Transcription of Katie Bowley for the show Impacted by Addiction #283
Lisa Belisle: My next guest is an individual that I’ve known for a few years as a very successful single mother and member of the Kennebunkport community. This is Kate Bowley who lives in Kennebunkport with her nine-year-old daughter Lila. In 2014 they lost Lila’s father to a three year struggle with opiates after he became addicted after a work related injury. Kate is passionate about advocating for opiate reform in the state of Maine and the impact the epidemic has on families and on the community at large. This is a pretty sad story that you’re coming in to talk to us about today.
Kate Bowley: It is.
Lisa Belisle: It’s pretty tough.
Kate Bowley: It is. It’s been a journey.
Lisa Belisle: On the flip side, you’re an incredibly resilient individual. You’ve had to raise your daughter by yourself for a little while, you’re a single working mom, I guess all moms are working. You work outside the home, support the two of you, you’re survivors. I think that’s part of the reason why you were willing to come in here today.
Kate Bowley: I think it’s important to talk about Wayne and his legacy in terms of what happened and what the progression was with his story, because I think it is unique and as we’ve discussed, it certainly it is an epidemic in our state and in the nation, and I think that it deserves more attention than it’s currently getting.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about Lila’s father.
Kate Bowley: Wayne and I met, we had known each other for quite some time, but we fell in love in 2007, and chicken before the egg, I suppose, I was pregnant quite immediately. Our family, we became a family very quickly. Lila was born in 2007 and we raised her together, and Wayne worked locally in the community as a meat cutter for 15 years for the same company, and I was traveling for work. We made it happen and made it work. Loved our little girl very much.
Decided after a couple of years that we might as well make it official and get married; however, prior to that, about six months before our wedding, Wayne was doing a delivery for work. It was slippery on the stairs and he fell down with a hand cart in his hand and tried to catch himself, and needless to say we ended up in the hospital that afternoon, and he had come to find out he had torn his rotator cuff.
The series of events that transpired after that, in a gist, where that workman’s comp obviously got involved in the situation because it was work-related. This happened in February of 2009. They sent him to physical therapy, and unbeknownst to me also were prescribing him, two doctors were prescribing him opiate pain killers. There was no MRI, there was no additional fact finding initially until probably, I would say, close to June or July, and in the meantime he ended up having surgery, once they’d uncovered all of that, the physical therapy wasn’t working. I think it was probably making things worse. Again, unbeknownst to me he was taking all of these pain killers.
Once he had the surgery, he still had a lot of pain and was struggling, was not able to go back to work until almost November of that same year. We got married in the meantime in August of 2009, as I mentioned. It was around that time that I started to figure out that something was off. I had asked Wayne on numerous occasions to maybe curb the drinking a little bit because I noticed when he did drink things were definitely amiss. We sorted through that, but unbeknownst to me it was not the alcohol, it was the pain killers and the combination thereof. By November when he went back to work it was Thanksgiving, and while he had some restrictions, on what he could do as far as lifting and weight and things like that, at the end of the day it’s Thanksgiving, it’s a butcher shop, and he ended up actually rupturing his biceps.
As a result he was back out of work and had to have another surgery to repair that. I found it fascinating at the time because when he came out of the surgery, the doctor said something to me that I thought was peculiar. He said because of his tolerance to pain killers, I’m giving him a prescription for oxycodone. I thought okay, that’s odd, but I just assumed it was something in terms of the surgery or the previous surgery that he’d had.
We went through the holidays and got through Thanksgiving. I knew that he’d had a few prescriptions again after the surgery for these pain killers. I actually woke up in the middle of the night one night and just had this strange feeling. I went to where I knew he was keeping the pain killers because we had had a conversation about how I would prefer that you don’t drive if you’ve been taking those, especially with our daughter. Something just didn’t feel right and I went and needless to say they were all gone. It was just the empty bottles. He was certainly at the time misusing them.
