Sounds like the guy was over medicated, but eating grapefruit daily. As far as I understand it, grapefruit binds to the drugs, reducing the level of available drug in your blood. So when he stopped eating grapefruit his levels spiked. Its unfortunate but when his doctor said "hey don't eat grapefruit it'll screw with your levels." The guy _really_ _really_ should have said, "oh yeah doc I've been eating grapefruit every morning for breakfast," which would have started a much larger conversation.
My personal experience as someone on a lot of blood pressure medication has been that all my doctors have been very clear and up front with me about not eating grapefruit while on that kind of medication. When I asked why they were happy to explain the interactions. And it's not just blood pressure medication. The same type effect happened with my other meds too.
Exactly. That's the conversation that should've happened.
But English was the patient's second or third language, learned late in life, and he was never particularly fluent in it. Enough that they didn't feel like calling a translator, but not enough to really communicate as well as should've happened.
Waiting for him to come up with words didn't fit with modern medicine's idea of the doctor seeing another patient as promptly as possible, so instead, he's dead.
My personal experience as someone on a lot of blood pressure medication has been that all my doctors have been very clear and up front with me about not eating grapefruit while on that kind of medication. When I asked why they were happy to explain the interactions. And it's not just blood pressure medication. The same type effect happened with my other meds too.