Doctors and nurses in the emergency room were asking Ijah McCulley questions she didn’t know how to answer.
Which family members could they call for her?
Did she want them to send for the hospital chaplain?
“My mind was just spinning out of control,” McCulley said. “At that point in time, the only thought was, ‘Save my son. Please don’t let him die.’”
On Oct. 25, a detective called to tell her that she needed to rush to Indiana University Health Bloomington Hospital. Her 22-year-old son had been found unresponsive after a drug overdose. She still doesn’t know what combination of drugs killed her son, not until a toxicology report is completed.
McCulley said the doctors and nurses did everything they could for her son, James Kany.
Jason Crouch, who oversees the emergency department at IU Health Bloomington, said his staff have the medical and technical skills to respond to overdose victims, but the effects of the nationwide opioid epidemic extend beyond the emergency room.
“We can treat the emergency at the moment, but this opioid crisis takes a lot of additional follow-up that we can’t give them in the emergency department,” Crouch said. “To say we can connect with them emotionally or psychologically at that point in time is not always the case if the health-care provider has no history of addiction in their family or themselves.”