I confronted him about it, and we had a very fierce conversation, and I told him that that was it. At this point, he needed to stop and seek some help. How naïve of me. Needless to say he told me that he had stopped. He also didn’t drink at all and started attending meetings. Christmas comes and goes, and it’s now January of 2010 and I go on a trip for work out to Los Angeles and called to check on him and Lila and had again another very strange feeling. I felt like his speech was slurred. He just didn’t seem coherent to me. Upon my return from my trip, I happened to be working out of my home one day and the woman who was cleaning my house came over and she said, hey, what’s wrong? You seem a little off today, and I explained to her, I’ve got some concerns about Wayne, he’s had these surgeries, some concerns with abusing the pain killers. She was working as a pharmacy tech at his pharmacy.
She’s like, oh, yeah, he filled his prescription this week. I saw him. What a gift from the universe that that information was revealed to me. That started off a series of events where I discovered just how terrible it was. He actually had returned to work that day and came home and was completely high out of his mind. I could tell, I could see it. That was his first trip to rehab. He went up to Mercy for a number of days and ended up in an outpatient therapy program for a number of months.
In the meantime, still negotiating with workman’s comp. They are very aggressive in monitoring progress, and I was explaining to them what had happened and now this new turn of events with the addiction, and we went back and forth at length in regard to that. The next year and a half or so was very challenging. He was sober, but in the midst of this we had been introduced to a doctor that could treat him with suboxone. My understanding, and perhaps, Lisa, you can speak to this better than I can, but not all doctors can prescribe suboxone, correct?
Lisa Belisle: That’s right.
Kate Bowley: There’s only a certain number of cases or patients that you can take on, that’s correct?
Lisa Belisle: That’s right.
Kate Bowley: Okay. This particular doctor was local to where we lived. Wayne started seeing him for treatment. Maintained his sobriety for probably a good year, I would say, but unfortunately with the addiction comes a number of other symptoms. There was lying, there was money missing. There were things happening that unfortunately ultimately led to the disintegration of the marriage, and he was making some choices, I think, because of his state of mind that were not healthy for Lila and were essentially putting her in harm’s way. You don’t get married to get divorced, certainly, but it had been so challenging and so upsetting that ultimately we did end our marriage in divorce.
At that time, I do believe that he was still sober; however, because of the nature of the work injury, he came into some money due to a settlement and spent the next summer, basically, blowing it on drugs and pills. I found myself in a situation with him again, as the father of my child, where we had to have an intervention. He went back to Mercy for a second time with the assistance of some of his good close guy friends. Cleaned up again for a period of time and then ultimately I watched from afar as he lost everything due to his addiction.
He, as you mentioned, he passed away in 2014, and in 2013, it was late fall, he called me on Halloween, I was trick-or-treating with Lila, and he said, “I need to go back to rehab. I need to go back. I’m a mess.” A this point he’d lost his job, his vehicle, his license due to child support demands, lack of meeting them, and when he came over to my home the next morning, he’d been dropped off by one of his fellow drug friends and didn’t even have the clothes on his back at that time. He was wearing somebody else’s clothes, somebody else’s shoes.
We sat at length and spoke about his addiction and spoke about what it was like for him, how his entire day at that point revolved around finding drugs, using drugs, keeping drugs to get through the next day, what the process was, no different than a work schedule or the way you would schedule a child’s day or anything like that. He went back to Mercy again for the third time, and when he got out, he also didn’t have a place to live, and he went to live with a family member in Waterboro. It was fairly remote. As I mentioned, no vehicle, no job, no money, no means to even get drugs at that point.
I thought that he was safe and was going to work on recovery in getting better. When I got a phone call on a Saturday afternoon the following June, it was very shocking to learn that he had actually passed away from a heroin overdose. Unbeknownst to me, at some point along the way he’d started using heroin as well intravenously. The tragedy of all of this, beyond just the circumstances itself and watching this amazing man who was a wonderful father and a great husband disintegrate like this is, not only did he die of an overdose, but the folks that he was with brought him to the hospital to SMHC and left him in a vehicle to die.
