A Family Doctor's Tale -VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

Barbiturates (the dolls in the novel and movie Valley of the Dolls) used to be the most common sleeping tablets in the 1970s. They have since been replaced by the benzodiazepines. 

The danger of barbiturates was the rapidity of their action as seen by the use of thiopentone to induce sleep in anesthesia. The other danger was that in high quantities they tend to depress the respiratory function so that an overdose can kill by causing breathing to stop.

Barbiturates are mostly used by the rich and middle income who can afford to get them from their physicians.
So they were the preferred choice by the rich or middle class to commit suicides.

There was a couple who had a bad quarrel in their home and the wife ended in the hospital after being discovered by the husband to have taken an over dosage of barbiturates.
She was a patient of our deputy head of the medical department.
She was kept under observation as she was still breathing at the time of admission.

When her respiratory rate reached a low critical level, we were summoned to start her on a respirator to assist her breathing.
As usual, I was the one to do the endotracheal intubation as I was the only one in the ward able to do the intubation having learned from the Anesthetic Department.

The intubation was done and the patient was put on the respirator. An intravenous drip was also inserted and her vital signs were kept under constant observation.

After 2 days she woke up from her so called sleep and was reconciled with her deeply stressed husband.

Of course the husband was very grateful  to the consultant and insisted in taking him out for a grand dinner after the wife was well enough to go out.

We (the medical officers, housemen and nursing staff who did all the resuscitation ) were not even mentioned by the couple.