OREM — A family is suing an Orem assisted living facility, claiming it mistakenly and repeatedly gave a 75-year-old woman chemotherapy medication that caused her death.
The lawsuit alleges that Bel Aire Assisted Living, Select Pharmacy, and other health care providers are responsible for Gloria Dunn's death on Aug. 27, 2018.
Dunn, a resident of Bel Aire, was prescribed metolazone on July 26, 2018, according to the lawsuit. Metolazone is a diuretic that helps the body get rid of excess fluid. The suit claims that Bel Aire sent the prescription to Select Pharmacy in Midvale and the pharmacy mistakenly sent back methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug.
The assisted living facility administered the "clearly labeled" methotrexate to Dunn "over and over again, despite knowing that she did not have any cancer," the lawsuit alleges. The medication caused "severe and painful damage" to Dunn for several weeks until she died on Aug. 27, according to the suit.
"She was put through chemotherapy," the family's attorney, Ricky Shelton, said. "It is absolutely a miserable, painful experience full of suffering."
Dunn visited several doctors in the weeks leading up to her death as she became sicker, but none of those health care providers recognized the cause of her sickness, the lawsuit claims.
"How are there so many people who had the responsibility and obligation to protect this woman who failed to notice this deadly mistake?" Shelton asked. "For a woman to die after so many people had the responsibility to save her is heartbreaking."
Two of the doctors, Brighton Home Health and Revere Health are named as defendants in the suit, along with Bel Aire, a registered nurse who worked at Bel Aire, Select Pharmacy, three employees of Select Pharmacy, and the University of Utah College of Pharmacy.
"Preventing this type of tragedy from happening to anyone else is what’s most important to the Dunn family in filing this case," the lawsuit states.
In a statement Wednesday, Salt Lake law firm Dewsnup King Olsen Worel Havas Mortensen, representing the Dunn family, described Dunn's death as "a terrible loss for our community."
"In addition to being a beloved mother and grandmother, Gloria was a dedicated educator," the statement said. Dunn was the owner of Little Scholar Preschool in American Fork and also worked with special-education students at the Dan Peterson School.
Messages left Wednesday evening with Bel Aire Assisted Living and Select Pharmacy for comment were not immediately returned.
Contributing: Paul Nelson
Correction: An earlier version incorrectly said Select Pharmacy was located in Murray. It is located in Midvale.