Kathleen A. Gagne

Kathie Gagne died 4,513 days ago.

August 14th, 2012 @ 7:30 am

Two days after my mother died, I had a very long phone call with a nurse paralegal named Charlene Sorensen from the law firm of Warner & Warner.

She told me that I needed to get in touch with Dr. Peele regarding the autopsy. She said the smartest thing to do would be to send a letter via certified mail to him. Charlene told me I should (a) ask when he will sign the death certificate, (b) note that according to what I was told by the hospital, she died from cardiac arrest but had no previous heart problems so I need to know the “contributing cause”, and (c) keep the letter short, sweet, and non-threatening.

Charlene said, “There is a piece of this puzzle missing,” and that the first step was to get the death certificate signed. She said that the second step would revolve around the fact that I have the right to question the cause of my mother’s death. “There’s something that is not right,” she said.

She told me that the doctor ¹ or the state’s attorney needs to request an autopsy. ²

She also said I should call the Department of Health in Tallahassee and (a) file a complaint against Coastal Rehab because of the fractured pelvis she suffered while there ³, (b) file a claim against Woodland Terrace because of their refusal to respect my wishes regarding the administration of Risperdal in the days leading up to her death, and (c) file a claim against every doctor that has seen my mother for the last nine months. Charlene said that the Department of Health would then make an unscheduled visit to each of the facilities and could revoke their licenses if they weren’t doing a good job of record-keeping.

Charlene gave me two numbers for the AHCA — the Agency for Health Care Administration. She said I could contact them at (888) 419-3456 or (877) 425-8862, and that she was giving me both numbers because one of the numbers usually doesn’t work. She said they are the ones who oversee nursing homes, hospitals, physicians, and anyone with a medical license in the state of Florida.

Charlene guessed that because my mom was not yet receiving Medicaid and had no health insurance, there were no health insurance benefits to cover any doctor’s fees, which is why nobody wants to perform an autopsy. She said that in the state of Florida, the laws do not protect the patient. She said that, “doctors and hospitals are killing people all the time, but we can’t get the citizens to change the laws,” because every election season the medical lobbies run ads on television and scare “the little old ladies” into thinking that if they don’t vote to protect the doctors, they’ll all leave the state and then nobody will be here to take care of them in their old age.

If I wasn’t already more sad than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life, it would have been a depressing call.

¹ According to the medical examiner, the doctor (or anyone else, I suppose) can request an autopsy but there is no way to compel the medical examiner to actually perform one.
² This was the first time anyone mentioned the state’s attorney’s office to me.
³ She actually fractured her pelvis while she was a resident at Grace Manor Port Orange and not at Coastal Rehab.

Top Men

August 13th, 2012 @ 6:45 pm

I received an email from lisa Slagter ¹ <autopsyexperts@gmail.com> The (very long) subject line of the email was “Regarding comprehensive Autopsy Mrs. Kathleen Gagne to obtain CAUSE OF DEATH $3200.00”. The text of the email read:

Dear David,

Upon three conversations with three top Pathologist,  it was verified by all three that just doing a toxicology study would not be so beneficial.  By doing a complete comprehesive autopsy then you can determine a CAUSE OF DEATH , for sure.  Doing just a toxicology study, you have a small chance of knowing exact cause of death..I have a Chief Medical Examiner that is available tomorrow.  I am sending you the necessary forms to handle the process. ²


Warm Regards,
Lisa Slagter
Autopsy Experts of America, LLC
1-800-343-2135

Attached to the email were six (6) files: ³

1. Autopsy Confidentiality Notice.pages
2. AGREEMENT FOR FEES AND SERVICES.pdf
3. AUTHORIZATION FOR ORGAN-TISSUE RETRIEVAL.pdf
4. Authorization for Autopsy.pdf
5.AUTOPSY MEDICAL HISTORY FORM.pages
6.FEES FOR SERVICES BY CREDIT CARD.pdf

I suppose I should note that the quote of $3200 is only $2200 to $2400 higher than what she told me on the telephone.

¹ It bothers me when anyone doesn’t properly capitalize his or her own name.
² Do I really need to detail the spelling and grammar errors in this email?
³ I thought it was fascinating that she sent me two documents which would require the Apple Pages application to open. Also please note the digits one through six — So I would know in which order to open them? — and the arbitrary spacing and capitalization of characters in the file names.

