Medical Information
Medical Treatment & Hospitalization
After Jeremy discovered that he had been given Remdesivir without being informed (he was asleep), he became anxious and could not sleep for fear it would happen again. He told them no because of the side effects and studies that he had heard about, but he was never told beforehand by the staff. In general, the nurses gave him good care as far as we could tell though we do suspect he was dropped when transferred between beds. My husband found a lump on the back of his head one day and although Jeremy was very heavily sedated, he winced when it was touched. We brought it to the attention of the nurses who ignored us repeatedly and NEVER recorded mention of it in his records. When "emergencies" arose, they were always (literally always) very early in the morning or very late at night which itself was suspicious to us. We even had a doctor comment (never having heard a comment from us) that "See, not all emergencies happen during the night." When our son was put on the ventilator, it was during the night. I (as his healthcare proxy) was not called beforehand. His notes say I was updated in the morning. That meant that I was never able to discuss with him if he would want to be put on it or not. It also means that we were never able to talk with our son again. We believe septic shock left untreated for several days contributed significantly to his death.
Activism & Follow-up
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Written by Cheryl and Scott Budik(mother and Father)
When our son was admitted to the hospital via the ER, we never dreamed things would turn out as they did. We fully expected that he would maybe be there for a week or 2 then would return home. We will NEVER again have the naive faith in any hospital/doctor that they have our best interest at heart. They deceived our son and they deceived us. They often ignored our concerns or took offense to them.
Our son was scared to begin with and they only made it worse because they gave him Remdesivir without him knowing and continued to try giving it to him even after he told them no more. He was so scared he couldn’t sleep. He was so anxious they put him on medications for it. I truly believe (besides the monetary reward for the hospital) that he ended up in the ICU and then on the ventilator because of the anxiety. Within a few days of receiving Remdesivir, he began having heart and kidney issues. His heartrate and BP went erratic. His kidneys started failing so much that he had to have dialysis, and he developed blood clots.
We will never know the cause of the lump on the back of his head that caused him to wince in pain though he was heavily sedated. We were repeatedly ignored when the subject was brought up. We didn’t get aggressive about it because so many things kept coming up and we were afraid Jeremy would be neglected or abused if we made anyone angry. He was put on the ventilator during the night without a call to me (his healthcare proxy). He developed cdiff, which he supposedly recovered from after antibiotics. He suffered 2 collapsed lungs, the first of which could actually have been caused by the ventilator (possibly the 2nd as well).
On December 1st in the very early hours of the morning, he was transferred by ambulance to Westchester Medical Center. We actually felt some hope that he would finally begin to heal. After all, as far as we knew, it had a great reputation. Maybe it does for some things.
Nothing improved really though. Some of the nurses there were good like at Columbia, but not all. One nurse told us there was another young man who was more sick than our son and ours would have to wait. That was in the MICU where EVERYONE is seriously ill and each nurse only has 2 patients compared to 10 or more elsewhere in the facility.
They did try to help our son for the most part, though at some point I think they wrote him off as too far gone. A few days before he died, he developed a very high fever. We watched it climb steadily throughout the day. When we said something to the doctor on duty right before we had to leave for the night, he told us they were “watching” it and waiting on a blood culture (at least 3 days out).
When we got back the next day, it was even higher (around 105 point something, I believe). His BP and heartrate were very erratic and his nurse was nowhere to be seen for an hour. When my husband hunted her down way down the hall chatting with another nurse, he was basically met with indifference. He asked her what would be done for a patient who entered the ER, with what was going on with our son and she literally just looked at him. He asked her what it took for her to get moving and she just sat there, so he stomped his foot and told her to get moving. She lied about waiting on antibiotics to be delivered from the pharmacy, but he overheard he on the phone requesting that they get some for him. It isn’t recorded in his records, but I would almost swear that on the whiteboard in Jeremy’s room which had his temperature and such written on it, it actually said at one point his temp was 107!!
The night our son died, the nurse on duty came and asked if we wanted an autopsy done (5 minutes after he passed). I told her we hadn’t thought about it. 5 minutes later she tells me they aren’t doing them in NY because of Covid. I found this odd as she was not a new nurse and probably should have known that already. I could be wrong, but I have so little faith and so much suspicion about the medical establishment now I can’t help but wonder if there was something they wanted to hide. But our son is gone now. He was a healthy young man before all this happened with so much potential and such a big heart.
I have a friend (my daughter in law’s mother) who also died, shortly after our son. She spent 2 months in the hospital with Covid (with already compromised lungs due to mold in her workplace). She was overweight and about 40 yrs older than our son. She was not given Remdesivir nor was she put on the ventilator, yet with all that, she still survived longer than a healthy 24 yr old (who DID get Remdesivir and WAS ventilated). I believe her death is suspicious too, honestly. Things her daughter told me just do not make sense.
These are just a few of the cases archived by our COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project, and there are more being reported by survivors and families of victims every day. If you would like to help with this project, please contact us at email@chbmp.org.