Toronto Sun

May 31, 1999

JEAN SONMOR/Toronto Sun

Fatal pills given by the hundreds

Why did Karly Long die?
From a distance you could look at the life of the pretty 29-year-old and easily conclude she had the world by the tail. She had an apartment she loved at Yonge and Sheppard, a man who cared about her, a job at which she was appreciated and, most of all, she had a family solid enough financially and emotionally to withstand any turbulence she brought them.

Until two weeks ago. At 4.20 a.m. on May 16, her parents, Jack and Penny Long, were awakened in their Richmond Hill home by the police. Penny heard her husband’s sombre voice calling her, “You’d better come downstairs.”
“No, I won’t, ” she answered weakly, knowing intuitively that something had happened to Karly.

The young woman had died in her bed of an accidental overdose. The police who responded to a 911 call from her boyfriend found hundreds of anti-depressants in the apartment, but no empty bottles, no suicide note. The results of the autopsy aren’t available yet, but nobody believes this was Karly’s deliberate exit strategy.
“She was a tortured soul,” her mother said tearfully yesterday as six members of the family gathered in the Longs’ comfortable John St. family room to talk about how they believe the system, the individual doctors and North York General Hospital all failed Karly. The room we sat in was dominated by huge blow-ups of Karly showing a slender young woman with an impish grin and obvious zest.
This was their Karly, the woman they were desperate to save, the woman who, like them, wanted to find an answer to the mood swings, the anxiety, the impulsiveness and the bulimia that had dogged her from adolescence.

“Please, if there is anything you can do to get me in faster, I would really appreciate it. I’m desperate.” she had written a few days before she died in a fax applying for Homewood, a private residential facility outside Guelph.
Her life had been punctuated by crises.When she first ran away from home at 13, she’d shown her ability to work the system. Her parents had gotten her into a residential facility that was supposed to carefully monitor her. They left money to be doled out to her, so much each day.

But as soon as they left, she was down at the office persuading the staff to give her all the money. And then she was immediately on the run again. Her sister Kim remembers that when she was living on the streets with other runaways, a different family member stood on every corner of her area until they found her. They simply refused to let go of her.

The problems changed as the years went by but they never went away. In February 1998, her mother Penny watched grimly, taking notes each day as Karly slid into confusion and hopelessness in North York General’s day hospital program. She listened to her youngest daughter slurring her words and watched as the medication she was prescribed piled up. Someone who worked for the family firm saw her stagger out of the hospital and get in the car to drive.

But this would be another crisis the family would weather.
Last Christmas was one of her best ever, but by spring the wheels were coming off again and her doctor again set her up in the North York General program.
Penny saw the same problems — overmedication, the staff’s reluctance to talk to the family about anything. On May 10, Kim got a frightened call from her sister. She was at Sears and the police were involved. Seems she had written $5,500 in bad cheques in the past few months and the store had called police.

Penny showed up with her Visa card to pay the debt and the police took Karly on a Form One to North York General for a mandatory psychiatric assessment.
Finally, the Longs believed someone was taking the problem seriously. They believed “being formed,” as the police described it, meant she would be held and assessed for 72 hours. But within two hours she was out again. Penny screamed at them. The crisis nurse turned her attention to Penny — she needed to be calmed down.

That was Monday of the last week of Karly’s life. From the pill bottles, Kim has pieced together a partial picture of the final days. Every day she got a different ‘scrip for clonazapam — over 300 pills from six different doctors. She also got four other drugs, some of them four times. By Sunday morning it was over and the police were at the Long front door.

Now Karly’s devastated family is doing what they’ve always done — refusing to let go, refusing to allow Karly’s life to be wasted. They are demanding an inquest to answer to the difficult questions. Why did this happen? Where was the responsibility for helping Karly? Why are there no checks and balances to prevent such massive overprescribing?

“We’re not bitter,” says J.J. Karly’s 27-year-old brother.” We want Karly’s life to matter. We know this is what she would have wanted.”