Autopsy Experts of America

August 13th, 2012 @ 2:47 pm

I called the (800) 343-2135 number Dr. Allen Cusack gave me for MediLegal, the independent pathologists he suggested I contact to perform an autopsy on my mother’s body if the Volusia County Medical Examiner refuses to do so. A woman answered the phone by saying, “Autopsy Experts of America. How may I help you?” ¹ (Their website is http://www.autopsyexperts.com/.) I said that I needed an independent toxicology report done on my mother, who passed away recently. She asked me if she could put me on hold for a minute and I said she could.

“Hi. This is Lisa,” someone said after a minute or two. There was a bit of confusion at first because Lisa thought that I was calling to get the status of an autopsy, and then was confused as to whether she had previously talked to me, but eventually she understood why I was calling. “Let’s start from the beginning,” she said.

I gave her the five-minute, quick synopsis of the last week and when I was done she asked me if I was familiar with the costs associated with having an independent autopsy performed. “No. I’m not,” I said.

Lisa said that it really depends on the state and the city, and how far a pathologist would need to travel, but that it was generally between $800 and $1000. She then quickly went into how the process involved drawing blood directly from the heart, and that it usually takes two to four weeks to get the results of blood tests.

She told me that this was, “very standard,” and that she was, “seeing this happen all the time.” ² She said it was, “very common”. Lisa asked me if she could fax or email me some forms and I told her my email address.

I gave her the web address for the mortuary where my mother’s body is being held — www.jecss.com — and the phone number of address she could use to contact Dr. Allen Cusack, the manager there.

Lisa told me that she would call me back on my cell phone and she would email me the forms.

The entire call lasted thirty-two minutes.

Update: I received a phone call almost immediately after this one, at 6:20 PM EDT, from (619) 216-7573. It was Lisa asking me for the name of the nearest large city. I told her that my mother died in Deland, which was about halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach, and that I would prefer a pathologist from Orlando. She said that was okay and made sense to her considering that the medical examiner’s office in Volusia County was refusing to do the autopsy.

¹ It was a little concerning that Dr. Cusack had the name of the company incorrect, but I supposed they could have changed their name since the last time he had contacted them.
² where this means elderly patients killed because of incorrect dosages of non-FDA-approved medications

Follow Up with Dr. Cusack

August 13th, 2012 @ 1:55 pm

I called ¹ Dr. Allen Cusack of Cusack Mortuary because I hadn’t heard from him yet ² and it was nearing five o’clock.

Dr. Cusack answered the phone and said, “Man, you called at just the right time!” He told me that he had just finished talking to MediLegal Autopsy Service, a nationwide chain of independent pathologists who performed autopsies. He told me their phone number is (800) 343-2135 and seemed to be stressing the fact that they are a nationwide chain. It took me a minute but I realize that was because he thought I was calling from Los Angeles ³

Dr. Cusack said that he had called the Volusia County Medical Examiner office and a woman named Tara Clark had told him that Dr. Peele should be the one to sign the death certificate. I reiterated to Dr. Cusack that Dr. Peele refuses to sign the death certificate. Dr. Cusack told me that Dr. Peele could be fined for not signing it.

I told Dr. Cusack that it seemed like a conflict of interest to me that the medical examiner was requiring a signature from the physician to determine whether they were going to perform an autopsy, and he said, “That I do not understand.”

Dr. Cusack said, “She is here. We have her in our refrigeration facility.”

I wrote in my notes, “super nice guy; said he’d call me tomorrow between 10/11 AM”

¹ Note that this website lists times as Pacific; this call began at 4:55 PM EDT
² During our previous conversation he had told me he would be calling me back today.
³ I explained to him that I was in Sanford, Florida and had been since five o’clock this morning.

Cusack Mortuary

August 13th, 2012 @ 10:10 am

I called ¹ Cusack Mortuary, where my mom’s body is being refrigerated.
Linda Jackson answered the phone and asked me to hold for Allen ².

Here are my notes from the call:

Allen Cusack said I should call the medical examiner’s office; said ME’s office must do an autopsy if I request it ³
he asked me if I wanted him to call the ME for me; I told Allen that the ME had refused to do an autopsy
he asked me if mom had a doctor in Daytona; I told him she’d seen Dr. Peele a few times
we can find out if we can get an independent pathologist
Allen is going to get the phone number of an independent pathologist and will call me
I explained the whole story of the last week and Allen was “shocked”; said he doesn’t understand why ME refused to do an autopsy
I confirmed with Allen that I am the only one allowed to make any decisions about my mother’s body, and Allen noted that Detective Whittier of the Deland Police Department was the only other person who had contacted him about my mother

The entire call lasted thirteen minutes.

