DRUGS ADD TO PAIN FOR FAMILY

1 Of 3 Sisters Dies From Ill Mom's Prescriptions

Three sisters, a dying mother and dozens of bottles of painkillers made for
a deadly combination one night in a small apartment in Chesterfield Township.

A 70-year-old woman summoned her three daughters to care for her in what
she knew would be her final days. She relied on her family to become her
arms, legs and voice as she succumbed to liver and lung cancer. Doctors
prescribed painkillers to help her through her ordeal.

But last month, police discovered the mother dead of cancer, one daughter
dead from her mother's prescription drugs, another disabled from those same
drugs and a third perplexed about how a mother's request for comfort
instead became a story of pain.

"My sisters decided they could take advantage of the situation," Lynn
Sheldon, 49, said last week.

Edna Placido spent her life in metro Detroit as a bookkeeper and homemaker.
When her daughter Marjorie Gwiazdowski, gave birth at age 14, Placido
agreed to care for her granddaughter.

Placido was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, and early this year spent
time in a Warren hospice. On March 22, Gwiazdowski transformed her
two-bedroom apartment into a hospital room, complete with a bed in the
living room, bars in the bathroom and a wheelchair in a bedroom.

By April, she had asked her two sisters, Cecelia Abrams, 52, and Sheldon --
who lived in Macomb County -- to move in and help out in shifts.

Placido was supposed to receive about a dozen medications a day, including
powerful painkillers. Gwiazdowski's apartment was quickly littered with
prescription drugs -- morphine, ibuprofen, sleeping pills and laxatives.
Police photosshow bottles on the nightstand, inside a penny jar and atop
the microwave.

Placido often lay motionless, falling in and out of consciousness.

On April 3 -- the family's last evening together -- Sheldon prepared sloppy
joes for dinner. They watched television together. By 9:30 p.m., Sheldon
said she wanted to give her mother her medication -- seven pills and a drop
of a tranquilizer -- because she did not trust Gwiazdowski.

"When she would go to give my mom medication, she came out all perky,"
Sheldon said, adding she believed her sister used her mother's drugs.

Abrams told police that she and Gwiazdowski were helping their mother, in
part, to get to her drugs: "We knew that Lynn was taking care of our mom,
and we just wanted to get high," shesaid.

Abrams told police she used her mother's morphine and Gwiazdowski used her
mother's Roxonal, a powerful form of morphine, because "she liked it."
Sheldon told officials she was unaware they took the drugs that night.

By midnight, Placido's daughters had gone to bed: Abrams in one room,
Gwiazdowski in the master bedroom and Sheldon on the living room couch.

Sheldon told a Chesterfield Township detective that she awoke two hours
later to check on Placido. "I was the night-shift person," Sheldon said.
She looked in on Abrams as well, but not Gwiazdowski, who always forbid her
from entering her room, she said.

Sheldon woke up again by 6 a.m., peeked into Abrams' room and tried to wake
her so she could start her shift. But Abrams would not wake up, even after
Sheldon threw cold water on her. She went to Gwiazdowski's room, but
Gwiazdowski already was cold and blue in the face, she said.

"I hugged her because she never let me hug her when she was alive," Sheldon
said.

Then she called police.

The medications that kept Placido alive had killed Gwiazdowski. Abrams was
unconscious from using her mother's medications, and Placido remained
motionless.

She died two days after her daughter.

Abrams sustained life-threatening side-effects from taking the medication.

The circumstances baffled police.

According to Lt. David Marker of the Chesterfield Township police,
Gwiazdowski -- a retired General Motors Corp. employee -- went to 11
doctors in the months before her death to obtain painkillers. Sheldon said
her sister went to the hospital complaining of migraines to get painkillers.

Gwiazdowski started using painkillers five years ago for migraines, Sheldon
said.

Gwiazdowski's daughter, Stacey Placido, 31, told investigators that her
mother sought treatment but it did not work.

"These women would do anything for these drugs," Markersaid. "And there is
nothing out there to stop doctors from writing these prescriptions."

There is no centralized system to ensure that patients are not abusing
prescription drugs. Michigan law used to require doctors to use state forms
when writing some painkiller prescriptions. But legislators repealed the
13-year-old law in December because doctors complained it limited their
ability to treat patients. Rep. Tom George, R-Portage, now is proposing a
revised edition.

Meanwhile, the woman who turned to her three daughters for care and to the
drugs for pain reduction may not have been served by either.