Patient Advocacy and Medical Care Challenges

This is the condition that I found her in.

Our family was prevented from being at her bedside to advocate

to help her.

Instead of hearing a plan for how they would help her recover,

our family was repeatedly told that she was unsalvageable,

that her lungs were permanently damaged,

and that we sh- we should prepare for her death.

We then discovered that she was designated a do not resuscitate,

a DNR,

despite her objections.

To me, it felt as though the medical objective

had shifted

from helping my wife to recover to preparing us to accept

that she would die.

December 15th, I believed

leaving Gayle there presented a greater danger than taking

responsibility for her care myself.

I entered the ICU

to bring my wife home.

Gayle was conscious, mentally coherent, repeatedly

stated that she wanted to leave with me.

Hospital administrators called law enforcement,

and what should have been a discharge

became an approximately six-hour standoff.

I wouldn't abandon her.

At one point, Gayle asked the police sergeant who

entered the room,

"Am I a patient

or am I a prisoner?"

She told them they were going to have to decide that day.

Colonel Alan West, Texas Senator Bob Hall, our attorney,

and others became involved and we tried to resolve the situation.

Eventually, the hospital released us, released her to us.

Rather than allowing us to leave through the hospital main entrance,

we were forced to take Gayle down the freight elevator

that's used to transport bodies to the morgue.

We were then escorted through the same

doors where the funeral homes come to pick up the deceased.

As we left, a nurse told me, "Mark my words, she'll be dead

tonight or before you even get home."

In the hospital, she had been receiving 60 liters of

high-flow

oxygen.

Once I took my wife home, I was able to get her to 25 liters of

oxygen with the equipment I had available.

After bringing her home, our daughter Angela and I cared for Gayle

ourselves. With guidance from Dr.

Richard Bartlett, we used treatments that he suggested from the

beginning, including budesonide, ivermectin, antibiotics,

vitamins, and supportive care.

We didn't have an ICU, sophisticated equipment, or the

resources that a major medical facility had.

We had home oxygen, basic medical supplies,

and around-the-clock care.

Within 48 hours, Gayle's oxygen requirements dropped

dramatically.

Over the next 30 days, she was weaned completely off of oxygen.

Within 60 days, she had recovered sufficiently to return

to work.

Today,

Gayle is alive, healthy, active, and

enjoying life with our grandchildren and children.

What has stayed with me is not simply that the hospital's standard of

care failed my wife.

It was how quickly some medical professionals seemed to stop treating

recovery

as a realistic goal.

I brought home a wife that told me,

that they told me would die that night. Instead, she recovered.

As a former critical care nurse, I do not believe healthcare professionals

should

stop treating the individual patient,

listening to the patient and family, and searching for a path

forward towards recovery

just because a protocol says there is nothing more to offer.

Thank you, Brad