Distraught Widow Sues Army -- Husband Died Of Negligence, She Charges

For 16 years, the U.S. Army was very good to Patrick Coltrain. Then, according to his wife, it killed him.

He wasn't killed in battle. Instead, he died from complications resulting from a common head cold.

Now Coltrain's widow, Thomasina, and their four children have filed claims totaling $23 million against the Army, alleging medical negligence. The Army is looking into the claims and will have six months to decide whether to honor them or force the family to sue.

The Army has acknowledged receipt of the claims and has forwarded them to Fort Meade, Md., for investigation. Calls to Army lawyers for comment on the matter went unreturned.

Meanwhile, the office of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., is also trying to find out what happened to Coltrain, who died last year five days before Christmas, a few weeks after he arrived at an Army base in Germany.

"We've started an inquiry," said Flo Thompson, of Helms' staff. "We haven't received a response from the Department of the Army yet. We're trying to find out exactly why that man died and whether it was negligence on the part of the Army."

How could an ordinary head cold kill an otherwise healthy 34-year-old staff sergeant? In an autopsy, Army doctors discovered an abscess in Coltrain's brain. The abscess appears to have been caused by a sinus infection he had been fighting for more than six months.

The sinus condition was never treated properly, says Thomasina Coltrain's lawyer, William Michelman of Tacoma.

Instead, Army medical personnel repeatedly diagnosed his sinusitis, then treated him with aspirin or cold medicine while suggesting that he was suffering from stress. Stop smoking, Coltrain was told.

No one ever prescribed any antibiotics, despite Coltrain's continuing severe headaches, frequent nausea, inability to keep food down, and even X-rays that showed continued swelling in his sinus cavities, according to Coltrain's Army medical records, recently obtained by Michelman.

What happened to her husband could happen to anyone in the Army, says Thomasina Coltrain. To her, it's a story of incompetent and indifferent medical care.

Coltrain's troubles started last July at Fort Carson, Colo. After suffering constant headaches for two weeks, he went to the fort's medical clinic and was given a sinus X-ray. A physician's assistant diagnosed his condition as a sinus infection, and gave him a prescription for Tylenol.

Although the headaches abated somewhat, Coltrain still didn't feel right. In late August he was given a 45-day leave, and he and his family moved to Tacoma to stay with Thomasina's parents. Coltrain spent his leave working at the fair in Puyallup.

At the end of his leave, in mid-October, he was ordered to Germany to prepare for eventual deployment to Saudi Arabia. The headaches returned, and Coltrain began making more trips to his battalion aid station and to the base dispensary at Aschaffenburg, near Frankfurt.

On Nov. 5, after a new X-ray, a physician's assistant wrote in Coltrain's medical records:

"Patient states he's taken Sine-Off, Actifed, Robitussin, throat lozenges, Motrin and 2 bottles of Xtra Strength Tylenol. Patient states that no matter how much medicine he takes, his headaches get worse. Patient states his pain is throbbing and stays with him constantly. Patient states the pain is 9 on a scale of 1 to 10."

The medic at the aid station referred Coltrain back to the dispensary with a recommendation: "Patient education on smoking and caffeine and the effects it has on the nervous system." The dispensary gave him more Tylenol. But the pain persisted.

Coltrain wrote his wife last Nov. 7: "The headaches got so bad I went to the German hospital Monday morning at 1 a.m. They gave me some pills that would make me sleep and told me to see the medics in the morning. So I went to the medics at 7 a.m. and they told me that I needed a sick-call slip and that I was late anyway.

"The PA (physician's assistant) sent me to the dispensary to see the real Drs. and the PA told them that I was having headaches from stress.

"Well, I finally convinced the Dr. that it wasn't from stress. He looked at my X-rays and found out that I have severe sinusitis, just like I had before at Fort Carson. He gave me the same medication that I had before and told me to come back if it didn't get better.

"At least I convinced someone that the medicine the medics were giving me wasn't doing any good. I'll sure be glad when I feel better. If you were here I would!"

About a month later, Thomasina Coltrain did come to Germany, arriving the day before Thanksgiving. But a week later, on Dec. 1, her husband was back at the dispensary, where a doctor wrote a single word on his medical records: "Deployable."

On Dec. 17, a week before he was to leave for Saudi Arabia, Coltrain went to his battalion aid station, but apparently grew frustrated with delays and left the station without seeing anyone.

Two days later, on Dec. 19, he returned to the battalion aid station and this time was seen by the medics. They wrote that Coltrain's temperature was only slightly above normal but noted that his pulse rate was very low, as was his blood pressure.

A medic wrote: "34 y.o. male complaining of flu-like symptoms . . . headache, vomiting . . . malaise . . . patient unable to keep water in stomach or anything else." The medic first decided that Coltrain was suffering from "possible stomach virus." He referred Coltrain to a physician's assistant at the base dispensary.

The assistant then discovered that Coltrain was severely dehydrated. At 10:40 a.m., he placed an intravenous line in Coltrain's right forearm to rehydrate him. The physician's assistant continued monitoring Coltrain's blood pressure, which slowly declined, as did his pulse rate.

At 4 p.m., the physician's assistant noted that Coltrain's blood pressure was continuing to drop, and that Coltrain had become dizzy and disoriented. The assistant finally consulted with a doctor in the dispensary, and then wrote, "From symptoms described (the doctor) thought that problem may have been labyrinthitis," an inner-ear condition which causes dizziness.

"Recommended patient strict bed rest for several days," the assistant wrote. The doctor also prescribed an antihistamine, meclizine, which was intended to raise Coltrain's blood pressure. From the records it is unclear whether the dispensary doctor ever actually examined Coltrain.

The next entry in his medical file was made the following day. By that time, Coltrain was brain dead.

It appears that sometime during the late evening of that day, Coltrain fell out of his bed and was discovered unconscious on the floor. Dispensary personnel immediately took him to a German clinic where a German doctor gave Coltrain a CAT scan. The scan revealed a large brain lesion.

The German doctor then attempted to have Coltrain admitted to a German hospital for brain surgery, but the hospital said he couldn't be helped.

The next morning, the German doctor contacted the 2nd General Hospital at Landstuhl and asked that the Army take Coltrain off his hands.

The Army agreed to take Coltrain, and he was helicoptered to Landstuhl. On arrival, Army doctors noticed that Coltrain was completely non-responsive to physical stimuli.

Thomasina Coltrain was notified of her husband's "serious illness" and was asked to come to Landstuhl as quickly as possible. On arrival, she discovered that her husband had been declared brain dead, although he continued on life support. Doctors there wanted to know whether she would agree to organ transplants. She said no.

"It is felt that this patient will not and cannot survive his current injury," the Landstuhl doctors wrote. "We do not know the histological type (cause), but that is a mute (sic) point since he has suffered irreversible cessation of all brain, brainstem, and upper cervical cord function."

Army officials rushed through Coltrain's medical-disability paperwork and retirement documents. Then the doctors pulled the plug.

What remained was the determination of how and why Coltrain died. His Landstuhl doctors were convinced that he had had a cancerous brain tumor since they couldn't understand how the persistent sinus infection Coltrain had been suffering from could have possibly caused such a large brain lesion.

But at an autopsy the following day, the truth came out: Coltrain's lesion was caused by a bacteriological infection that probably began in Coltrain's pharynx. In other words, he died from a sore throat that had gone untreated for almost half a year.

Thomasina Coltrain is furious. "The Army killed him," she says. "He believed in them. He always did everything they said. He was 34 years old and he loved the Army. He trusted them, but they killed him."