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AP Exclusive: Insomniac Jackson begged for drug
Associated Press ^ | June 30, 2009 | LYNN ELBER

Posted on 06/30/2009 4:58:32 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael Jackson was so distraught over persistent insomnia in recent months that he pleaded for a powerful sedative despite warnings it could be harmful, says a nutritionist who was working with the singer as he prepared his comeback bid.

Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse whose specialty includes nutritional counseling, said Tuesday that she repeatedly rejected his demands for the drug, Diprivan, which is given intravenously.

But a frantic phone call she received from Jackson four days before his death made her fear that he somehow obtained Diprivan or another drug to induce sleep, Lee said.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: michaeljackson
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1 posted on 06/30/2009 4:58:33 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
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To: Free ThinkerNY

maybe he just needed a “little something” to crawl into bed with...


2 posted on 06/30/2009 5:34:15 PM PDT by bigbob
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To: Free ThinkerNY

>> Michael Jackson was so distraught over persistent insomnia in recent months

The guilt over all those poor kids he molested must have taken its toll.


3 posted on 06/30/2009 5:39:06 PM PDT by Nervous Tick (Stop dissing drunken sailors! At least they spend their OWN money.)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

I’m still wondering if LaToya will appear at the funeral. Still believed that LaToya was Michael in drag.


4 posted on 06/30/2009 5:44:38 PM PDT by lilylangtree (Veni, Vidi, Vici)
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To: Nervous Tick
Now the black celebrities are crying racism because the media talks about Jacko’s drugs and child molesting. Pee Diddiot and Jamie Faux said Jacko was the black people's hero and white people can't try to claim him. They could choke on the freak for all I care.
5 posted on 06/30/2009 5:46:25 PM PDT by peeps36 ( Al Gore. Is A Big Fat Lying Hypocrite. He Pollutes The Air By Opening His Big Mouth)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Just so everone is clear DIPROVAN (propofol) is NOT a sedative, it is a GENERAL ANESTHETIC induction agent, and as such is only to be administered by anesthesiologists, or under the direction of an anesthesiologist.


6 posted on 06/30/2009 5:47:52 PM PDT by gas_dr (Trial lawyers are Endangering Every Patient in America)
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To: peeps36

>> Pee Diddiot and Jamie Faux said Jacko was the black people’s hero and white people can’t try to claim him.

Well who am I to argue with Pee? Have him all you yourselves, you Diddiot. They sure pick funny heroes.


7 posted on 06/30/2009 6:01:06 PM PDT by Nervous Tick (Stop dissing drunken sailors! At least they spend their OWN money.)
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To: gas_dr
DIPROVAN (propofol)... is a GENERAL ANESTHETIC induction agent, and as such is only to be administered by anesthesiologists.

Wow... Jacko truly WAS Whacko! Living and dying on the edge!

8 posted on 06/30/2009 6:07:26 PM PDT by tflabo (Truth or Tyranny)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

There is so much being printed and spoken in the press about Michael Jackson it is hard to know what is true. I guess over time hopefully the truth will surface.


9 posted on 06/30/2009 6:07:27 PM PDT by Parley Baer
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To: peeps36

Pardon me, but didn’t some blond die of cancer the same day? I mean, how much have we heard of her death. And she’s already buried. So tough luck lady. You should have picked another time to die. MJ has preference over the airways and all other celebs that meet their end will get pushed aside like ice by an icebreaker. Sheeesh, enough already. Some sarcasm intended.


10 posted on 06/30/2009 6:13:11 PM PDT by NCC-1701 (ON 1-19-09 GAS WAS, ON AVERAGE IN MEMPHIS, $1.43 A GALLON.)
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To: gas_dr

I have had propofol many times for minor medical procedures, and it involved a single injection that knocked me out in seconds but had me fully awake again with 20 minutes (and conscious even sooner). Am I correct in thinking that the only way this could be used to get someone an 8 hour stretch of sleep would be to have them on a slow IV drip the whole time? This really sounds like a wholly impractical way to provide a full night’s sleep for a hard core insomniac, and I’m sort of shocked that any doctor would have suggested it, much less administered it to Jackson. Putting aside the safety factor, I would think there would be other drugs that would be more practical, especially when you’re dealing with a situation where the patient is willing to pay a medical professional to sit by his bed and monitor him for the whole night, and for any needed medical monitoring equipment to be purchased.

It’s really a little scary that sleep medicine is lagging so far behind many other areas of medicine. I think it’s viewed as not being a life-or-death matter, and thus not as much of a priority as things like cancer and heart disease. But persistent lack of sleep certainly shaves a lot of years off of people’s lives, and also leads to a lot of deaths when people who may have spent 8 hours in bed but got little sleep, force themselves to drive or engage in other dangerous activities that they have to do to keep their jobs. Obviously there are a lot of people who are just self-inflicting sleep deprivation by refusing to allocate sufficient time for sleep, but there are a lot of others who just *can’t* sleep.


11 posted on 06/30/2009 6:49:59 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: NCC-1701

Yes, but Fawcett’s death was certainly not unexpected, and there had been quite a bit of media coverage over the last couple of weeks, focusing on her long battle with cancer and the fact that it appeared to be nearing an end. There really aren’t any questions or mysteries about her death.


