If she had sought treatment for her flu, she might have been saved, Perper said, if only because her drug use could have been controlled: “If she would have gone to the hospital she wouldn’t have died because she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to take the excessive amount of chloral hydrate.”
But according to a statement from lawyers for Stern, she refused emergency care in the days before her death because “she did not want the media frenzy that follows her.”
Both Stern and Smith’s physician implored her to seek emergency treatment, but Smith ?refused to go to the hospital because she wanted to avoid media,” attorney Lilly Ann Sanchez said in a news release”Anna called the shots in Anna’s life and everyone close to her knows that.”