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"Dying To Be Thin,"
People magazine
Gaylene Bontrager: Her family believes fen-phen killed her
When Gaylene Bontrager of Spokane, Wash., began taking the diet drug fen-phen in 1996, her mother, a retired nurse, knew about the possible side effects, including hypertension. But she never mentioned her concerns.
"You had to be extremely careful about what you said to her," Nan Baker, 72, says of her daughter. "If you told her not to do something, that usually made her all that much more like to do it."
The consequences were lethal.
In January 1997 Bontrager died at 45 after surgery to repair heart damage her family believes was brought on by the drug.
A yo-yo dieter, Bontrager had tried weight-loss plans touted in health magazines, joined Weight Watchers and taken over-the-counter appetite suppressants. Nothing had a lasting effect, however, and in April 1996 the 5-foot-eight-inch teacher's aide tipped the scales at 225 pounds. That was when her doctor wrote Bontrager a prescription for the combined drugs fenfluramine and phentermine, known as fen-phen.
"It was working well and really seemed to curb her appetite," says her husband, Steve, 49, owner of a cabinet shop. "In just a couple of months she'd lost 25 or 30 pounds. But she'd done that 100 times in our marriage."
By the fall of 1996 Gaylene, a softball player, bowler and swimmer who had rarely suffered so much as a cold, felt tired and weak. Soon she had trouble walking the halls at school.
In steady decline, Gaylene was diagnosed with heart-valve abnormalities. On Jan. 11, 1997, she underwent valve-replacement surgery, but it was too late. In addition to Steve, she left behind two sons, Christopher, now 24, and Brian, 20.
"This is a good women who, because of diet pills, missed seeing her youngest son graduate from high school," says Steve. "Both boys will probably be married in the next couple years, and she won't be there."
In 1997 he and his sons filed suit against American Home Products for promoting fen-phen without advertising its dangers, but they dropped the suit earlier this year. They then joined the class-action suit against the drug manufacturer that was settled in August.
"The only reason I dropped our suit was because I thought nothing would come of our individual claim," says Steve. "Still, we need to stand up and be heard." |
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