The mother of an 11-year-old student of Kiowa County Junior High attending classes in Mullinville told The Signal Thursday morning she and her husband are considering filing suit against USD 424 because of a recent error in administering a prescribed medication to her son.
Michelle Berry, who moved to Greensburg in July with her three sons and husband when he was transferred to the area by the oil exploration company he works for in regard to the development of an oil field south of Bucklin, notified The Signal late Wednesday night with an email in regard to “something…we feel people should know about.”
Evan Berry, a sixth grader attending junior high in Mullinville with other Greensburg and Mullinville sixth through eighth graders since school opened August 14, has been taking daily dosages of a pair of anti seizure medications--Lamictal and Trileptal--the past several years to counteract seizures to which he’s been prone since sustaining brain damage as a result of an encephalitis related viral infection five years ago. As a result of that illness Evan now functions at a first to second-grade level in school, shadowed throughout the school day by special education para Janie Kemp.
Just trying to help…
According to Michelle Berry, who spoke Thursday morning to The Signal at length about the matter, her son was given an entire school week’s worth of Lamictal by mistake the day of Monday, August 24, and not given any Trileptal whatsoever. Evan was to receive one 200 mg pill of Lamictal and one 600 mg pill of Trileptal each day shortly after eating lunch.
Instead, he was given five of the Lamictal pills by the school custodian, Curt Wilder, when the person typically responsible for administering the pills—junior high secretary Jerilyn Young—was not present. Though Kemp is typically with Evan Berry for the duration of the school day, she was not with him in the office for a few minutes, asking upon her return if the student had received his medication. Michelle Berry said Kemp remembered being told Evan had already received his medication, without any idea he’d been given five pills at once.
As to how Wilder could have given the student five pills rather than one, Berry said she later discovered a week’s worth of Lamictal had apparently been taken out of the medication bottle and placed in a small envelope. Berry said she understands Wilder was “just trying to help” when neither Young nor Kemp were present to give the sixth grader his medication, and had no idea he was to receive only one of the pills, apparently assuming the contents of the envelope were a daily dosage. She also said Kemp had administered Evan’s daily medication on at least one prior occasion.
(You can read the full account of this story in the 9/16 edition of The Signal)
