I Felt That No One Was Concerned if He Was Eating

Charles Williams III

St. Luke’s Hospital, Miners Campus Pennsylvania

My husband had carpal tunnel surgery on 12/20/21 which is where it is my fervent belief that he contracted Covid. We spent an enjoyable Christmas with our family. Between Christmas and New Years, we both had a very slight cold. He wanted to call our Dr to get meds because he knew he might need antibiotics to not get any worse. Since we knew they would ask, we both took a home Covid test. His was immediately positive. He called the doctor on 1/4/22 and was prescribed a cough medicine, zinc, Vitamin D. He would not prescribe an antibiotic because he said it wouldn’t help with Covid.

Because our granddaughter is a nurse, she had me take his pulse oxygen level. It was in the low 90’s. The next day (1/5 /22) it dropped into the high 80’s. We called the dr again and when he spoke with my husband he felt he sounded fine and not out of breath so he prescribed an inhaler along with the other meds. By Friday (1/7/22) his oxygen level was in the high 70’s and when I called the dr’s office they told me to take him to the ER.

When I was able to speak with my husband, I felt that no one was concerned if her was eating. It was difficult for him to eat due to the high flow oxygen mask. He would be placed in a chair and left for hours. At night, he'd get tangled in the wires and tubes if he tried to move to get comfortable and I remember him telling me the nurse was nasty to him when they'd get tangled.

Today is 3 years since that day. When I left him at the ER desk and kissed him good bye, I never dreamed that would be our last kiss.

The next 7 days are a blur and I still do not feel I have near as much information as so many of the people who share their story in the group.

I will try to summarize.

1/8/22 – He was listed in guarded condition. He was on high flow oxygen. He would need to go to moderate flow and then low flow. They said he’d be in the hospital 3-4 days. From what I wrote in my notes, he was on remdesivir, anti- virals, steroids, and medicine to prevent blood clots. They said they stopped antibiotics.

1/9/22 – They said he had viral pneumonia, not bacterial pneumonia. They said it was hard for him to eat because of the bag hanging with the high flow oxygen. When he moved the bag to eat, his oxygen level would drop. I tried asking him if anyone helped him to eat and he said no.

1/10/22 – When I spoke to the hospital, they said they started a special drug and his lab work was headed in the right direction. I wrote down Dornase but I don’t know if that is correct or not. I haven’t seen that drug listed anywhere.

1/11/22 – They said he was on bi-pap overnight. He is maxed out on 40 liters of oxygen. His levels were holding.

1/12/22 – The pulmonologist and a PA called me and said bi-pap is not life sustaining, it is maintenance till a decision is made.

I don't know of any specific mistreatment but I remember the respiratory dr saying he would not be in this condition if he had been vaccinated.

What decision?

Vent – he would be moved to another facility and in their experience, it would be highly unlikely he could be extubated. If not, it would mean a tracheotomy and feeding tube and he’d be in a nursing home.

Comfort care – What is that? He’d be made comfortable on drugs until we assembled the family to say good bye. At that point, it probably wouldn’t be more than an hour till he was gone.

WTF!!!! – and I apologize for the vulgarity. But I was 1 million % not expecting to be told anything like this. This cannot be happening!

It is still unfathomable to me that he went into the hospital for some oxygen due to his age and he was dead 7 days later.

Then she told me that earlier that morning he asked her for a pill to end it all. She said he was explained the situation. He replied that he really didn’t want to go on a vent but that he would do what I wanted him to do.

After an hour and a half on the phone with the pulmonologist, I told her to let him know that I was ok with whatever decision he made, that he shouldn’t make his decision based on me. They told me to wait and be prepared and when they got him ready they would call me. AND NO ONE CALLED ME THE REST OF THE DAY!

When I finally called at 6:30 PM, I was told he was resting comfortably on an Atavan drip. And they were giving him breathing treatments! Again, WTF!

1/13/22 – I was called very early in the morning. His levels dropped overnight. There was no time to call me. They felt he was capable of making his own decisions. He decided to try the vent! REALLY??? They had me and my daughter come in to have a discussion with the team. Again, we were told there was less than a 10% chance of him ever coming off the vent and if so, he’d spend much time rehabbing in a nursing facility.

We chose Comfort Care. We planned it for late morning the next day so my daughter could drive in from VA. They allowed me and my daughter into his room to spend some time with him. He was sedated and not aware we were there.

That evening, I got an emergency call from the hospital that because he was on the vent, they had to follow vent protocol and when they tried to turn him, he began to go into cardiac arrest and they were calling ME to ask what they should do!!!

I told them to stop the vent and I would be there in 15 minutes.

I arrived with my daughter and two granddaughters at about 8 PM Thursday. They removed the vent and left him with an Ativan IV and an oxygen mask for the remainder of the night. In my opinion, the pharmacy was already closed and they had no access to morphine so that is all they could do until it opened in the morning.

It seemed my husband was gasping for air but they told us he was fine, he was comfortable.

We all spoke to him and told him how much we loved him and what he meant to us. He was heavily sedated but seemed to respond and move his head in the direction when he heard his granddaughters speaking to him.

And I sat by his bed, and held his hand, and kissed him and slept off and on and listened to him struggle to breath for the better part of 12 hours until after 8 AM on Friday, 1/14/22, when they came in and started a morphine IV and within about an hour, he was gone.

It’s taken me 3 years to be able to do this. Every time I came to this site and read other people’s tragedies, and how so many were so similar to my own, I’d have to leave. Because I couldn’t fathom that this could have been prevented. Or that his life was just a ‘statistic’ or a ‘protocol’.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story.

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