Narcan wasn’t on the radar at that point, the way it is now. He certainly may have benefited from that, but they found him the next day or that evening in the vehicle.
Lisa Belisle: They drove him there in a car and then left him in a car for somebody else to find, rather than bring him in the emergency room.
Kate Bowley: Rather than bringing him to the emergency room or kicking him out the door on the front steps of the hospital or making a phone call or anything else. I certainly think in terms of law enforcement things have changed since that time, but the other challenge here is that there wasn’t, it wasn’t followed up on in terms of who was responsible. What those circumstances were that led to him being left there. I think if it’d happened today it would have been a little different, but at the time it was not, and it wasn’t followed up on where… I don’t have a lot of recourse legally because he wasn’t my husband at the time. We had gotten divorced, so it wasn’t something I could follow up on and push for. To this day, I had a long conversation with Wayne’s mom yesterday, we still don’t know what happened that night.
What I do know is this. I think things could have been different if all of the prescriptions for the pills were not written and filled and paid for by the workman’s comp, and also if the doctors that were involved in his care weren’t so free to write him multiple prescriptions. When he returned to rehab the third time, and we sat and spoke at length about what he was suffering from, he shared with me that the same doctor that we had been directed to for him to be able to take Suboxone was now writing him prescriptions for Oxycodone, upwards of 300 pulls a month, Xanax, Adderall, and Ativan. I’m sorry, not Ativan. Ambien. Four of the most addictive drugs that are out there.
I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why a doctor would do that. Hippocratic Oath states do no harm, and there’s nothing but harm in that.
Lisa Belisle: I want to go back to something that you said. Not only did you say it to me in a previous conversation, but you just said it now, that this person that he became was not the person that you first knew. That he was a husband and a father and a son and a hard worker. He was an upstanding member of the community. He had friends, he had a loving family. It really was this addiction that changed his mind and his body so significantly that he was almost unrecognizable.
Kate Bowley: That’s correct. The person that I was communicating with when he returned to detox and rehab the third time, the person sitting in front of me was this angry, bitter, hateful, just angry person. It was remarkable how much he had changed. Everybody loved Wayne. Wayne was the nicest guy, he’d give you the shirt off his back, he always stood up for the underdog. He was creative, he was sensitive, he was sweet. It was truly like speaking with a completely different human being. I think with opiates, it does, it changes the brain and it changed who he was. I just couldn’t get over the anger. Just so angry. Maybe part of that was due to him acknowledging what he’d become, but it just seemed so organic and inherent to who he was as a person.
Lisa Belisle: Was he angry at someone or something or at circumstances? How would you describe the anger that he was showing you?
Kate Bowley: When he spoke about people it was with so much anger. He was looking for fights and looking for conflict. It just seemed to be a normal part of his life and his routine. It was who he’d become, and he was exceptionally negative and I’m sure given the circumstances, I can see that, but it’s challenging for me because when he passed away, and I found myself in a position where I had to break that news to my daughter, fortunately she wasn’t home at the time when I found out. I’ve very lucky that I have an amazing family that surrounds me.
I obviously called my dad, my brother came over, my mother was with my daughter. There’s nothing that I’m ever going to have to do as a parent that will be as challenging as that day when I had to tell Lila what had happened. We had been estranged from him for quite some time. He had attended her sixth birthday party which had been back I the fall. I’m grateful that she has that really happy memory with him, and he showed up and he cleaned up and he was sober and he was helpful. That’s a really beautiful memory that we both get to share. Otherwise we didn’t see him frequently at all.
