Today (last year) Dr. Kurtzman called me, by now the doctors, and professors at UCLA Medical Center had come to the conclusion that Dr. Kurtzman was not receptive at all to established medical fact.  He started the conversation by stating he cannot reclassify Morgan’s death at this time to anything, but natural causes because unless he knows for sure that she didn’t have Porphyria he can’t rule that out, and it could have killed her, even if I did not want to, “admit that”.  I was never really quite sure what he mean by that statement.

I told Dr. Kurtzman facts that doctors far more qualified to talk about Morgan medically already had.  I told him Morgan was never diagnosed with it, and then he said I was forgetting that she took Amitriptyline for her Porphyria.  I told him that was completely false.  I went on to correct the history of Morgan’s medications, and offered to get pharmacy records, her doctor’s records.  I did not question why he had not requested any of this most basic medical information for Morgan before concluding her autopsy based upon completely missing and erroneous information.  My goal was to perhaps introduce one piece of evidence at a time for him, he was very touchy if questioned about anything he had done.  Dr. Kurtzman again told me that of course she was talking Amitriptyline, it was in her labs.

I openly ask the world at this point a few things.  Sheriff’s reports, hundreds and hundreds of pages, not seventy-five, include multiple medications they say Morgan was taking, that she was not, and were not found in her “labs” either.  The Sheriff’s reports also include the condition she was taking the prescription medications for, which she was not even taking, and she never took medications for the condition they are saying she took them for, she had never been diagnosed with any of those conditions, so:

1. Why are Sheriffs trying to compile a list of the medications that Morgan was taking, they have no right under state or federal law to access any of her actual records, in fact they are completely barred from accessing her records.  Yet they write reports as to what medications Morgan was taking, and purport to know why.  And I should not have to say this because I believe they are in violation of her HIPAA rights, but they are completely wrong about what prescriptions she took, completely wrong about what conditions she might have had, and obviously not being doctors they do not have the expertise to make these statements in their report…but that didn’t stop them, they did it anyway.
2. I do not know if their reports were used by the Coroner or his contracted pathologist to arrive at important conclusions.  But I certainly hope that is not the case.  As we all know the Coroner or his contracted pathologist will never answer any of this so what sane way do we have to deal with these people?  Especially when they refuse to treat victims with dignity and respect.  What am I left to do about Morgan’s victims rights?
3. Why is the contacted pathologist so hung up on a condition she never had?  You would think that if we put him in touch with her doctors, who knows she never had the Condition he is stating caused her to die from natural causes, then we could move on, but no that is not possible.  Can’t let any truth seep in here.
4. Is there any wonder why the Honorable District Attorney feels the Sheriff’s Department has so thoroughly botched the crime scene investigation that they are not sure what can be done?        

Back to the conversation with Kurtzman, I asked him what it was going to take to move on from this Porphyria endless loop.  He said if we had her blood genetically tested, of course this would have to be at our expense, to prove she did not have Porphyria then he could take that off of his report. He said he cannot take the word of a doctor or doctors in this case anymore, that he would need to get information from another pathologist, preferably from the State of Colorado.  He said unless a pathologist tells him that she could have died from death by fright he can’t put that down on her death certificate.  He said she would need an underlying malady like QT syndrome, and then he gave me the name of a lab to look up that could do the testing, also at our expense.  He said an underlying malady could make her prone to sudden death.

He said her full manner of death is cardiac & pulmonary edema.  I did not mention that he wrote pulmonary edema on the original autopsy report.  He said the cause can’t be changed at this time.  I asked about the Amitriptyline numbers and he started to talk about Post-mortem redistribution and then got vague again.  He said once again that he found no pills or fragments of pills in Morgan’s stomach so he could not say her death was a suicide or accidental overdose.  There is a disturbing trend that whenever I mention during this conversation about Porphyria never being a diagnosis and that it should come off of his, “Natural Causes”, conclusion he brings up Amitriptyline and the specter of the very high numbers, and that he could have looked at suicide or accidental overdose except that they were not pills in her stomach.

He then went into all of the various ways we could use genetic testing to  establish sudden death.  I asked him if he tested for poisons – he said the testing is very expensive, so there are things they do not test for unless instructed to such as cyanide, etc.

Th conversation was ending and I summarized by saying, Dr. Kurtzman, “so my job this week is to get the hospital results from Children’s Hospital to see if Morgan ever had an EKG and to look up on the Internet the Labs you just told me about to see what the costs are for the testing and discuss with my husband and decide if we can afford to have her remaining blood sample tested for these genetic things that we just discussed to rule in or out and then get back to you by the end of this week.”  Dr. Kurtzman said yes please call me to let me know.

I called and left a message for Dr. Michael Dobersen to call back when he returned to his office on Monday.  A very helpful person in Denver had recommended him in case I needed a second opinion and it seemed as if we did at this point.