Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Monday, March 12, 2012
(INDIANAPOLIS)(Fox 59) - For a 62-year-old man with a history of heart attacks, William Cage’s doctors said he was doing pretty well.
"They said he was doing okay as far as his heart," said widow Shelley Cage after her husband's most recent doctor's appointment. "The only thing he complained about was the pain in his jaw."
For more than two years Cage's jaw had pained him. Cage recently qualified for Medicaid benefits and that's what sent him to Affordable Dental at 3800 North Post Road last Thursday. Shelley Cage helped her husband fill out his medical history form for the dentist.
"He listed that he had two stents put in as well as five heart attacks. He had high blood pressure and what medications were."
Cage had been prescribed an antibiotic, Cephalexin, three times a day to fight the infection in his bad tooth.
Shelley Cage said her husband was fine though the first half of his appointment. It was only after his tooth was extracted that his condition took a turn for the worse.
"And he starts talking slow...'I don't know,' and I said, 'You're walking stiff like a zombie,' and then he says, 'I don't know.'"
Cage said foam was coming out of her husband's mouth as he collapsed in the dental office's restroom. Within an hour he was dead.
Cage asked the dentist what drugs he had given her husband.
"He says something about Lanocaine or whatever it is to numb the tooth that was extracted."
Cage's body was delivered to Wishard Memorial Hospital.
"And the chaplain came in and my mother specifically told her she wanted an autopsy being done and she wrote it down," said son Ricco Francis.
But the family's wishes were not honored. Instead, Cage's body was delivered to Lavenia's Funeral Home on East 38th Street.
"And he's here, he's there at the thing," said Francis. "He hasn't had an autopsy and we was wondering how come he was there and they already embalmed him."
The family said it was told it could request a private autopsy for $2500. After being contacted by Fox 59 News, the Marion County Coroner's Office said it would conduct an autopsy at no cost if the family can convince Wishard Memorial Hospital to sign off.
"Its shocking," said Francis. "You know, here today and gone the same day."
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