Anna Nicole Smith found in hotel room unresponsive

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by Livia

I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread or not - but besides the fever and the cold/flu symptoms - she slipped and fell in the tub (possibly hitting her head) and she told everyone that she was fine.

I'm thinking even without any drugs, she could have had a slight concussion and brain swelling, that only worsened w/ each hour. When she took a nap yesterday, that was that.

Edit: ^^^ What Paula just said before I finished...that's why hospitals tend to keep people w/ head injuries overnight, for observation.

That is an interesting angle. Without being a forensic scientist, I cannot say for certain, but I wonder if it is customary to do a brain scan or MRI as part of an autopsy. It would be very easy to tell whether she had some kind of hemorrhage or ischemic event if that was the case.

The thing about Valium (and other benzodiazepenes) is that it is really supposed to be used as a muscle relaxant or for anxiety. It's not for sleep, as popularly assumed, although it is often prescribed for that. As a muscle relaxant, in excessively high doses, Valium will repress the breathing reflex, which means that you will stop breathing in your sleep. Valium is also a very, very tiny pill that would be dissolved very quickly. Therefore, I'm not surprised that the examiner could not find visual traces of it.

Some classes of antibiotics have cardiac affects (QTc prolongation, Torsades, etc.), and may interact with other drugs, which would increase the levels in the blood of all drugs, even if an appropriate dosage is taken. This could have led to a heart attack. Because many newer antibiotics are taken once per day, if she took the medication in the morning, it may have been absorbed fully into her system by the time she died. For all we know, she could have taken a double dose of antibiotic because she felt so rotten, or because she wanted to make up for a skipped dose.

I would also imagine that she must have been on some kind of an antidepressant due to all of the stuff going on. Again, more potential drug interaction.

I think the fact that the drug bottles all had Howard K. Stern's name on it is very telling . These meds have obviously not been taken under the watchful eye of a single physician.