This is the first time I've ventured in to the Heath Grieving forum and I don't really feel ready to be here now, so I'm about to leave again. I had an idea I shared via PM with Pete last night and maybe I'm grasping at straws, but I wonder if Heath could have had an undiagnosed condition like sleep apnea?
My logic is that he reportedly was having problems sleeping. When you have sleep apnea, even if you do sleep, you never feel rested because you wake up throughout the night often without realizing it. I don't believe sleep apnea can be diagnosed without spending the night in a sleep clinic nor identified via autopsy.
It does not ring true to me that even the long list of drugs in his system would have caused respiratory failure in a healthy person without there being an underlying condition. All I have is anecdotal evidence - I have combined two of the drugs in his system (xanax and oxycodone) when I had my broken ankle and more than once I increased one or the other because I wasn't getting relief. My mother takes prozac, ambien, xanax, and fentanyl in regular prescribed doses closely monitored. She is a COPD patient and physically she is in awful shape. Nonetheless, the TWO times she has had respiratory failure it was because of pneumonia/MRSA - i.e. a bacterial lung infection.