¹ Note that all times on this website are Pacific; this phone call began at 1:10 PM EDT.
² Dr. Allen Cusack, who I later learned was the manager of the facility
³ Note that this is not true according to Bob Burch at the office of the Volusia County Medical Examiner

Updating Detective Whittier

August 13th, 2012 @ 9:55 am

I called ¹ Detective Whittier of the Deland Police Department to let him know about my conversation with Bob Burch at the office of the Volusia County Medical Examiner.

Here are my notes from the call:

she’s @ the one in Deland ²
he told me to make sure I get toxicology reports
he said that he had not talked to Bob Burch this morning; he talked to him twice last night but not at all today
he made it pretty clear that he was not lying to me, and he told me that he wouldn’t lie to me because he knows how stressful this all is
asked me to let him know when toxicology reports come in

¹ Note that this website lists times as Pacific; this call began at 12:55 PM EDT.
² There are two Cusack Mortuaries; the detective had asked me where my mother’s body was

Volusia County Medical Examiner

August 13th, 2012 @ 9:39 am

I called ^* the Volusia County Medical Examiner using the number I was given by the nurse at Fish Memorial Hospital. ¹ (Their automated message — press one for this, press two for that — is insufferably long, and includes a letter-by-letter enunciation of their web address: http://volusia.org/medicalexaminer/ which takes a long, long time.) A woman answered the phone and I said that I was calling because my mother had died on Sunday and I wanted to know why they weren’t performing an autopsy. She said, “Okay. Hold on just a moment and I’ll get you an investigator.”

After less than a minute I was connected to Bob Burch, who explained to me that my mother’s body was under the jurisdiction of Dr. Peele, and he was the only one who could authorize an autopsy. ² Mr. Burch told me that he had talked to Detective Whittier of the Deland Police Department “last night and again this morning”. ³

I asked Bob why the medical examiner’s office was not going to perform an autopsy and he said, very casually, that it was because of her medical history, that she had a history of kidney problems, and she’d recently broken her hip.

I interrupted him because all of those facts were incorrect. She’s never broken a hip, I said, and she’s not had any kidney problems. He told me he was only basing his comments on the information he’d received from the hospital. ⁴ I told him that didn’t make any sense, because the information was all wildly inaccurate, and he said that he’d eventually get all of the correct records and have time to review them.

I tried telling him the story of the last week and everything that had happened with the Risperdal and my arguments with Ida Alvis at the nursing home, but he gave me no indication that any of that mattered to him. Bob told me that he couldn’t “take jurisdiction” over my mother’s body and couldn’t simply perform an autopsy based on the fact that I wanted one.

Bob said that she was under the care of a physician, there was no trauma surrounding her death, and there was no indication of foul play, so the ME will not do an autopsy. He further explained that even if I managed to transfer jurisdiction of my mother’s body to the Volusia County Medical Examiner’s office, “we’re just going to review her medical records, so we are not going to do an autopsy.”

Bob told me, “You do have an option to do a private autopsy, and the funeral home can help you do that.”

I thanked him and said goodbye.

The entire call lasted fourteen minutes.

^* Note that this website displays Pacific time; this call began at 12:39 PM EDT.
¹ (386) 258-4060
² Note that when I talked to Bob on the 14th he told me that Dr. Peele had no influence on whether the medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy.
³ Detective Whittier would later refute this, stating that they spoke twice on Sunday night but not at all on Monday.
⁴ As far as I know, at this point the hospital was still claiming to have not yet received any information from Woodland Terrace, and Detective Whittier also told me that he had not yet received any medical records regarding my mother, so I don’t understand to which (clearly incorrect) records Bob was referring.

Updating Investigator Brown

August 13th, 2012 @ 9:24 am

I called Investigator Brown from the Florida Department of Children and Families. ¹ He had previously told me that I would never hear from him again regarding his investigation, but I thought it might make sense to provide him with the additional information that my mother is now dead.

I called the number on my caller ID from when he called me on Saturday morning, but there was no answer. The outgoing voice mail noted that callers could attempt to contact him using his state-issued cell phone using the number (386) 299-0820, so I called that.

He answered the phone on the second ring. I said, “Hello, Mr. Brown. This is David Gagne.”

He said, “Hello, Mr. Gagne,” and I said, “My mom is dead.”

Investigator Brown replied, “Really? That’s a shame. Did they tell you what happened?”

I explained in great detail everything that had occurred since I spoke to him. He told me that he had indeed been to visit my mom at Woodland Terrace on the afternoon of August 11th. He said she was resting and watching TV. He said he, “didn’t feel like she had mental capacity,” but that she appeared to be, “almost napping.”

