COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal ㅤ Memory Project

My husband was isolated from us for a total of 27 days. He was given Remdesivir for at least 5 days (per his medical records), and began retaining excessive amounts of fluid, along with having increased difficulty with breathing (even with the use of a CPAP). It was on the 5th day, that his doctor called me to tell me that they were planning on placing him on the ventilator later that day.

Prior to his hospitalization, my husband and I had discussed that he would contact me immediately if they so much as mentioned a ventilator. Concerned that I didn’t hear from my husband, I immediately texted him after hanging up with the doctor, but he didn’t reply back or call me. This leads me to believe that they had already placed him on the ventilator prior to calling me. There is also no date or time noted in his medical records as to when he was placed on the ventilator, nor is there any proof of him giving consent. The following day, he was placed on an ECMO machine.

Following intubation, his kidneys began shutting down, he developed a UTI/staph infection, bacterial pneumonia, and sepsis, but he managed to recover from all of it, along with regaining his kidney function with the help of dialysis. His lungs, however, were still showing very little improvement and his doctor had called me regarding an abscess that he was concerned about on the outside of his right lung. He advised me that they needed to do a procedure to remove the abscess and send it in to the lab.

He, along with the physician performing the procedure, assured me that it was a “routine procedure that had very few complications and that serious complications were extremely rare”. Yet, during this “routine procedure”, my husband sustained an iatrogenic injury that resulted in a tension pneumothorax, leading to cardiac arrest, and he suffered an anoxic brain injury. Once my mother-in-law and I were allowed to visit, his doctor stated on 2 occasions that the “needle went too deep”, but didn’t elaborate.

He also neglected to tell us until the 4th day of visiting, that he was without a heartbeat for greater than 5 minutes after going into cardiac arrest. We were then advised by the panel of doctors that, with the extensive brain injury, my husband would remain in a vegetative state and would need 24/7 care. Knowing my husband, and my mother-in-law knowing her son, we knew that he would not want to remain in that state and he would have no quality of life. We elected to move him to comfort care and remained by his bedside for 2 hours until he took his final breath.

In addition, my mother-in-law and I witnessed gross negligence with reckless disregard for my husband’s health. During a visit, we watched as a nurse entered/exited his room without proper PPE. When we asked why she wasn’t wearing PPE, she stated that she “was in a hurry and it was okay”. At another visit, a nurse stated to me that she was “tasked to keep an eye on his ECMO machine” when he was on it and giggled as she stated “I have no training or knowledge of how to monitor the ECMO machine”.