At autopsy, the buttocks' abcesses are a curiosity. Most of the time these are 'sterile abcesses'....though not always. What I would like to know is what made the woman septic. If she died of sepsis and pneumonia, as originally reported, then a pivotal question becomes, 'What was the offending bacteria?" If she died of Gram posivive cocci....Staphlococcus.... with Staph pneumonia then it is likely it was due to dirty needles. The fact that she had abcesses of the buttocks indicated that she did not inject herself....she was spoiled and I am sure not the kind of junkie we mostly think about when we consider self administered narcotics. The most common form of pneumonia in heroin addicts is Staphlococcus pneumonia. Now, she was taking Methodone, a drug which is in itself a narcotic, and is used mostly to wean people off of heroin, morphine, dilaudid...very potent narcotics.
Therefore, if she died of Staph pneumonia, it was most likely administered by someone else. I wonder if the medical examiner performed cultures on the vials of medication which was injected. That might be interesting.
This woman was essentially well nourished, not in need of nutritional supplimentation and therefore should have had an intact immune system. Relatively speaking, fairly few well nourished patients, not immunocompromised, die of Staph pneumonia. Relatively speaking with reference to the general population, lots of heroin addicts (self injecting drug users) develope Staph pneumonia.
"... lots of heroin addicts (self injecting drug users) develope Staph pneumonia."
Methadone is the drug of choice when pregnant to stave off heroin use. This could also explain WHY she had pneumonia just after she gave birth to her baby. I suspect she was a heroin user.