I asked him if they had given him a copy of the paperwork he had requested, and he said, “Yes, but this isn’t my only case and I haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

We talked for a minute about how he wasn’t allowed to talk to me about his investigation at all, and then he said, “Trust me. I’ll be in touch with law enforcement on it.”

I thanked him and said goodbye.

The entire call lasted six minutes.

¹ Note that all times on this website are Pacific unless clearly stated otherwise. This call occurred at 12:24 PM EDT.

An Update from Detective Whittier

August 13th, 2012 @ 9:04 am

I called Detective Whittier a few minutes after noon. ¹ He correctly assumed that I was in Florida now. He told me he had called the medical examiner’s office this morning, but he had been unable to talk to a doctor. He said that he left a message for the chief medical examiner for Volusia County to call him after he explained the whole story to a nurse there. He said he was waiting for them to call him.

Detective Whittier suggested that I call the ME’s office, because if I call they might agree to do an autopsy based on my story, otherwise I can have one done on my own. We talked for a bit about HIPAA and privacy and how it frequently made it very difficult for law enforcement.

He told me that he doesn’t understand why the medical examiner won’t do an autopsy on their own, and that he is documenting all of his conversations with everyone at the medical examiner’s office because, “it doesn’t make sense.” He noted again that he has been told that Dr. Peele won’t sign the death certificate, and that he is still waiting for the ME to call him back, and that he is still waiting for Dr. Peele to call him back.

Detective Whittier said that he came to this website and had printed most of it and shown it to his lieutenant. He asked if I was taking notes on everything, which he said was very smart. ² He said that he had called the medical examiner’s office at 8:10 AM EDT and was unable to get in touch with any doctor or the medical examiner, but that the nurse to whom he’d spoken said she’d leave a note in mom’s chart. Detective Whittier said he understood that doctors and administrators are very busy. ³

The entire call lasted nineteen minutes.

¹ Note that this website posts times as Pacific.
² I told him that I was indeed taking notes of everything, including the conversation we were having right now, and he said that was a good idea.
³ It was very clear from his tone and choice of words that he was annoyed that his calls had been not been returned yet.

Detective Whittier

August 12th, 2012 @ 7:23 pm

Deland, Florida My phone rang and I answered it on the second ring. I said, “Hello? Hello?” but there was nobody there, so I hung up.

I called the number that displayed on called ID and got the voice mail box of Detective Whittier at the Deland Police Department. While I was leaving him a message, my phone clicked to let me know he was calling me on the other line, so I hung up and started talking to him.

He said, “I’ve got that case,” and told me he was trying to touch base with me, and that he just got back from the hospital. I started telling him about my mom, but he had to put me on hold. ¹ When he returned he asked me if I had received a call from the livery service. I told him I hadn’t and he said that they were based in Deland but had an Orange City phone number and he didn’t want me to be confused. ² He said, “They have your mother now.”

Detective Whittier ³ told me to write his number down so I could call him. He said he was, “trying to tie up some loose ends,” and that I should call him tomorrow, in the morning if I could.

He said he was going to try to find out from the chief medical examiner — Dr. Herman? — why he won’t take this case. He noted the fact that mom had only been under the care of Dr. Peele for a few weeks, and that the medical examiner is the only one who can do an autopsy.

Detective Whittier said that the livery service was not going to do anything with her, and that Dr. Herman doesn’t work nights. He said that the medical examiner’s office has a list of criteria which determines if they’ll come get a body, and for some reason they were refusing to get mom. He said that they, “can wait 72 hours before they need to do anything,” but I wasn’t sure who he meant by that. He expressed frustration in that the medical examiner’s office doesn’t have to do anything that he tells them to do, and that I can still have an autopsy done, but I will have to pay for it. ⁴

He told me that I can call the medical examiner’s office and have a biopsy done, and he said that a biopsy was the same thing as an autopsy except it meant that I was paying for it instead of the state.

“They will do it,” he said. “They will charge you, but they will do it.”

I asked him, “Okay, but I have to wait for them to deny it first?” and he said that was right. He said that once Dr. Herman calls him to officially decline to do an autopsy, I should put the wheels in motion to get a biopsy done.

I thanked him and agreed to talk to him in the morning.

¹ When he returned he told me it was his sergeant calling him because, “We’ve got another dead body.”
² I’ve been away from Florida for far too long to recognize phone numbers, but it was nice of him and an early example of how thoughtful and thorough he is.
³ Added to my “to do” list: Find the proper abbreviation for “Detective”.
⁴ I said, “Yes. We will do that.”