctors do not warn about the danger and believe that the packages of such dangerous drugs must have labels clearly saying that “medicine is killing”, just as in the case with cigarettes.
Let us remember: DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN 8 paracetamol tablets during 24 hours! It is a deadly risk!
