Summary of M. William Phelps's Perfect Poison

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Northampton, a small town in Massachusetts, is the epitome of a classic New England landscape. It is full of agricultural history and laid-back living. Nothing ever happens there of any national interest.

#2 The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, Massachusetts, has served the health needs of Massachusetts veterans since 1924. It provides tertiary psychiatric and substance abuse services, as well as primary and secondary levels of medical care to a veteran population of men and women in western Massachusetts of more than eighty-five thousand.

#3 Stanley Jagodowski, a veteran who had suffered from non-insulin-dependent diabetes and high blood pressure, was transferred to the Leeds facility in August 1995. His doctors had predicted that he wouldn’t be returning home again.

#4 On August 14, doctors had agreed that Jagodowski was doing so well that he could leave Ward C and transfer to the long-term nursing care unit. The only thing standing in his way was a bed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Aug 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822582613

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Insights on M. William Phelps's Perfect Poison

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Northampton, a small town in Massachusetts, is the epitome of a classic New England landscape. It is full of agricultural history and laid-back living. Nothing ever happens there of any national interest.

#2

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, Massachusetts, has served the health needs of Massachusetts veterans since 1924. It provides tertiary psychiatric and substance abuse services, as well as primary and secondary levels of medical care to a veteran population of men and women in western Massachusetts of more than eighty-five thousand.

#3

Stanley Jagodowski, a veteran who had suffered from non-insulin-dependent diabetes and high blood pressure, was transferred to the Leeds facility in August 1995. His doctors had predicted that he wouldn’t be returning home again.

#4

On August 14, doctors had agreed that Jagodowski was doing so well that he could leave Ward C and transfer to the long-term nursing care unit. The only thing standing in his way was a bed.

#5

The VAMC had many nurses and doctors who were extremely skilled at dealing with codes and cardiac emergencies, but one of them was missing for two and a half minutes when Stanley Jagodowski went into sudden cardiac arrest.

#6

Following a code, nurses rushed to help Stanley Jagodowski. He was brought back to life, put on a ventilator, and transferred to the ICU. But his troubles had only begun there.

#7

In the spring of 1995, Stanley Jagodowski had complained to his daughter about the pain in his legs just about every day. He had even lost his appetite because the pain had become so severe. But ever since the amputation in July, he had been feeling much better.

#8

Lessard, who was feeling very ill, was preparing to leave the hospital when she passed out. When she awoke several minutes later, she was in an admissions bed being treated with a sedative. Her father had coded again while she was out.

#9

In 1995, nurse Renee Walsh was assigned to care for Stanley Jagodowski, a patient at the Leeds VAMC. When Gilbert came into work later that day, she asked Walsh about Jagodowski’s code. Walsh was taken aback by the nurse’s amusement over the death of one of her patients and the family’s reaction to it.

#10

The Stricklands moved to Groton, Massachusetts, a quaint little Hallmark-like New England town, in the early 1980s. They were admitted atheists, and their children, Kristen and her younger sister, Tara, grew up without any religion or God in their home.

#11

In 1984, with high honors, Kristen left high school and was immediately accepted at Bridgewater State College, a pre-med major at the age of sixteen. She was close to the one place she had grown to love more than anything else: the beach.

#12

Strickland was always the one to end a relationship. She was an intelligent manipulator, and she would beg for forgiveness, but when that didn’t work, she became malicious.

#13

In 1987, Glenn Gilbert met his future wife, Kristen Strickland, at a nursing home where