Airman's death raises questions of treatment

A family's pain: Airman's death raises questions of treatment

by Chris Roberts \ El Paso Times
Posted: 02/19/2011 12:00:00 AM MST


In Iraq, Senior Airman Anthony Mena's Humvee had never been hit by a roadside bomb.

The El Paso native was responsible for mapping patrol routes and, as driver, avoiding ambushes and other potentially deadly situations. He had confidence he could protect his fellow airmen, members of an Air Force security unit serving in Baghdad.

By 2009, a few years after returning from that deployment, things had changed dramatically.
Numbed by the prescription drugs he was taking for pain and post-traumatic stress disorder, he did not trust himself to drive across Albuquerque for a counseling session.

In July of that year, as he slept, the 23-year-old simply stopped breathing.

The death was ruled accidental. A toxicology report showed he had nine different medications in his blood stream. There were no illegal drugs. There was no alcohol.

He had not taken more pills than the instructions on the bottles directed. In fact, he had been issued 29 prescriptions from the Albuquerque Veterans Administration hospital in the five months he had been treated there, said Willie Mena, the airman's father.

"VA had the oversight, and they failed miserably," Willie Mena said. "Something has to change, because this is not proper. This is not the right way."
read more here
Airman's death raises questions of treatment