12 posted on 06/30/2009 6:51:50 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: GovernmentShrinker

You are quite correct. Propofol can be slowly infused to keep a patient generally anesthetized. I administer propofol total IV anesthesia all the time. Having said this, propofol is lipid based, and if you get a ton of it, it is like having pure cholesterol infused into your veins. Additionally, propofol (diprovan) being a general anesthetic does not give physiological sleep. Restorative sleep is REM (dream sleep). If you deny someone dream sleep, but anesthetize them, it is as if they never slept at all. My contention is that if Jackson was relying on this to sleep, he in fact died of sleep deprivation...


13 posted on 06/30/2009 7:15:39 PM PDT by gas_dr (Trial lawyers are Endangering Every Patient in America)
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To: gas_dr

As someone who struggled with insomnia for a long time (ultimately 100% solved with a combination of antihistamines, melatonin, 5mg of Prozac just 3 times a week, and foam rubber ear plugs, as an inflexible nightly routine), I’ve never bought into the idea that drugs that knock you out don’t help you get real sleep. The obstacle to real sleep, at least in my case, was things preventing the real sleep from happening. Knocking out those things whatever they are (and they don’t necessarily have to be identified to be knocked out), allows the real sleep to occur. The knock-out drugs can make that happen. Doesn’t mean it will work for everyone, but I think it works for a lot of people.

Partly I’m just hypersensitive to noise and light — a noise in the “pin drop” range can effect my sleep just like somebody grabbing my arm and shaking me. The knock-out drugs eliminate the brain’s ability to register that sort of external sleep enemy, and natural sleep then proceeds side-by-side with the effects of the knock-out drug. I’ve used Sonata, and occasionally still do when my sleep schedule has been thrown off and really needs to be thrown back on quickly. It knocks me out completely, even at half the smallest available dose (I empty out half the contents of the capsule), and I wake up feeling perfectly well-rested.

Part of my problem was a permanently runny nose, that combined with other sleep problems, kept me awake because I was constantly clearly my throat or blowing my nose or being awakened by a scratchy dry throat from breathing through my mouth. Switching from the combination antihistamine decongestant that I used during the day, to an antihistamine only for nighttime pretty much solved that problem. The melatonin and ear plugs helped with falling asleep and staying asleep, by reducing my sensitivity to tiny light and noise stimuli.

The underlying sleep issue that I finally solved without ever really identifying was the pattern of waking up at 3-3:30 AM like clockwork, and not being able to get back to sleep for 3-4 hours (time to get up to go to work, naturally). And that’s what the microdose of Prozac miraculously fixed. It was hellish, having this happen several times a week, for several years, and it continued and even worsened after I’d gotten my falling asleep problems fixed. But it became manageable once I started taking a Sonata right away, as soon as I realized I was awake. It was a quick knock-out effect, but I know I was getting “real sleep” from it, because I’d awaken feeling perfectly well-rested (and Sonata conveniently wears off after 3-4 hours so it was perfect for a middle of the night wake-up problem. Whatever was waking me up was a separate issue from my brain’s inclination to do “real sleep” which seemed to function normally. Fortunately, the problem evaporated completely with the Prozac, and I now only use Sonata about once a month, to help me fall asleep.

I had done almost no dreaming for several years before I started the Prozac. And dreaming came back to the level I recalled from my teenage years, almost immediately after starting the Prozac, and has continued for several years now. But even when I wasn’t dreaming, I still felt well-rested and was in excellent physical and mental health, when I was relying on Sonata to get me the second half of my nightly sleep on a pretty regular basis.


14 posted on 06/30/2009 7:48:32 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: gas_dr

Anyone using this is nuts. Any physician giving this except an stated above is criminal. It is also used to heavily sedate patients that are on a ventilator. HEAR that a ventilator. Jacko was not on a ventilator and stopped breathing. STUPID.....


15 posted on 06/30/2009 9:05:06 PM PDT by therut
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To: gas_dr

oh my!!!

my jaw dropped when I read that MJ was on Prop.

wow.

the only antidote to propofol is a doctor trained in managing an airway...

on top of propofol add a benzo (xanax), opiates (vicodin, dilaudid) and you have bingo...polypharmacy and apnea.

what a tortured existence he must have had - that nothing short of an anesthetic would allow him to get some ‘sleep’.


16 posted on 06/30/2009 11:03:29 PM PDT by jabotinsky
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To: gas_dr

I had propofol when I had minor surgery last year- it was my Dr. and the anesthetist’s thinking it wouldn’t make me as nauseous/sick as other types of anesthesia drugs. I usually get pretty sick from general, but they also stuck a patch behind my ear and gave me some anti-nausea drugs adn I did better that time, didn’t get sick. Although the first 24 hours I was in a major daze...I just remember lying there and sleeping or staring out the window watching the snow! Felt much better the next morning after everything started wearing off..


17 posted on 07/01/2009 7:15:43 AM PDT by gore_sux_2000 (We always knew McRino was wearing the change n' hope kneepads....)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

"Sedagive? Give him a sedagive?"

18 posted on 07/01/2009 7:20:44 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: rintense; Lisa_from Buckeye Country; Curious George1978

Who is this, Cherilyn Lee? Who is she connected to? And is she connected to the NoI/Nanny Grace?

That’s the three questions that pop into my head for now.


19 posted on 07/01/2009 11:10:41 AM PDT by hoosiermama (Berg is a liberal democrat. Keyes is a conservative. Obama is bringing us together already!)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

More details at this link...Who was the doctor that suggested this “medicine” ... the same one that waited until he was dead before calling 911?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090701/ap_on_en_mu/us_michael_jackson_drugs


20 posted on 07/01/2009 11:20:04 AM PDT by hoosiermama (Berg is a liberal democrat. Keyes is a conservative. Obama is bringing us together already!)
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