Somebody had coached me and said, this is what’s going to happen when you tell her. She’s going to be upset, she’s going to cry and then she’s going to be like, can I have a popsicle or where’s my teddy bear, and that is exactly what had happened. I was so angry at him for it and really looked at it for so long as a choice, I think, until I started doing more research and speaking to folks that struggled with addiction and gaining a better understanding that it’s a disease no different than diabetes or cancer or what have you. Did he make some choices in the process that might have contributed? Yes, absolutely. Nobody chooses to lose your family, lose your custody or your daughter, lose your wife, lose your home, lose your job, lose your vehicle, your means to exist in life. Nobody would choose that.
Lisa Belisle: It’s been important for you, as difficult as it is to tell the story, it’s been important for you to have these types of conversations because otherwise, there’s not really a way to see that this can change, until people really are aware of what’s going on and who this impacts. One of these conversations was with the governor.
Kate Bowley: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: It maybe didn’t go exactly the way you were hoping.
Kate Bowley: Yes. My dad and I went and met with Governor LePage actually just about a year ago. It was last December. I think he heard the story and what I had to say, but in terms of the things that I read about what is moving forward in the state of Maine, I’m not sure that it was entirely heard. I think it is an evolution, and I hope that we’ll get there, but there are so many moving parts to this epidemic that need to be addressed and it’s not just law enforcement, it’s not going to be just the pharmaceutical companies, it’s not going to just be Narcan, it’s not just going to be good Samaritan laws or physicians or anything else. It’s got to be all. I’m not sure that we’re there yet.
Lisa Belisle: How do you feel about the laws that were most recently enacted about physician prescribing?
Kate Bowley: I’m on board with it. I think it would have made a big difference for Wayne. I’ve talked to folks, though, who do struggle with chronic pain, and they are frustrated with it because they don’t feel like their needs are being met. I think for my family and for our situation it would have made a big difference. I think a database also would have made a big difference because Wayne was not doctor shopping per say, but did have both his general physician and the surgeon prescribing medications to him without knowing that each other was doing the same. I think that there’s an opportunity there for sure.
Lisa Belisle: How are you going to frame this for Lila as she gets older, because obviously this is her father that she loved, and it’s also someone who ended up with addiction problems so significant that they ended his life. Again, still her father.
Kate Bowley: Right. That’s a great question. Interestingly enough it’s something that I’ve been speaking with my friends and loved ones about a lot lately because she’ll be 10 this year, and obviously I worry about her and any sort of genetic predisposition, if that does in fact exist. I also worry about the stigma, if you will, around this, because at the end of the day there is a stigma around it. I think that that’s shifting socially and culturally, but it still exists. As I watched her in school, some of the bullying stuff has started a little bit, not necessarily in relationship to this, but in time I worry that she could be exposed to that. Lila’s an exceptionally bright young lady. She is an old soul, and she has lived more than she should have had to at her young age.
What I’ve decided is as time unfolds, I’m just going to be completely honest with her and candid and transparent and forthcoming. Is it appropriate right now to tell her that her father died of a heroin overdose? No. Not yet. I do think she does know and she has known for quite some time that daddy got involved with drugs. Found myself in a position where I had to explain the difference between Tylenol and then what he was taking.
I just want her to be armed with all of the information that’s possible. I think that that will unfold over time here as she gets a little bit older, but I have started to share more with her because I certainly don’t want her to find herself in a position where she is embarrassed or hurt or anything else like that. I want her to have the information so she can make choices that are healthy and good for her as well.
Lisa Belisle: I applaud you. It takes a lot to be willing to come on the radio and talk to people that you’ve never met before about what’s obviously a very painful story for you. As I said in the beginning, you’re a resilient individual, and I’m guessing that Lila has probably gotten some of that resilience?
Kate Bowley: She’s a tough little cookie.
Lisa Belisle: I wish you all the best, Kate. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you out and about in the Kennebunkport area. I’ve been speaking with Kate Bowley who lives with her nine-year-old daughter, Lila. In 2014 they lost Lila’s father to a three-year struggle with opiates after he became addicted following a work related injury.
Kate Bowley: Thank you.
Lisa Belisle: All good things ahead for you.
Kate Bowley: Thank you.