My mother’s health and death
APS and their allies seem determined to deny that cutting off my mother’s electricity — and therefore her air conditioning while temperatures were in the 90s — killed her. Consider a Twitter exchange with the state regulator supposedly watchdogging APS’ policies:
Stacey Champion
Wondering when Arizona Corporation Commission <@CorpCommAZ> is going to publicly address that one of your regulated utilities turned off another senior woman’s power in dangerous temps who died. Hope you have questions.
Nick Myers — Arizona Corporation Commissioner
We did address it and trust me, I’m sure the family doesn’t want made public what we found. This is another case where the utility did above and beyond what they needed to, and more importantly the shutting off of power for non payment was NOT the cause of death.
Stacey Champion
Can you please tell me how many times APS spoke directly to Ms. Korman prior to disconnection? And lie much? She’s literally on the confirmed heat death list. Also from Medical Examiner’s report: “The high temperature in the days leading up to her death was 102 degrees Fahrenheit.” #HeatKills
Nick Myers — Arizona Corporation Commissioner
I’m not sure what you didn’t understand about my post, but let me put this in terms I’m sure you can understand: I’m not talking about this case with you. Go drum up drama elsewhere.
Let’s break down why Myers does not want to talk about this and imagines that I won’t either. Spoiler: He’s saying APS’ policy is okay because it only kills frail old ladies. I sure do want to talk about that.
His argument rests on the report from the Medical Examiner, which says:
Cause of death: Complications of chronic ethanolism [alcoholism]
Contributator cause of death: Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, environmental heat stress
Manner of death: Accident
How injury occurred: Exposure to elevated temperatures
Over on that capture of the X/Twitter exchange, you can see other reports of heat deaths from the Medical Examiner. They all identify a prior medical condition as the cause of death, with heat stress both as a contributing factor and the cause of the injury producing accidental death.
I am reliably informed that in other areas MEs would name heat stress as the primary cause of death. I am curious why the practice is different in Arizona.
So was my mother an alcoholic? Does that matter?
I know my mother spent much of her retirement playing bridge with people on the internet, smoking cigarettes and sipping vodka. She wasn’t the sort to go on a bender — I had seen her tipsy but never saw her drunk — but I know she drank strong liquor pretty much every day of the last couple of decades of her life. Of course that takes a toll.
I was not heedless of her health. When my father was too old to stay completely independent, my family arranged an apartment for him right across the street from mine where he lived the last few years of his life.
At Thanksgiving in 2023, my brother and I discussed starting to worry about our mother but did not press the issue. She was an old lady, a little wobbly, a little dotty, but still herself, stubborn and not ready to give up her independence, living in a retirement community with a network of friends.
In retrospect, she was was not safe. She died alone. I have to live with that.
But my mother just did not just drop dead one day because she was a drunkard. APS cut off her electricity. She was without air conditioning while temperatures were in the high 90s in the shade. She probably died the first day; she definitely died sometime in the next few days. Do the math. It was the heat.
Manner of death: accident. She stumbled and could not get up. Why? Because she was drunk? Nope …
How injury occurred: Exposure to elevated temperatures. She was woozy from baking in the heat.
Contributator cause of death: Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, environmental heat stress. She lay in her house, cooking, until her heart gave out.
Cause of death: Complications of chronic ethanolism. Why was she vulnerable enough that this killed her? Drinking had weakened her system. Plus she was 82 years old.
I imagine that had she not been a drinker, she might have been just strong enough to survive. But so what?
Is it okay to unplug a hospital patient’s ventilator because a healthier person could survive without it? No.
Was it okay to unplug my mother’s air conditioning because a healthier person could survive without it? No.
A few days after the X/Twitter exchange above, my brother Adam commented, and Myers had a lot more callous things to say.
