The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A 49-year-old Holbeach woman who suffered significant joints pain was found dead with a massive amount of morphine in her system.
An inquest heard that Andrea Davies had a level of 6,294 nanograms per millilitre of blood. The hearing was told that a lethal level of the painkiller is considered to be between 50 and 4,000 nanograms.
Ms Davies’ body was found by her parents Walter and Margaret at her home in Market Rasen Way. They had gone to the bungalow after being unable to contact her.
Late the previous night Mr Davies had texted his daughter, proposing to take her shopping at Springfields in Spalding the following day.
Her reply asked if she could take a rain-check, adding: “I’m just feeling under the weather, nothing awful.”
Ms Davies’ response was sent at 10.31pm on November 24, 2015.
Mr Davies, who lived with his wife seven miles away from his daughter’s home, told the hearing: “We tried to contact Andrea by phone on several occasions following that text and got no reply. We decided to visit her.
“I had a key and let ourselves in and Andrea was lying on the floor of the bathroom in what I would loosely call the recovery position.”
He added: “I checked and she was ice cold. We assumed that she was dead by that time – it seemed very obvious.”
The inquest heard that while a police officer was with the couple at the scene later that day, Mrs Davies had a fit or seizure and a second paramedic was called to the home.
Mr Davies told the hearing at Boston Coroner’s Court on January 5 that his daughter had not been in good health. It was said that she was “morbidly obese”, weighing 35 stone but did manage to take her dog for a half-mile walk on most days.
Diabetic Ms Davies had had two replacement knees replaced again.
Her father said: “She was often in a great deal of pain.”
The inquest heard that Ms Davies took slow-release morphine and a faster-acting oral solution.
She was also found to have a toxic but not lethal level of buprenorphine in her system – a drug related to morphine, but one which had not been prescribed by her GP.
A toxicology report said that her death may have occurred “within a reasonably short amount of time” after the drugs were administered that night.
Pathologist Dr Angus McGregor put the causes of death as the combination of morphine and other drugs, and heart disease.
Concluding that Ms Davies’ death was drug-related, coroner Dr Murray Spittal said: “We have heard that the drugs she was taking can be individually fatal or act together.
“We do not know why she took so much on the night of the 24th/25th. There is no suggestion of suicide.”
