She Dies, She Dies Not, She Dies

She Dies, She Dies Not, She Dies - Good morning everyone! - Two weeks ago my mother- in- law suffered a massive heart attack and was whisked into ICU (Intensive Care Unit) care right away. Considering the rough condition she was in after the cardiac arrest, failing kidneys and badly damaged smoker's lungs, the physicians initially claimed that there was not much they could do but sedate her and basically wait it out. Luck seemed to be on our side twice that particular day. For one, Billie's second son happened to be around her when she went into cardiac distress and needed to be rushed to Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, NY. Secondly and even more miraculously, of all days there were eight heart specialists on site on April 30th. I was doubtlessly quite impressed to hear and later witness myself how great of an intensive care my husband's mum first received. Two vigilant nurses were there for her around the clock meticulously writing charts and checking her vitals constantly. However, in all that time we wouldn't see one single doctor that we could have talked to, and that raised the first red flag. As we all know, doctors are the ones ultimately deciding how to proceed which then we, the patient's family, learn through the nurses. - Alright, let me guide you through that ridiculous roller- coaster like week we were all put through. The night Billie was admitted to Ellis Hospital that team of specialists had ordered to have her put on full sedation, but the first- hand information let us believe she had been put into a chemically induced coma. Just wondering, aren't these two technically two different pairs of shoes? Anyway, since Billie had been on blood thinners among many other meds, they decided to give it five days to wean her off Plavix. Perhaps by Monday, May 5th, she'd be ready for open heart surgery, provided of course, her kidneys with all their stents showed noticeable improvement. All that information was valid for that first night and the following day. By Friday though, the docs had rather surprisingly dropped the Plavix story entirely. In order to avoid blood clots of any kind she had not been taken off the blood thinner at all. What the heck! What's more, the nurses we had seen the first couple of nights must somehow mysteriously have vanished because on Saturday there was a different nurse together with an intern caregiver. I thought that that was rather odd. Okay, so now we were told that the kidneys had luckily started to get somewhat better, but the docs still wanted to wait with the surgery. Furthermore, they were planning to take Billie off the ventilator in case they couldn't perform surgery soon due to the high risk of catching pneumonia. On Sunday it all appeared to finally come together nicely. All her numbers had improved enough to schedule her for a multiple by- pass surgery the very next day. Therefore now they did not want her awake which meant the ventilation hose stayed in. What a surprise and relief at the same time! Billie's cheeks looked rosy the first time in days. We were all cheerful and hopeful that the majorly invasive and risky surgery would finally bring her back to us again. Monday morning we called in to hear that Billie had mysteriously contracted something over night and consequently had to be administered antibiotics. This was the day the whole scenario gradually started to change to the worse. Needless to say, the surgery was put on hold, but Billie was not taken off the ventilator after all because now they were worried she might have pneumonia. But she had pneumonia already! What? Wait, it was getting even more confusing. When we got there we could not talk to anyone for there simply was no one around at first. I did not like any of that! Finally some nurse popped in and let us know that the surgery had been postponed and that they would not continue waking her up for she would have a really hard time coughing, gaging, etc. Okay, on Tuesday Billie was moved to a different room within the ICU. She felt ice- cold and looked shockingly grey. Twice the monitors were beeping, and twice I had to run and fetch someone. This was when we learnt that they were clearly understaffed! Really? What on earth had happened??? We figured out that the one alarm was about the Propophol (sedative) bag which needed to be replaced. "Doesn't that drug affect her breathing?", my husband asked. "That's the stuff that killed Michael Jackson." The doctors were obviously no longer worried about her kidneys but kept monitoring her lung function for a reason which under those circumstances made perfect sense. Hello! However, what really bothered me more than anything else was the fact that they had taken her off the heart pump. Why in God's name would they do that after a massive heart attack??? Unlike the day before when they had her still heavily sedated, that day they were trying to do just the opposite again. They had reduced the amount of sedatives but since Billie once more gaged and started to yank the hose out, they reversed that process immediately. What had happened with the original plan to take her off the ventilator? I got immensely distraught, to say the least. I am no physician, but even I could spot the occasional heart arrythmia on the monitor. Up to Monday I genuinely had had a very positive feeling as far as a possible recovery which had been continuously supported by lots of people praying for my mother- in- law. That Tuesday night, however, I grew desperate and began to worry tremendously. On Wednesday the general information was that they had been attempting to wake Billie up again but still had no plans of taking her in for surgery. Give me a break, for God's sake! The dose of sedative had well been decreased to a level where Billie was only half awake but sedated enough as not to violently try to pull the ventilation hose and IVs out herself. Now we are so glad that she opened her eyes one more time. Her hands were warm and her skin looked rosy again. Then she suddenly went into a convulsive coughing fit, but just like the day before there was no nurse around! I again hurried down the aisle to find someone. My husband asked one very important question: "Can my mother drown in her own fluids?" The nurse, neither specifically empathetic nor apparently into it at all, reacted very strangely and ultimately referred to the alarm function on the monitor. No idea why I did not open my big mouth that evening. Instead I kept hypnotically starring at the blood pressure numbers - 177/ 95! Knowing that I should have spoken up makes me feel even more heart- broken now. My husband did actually not want to leave as he told me later. Well, the night came and went, and at 8:05 he called me from work to let me know that his mum had just died a few minutes before. The whole family went into shock as this was not to be expected at all. The hospital had the audacity to call us twice within two hours. They wanted to speed things up and get her corpse down into the morgue ASAP but obviously needed to wait for us to finally come, see her and say our good- byes. I am not just extremely sad about Billie's sudden unexpected passing but also incredibly upset about the way her care had gone down the tube within three days. The same nurse my husband had asked that key question only 16 hours prior very reluctantly went to disclose what had happened that morning. Sure, I can't prove anything since the family clearly refrained from having an autopsy done. We will most likely never find out what exactly happened, but my feeling was that that nurse was not telling the entire truth. My gut feeling was telling me that Billie must have started coughing again and ultimately drowned in her own fluids since there was no one around who could have prevented that. Yes, the ventilator alarm had gone off, but what was it good for with nobody around? Billie's severely impacted heart could no longer cope with that distress and started beating irregularly until it finally stopped. I inquired if they had at least tried to resuscitate her, and once more her body language struck me as very odd. She claimed Billie had been shocked once which I did not buy. Once? Since when do they shock a heart once only? Why is it that up to this day we haven't heard one single word of any of the Gods in white, I wonder. All cowards with tons of flaws and certainly not worthy in the least to be compared to God, if you ask me! - Please, pass this post on to as many folks out there as possible, TV stations too, and gladly to the Ellis Hospital team as well. I've always pushed for a dialogue and badly need a few more answers and most of all an apology for letting Billie slip away just like that. I want the whole world to know that too little staff in hospitals inevitably creates unnecessary and hazardous bottlenecks which leads to definite negligence and in many cases untimely deaths. This must stop! Today, sadly enough, everything revolves around financial gain and profit which is just wrong. Greed and bureaucratic obstacles must be kept out of hospitals where the fate of defenseless patients is put into strangers' hands. Insurance companies ought to be deprived of their almightiness to decide over life and death with the mere strike of a pen just because they do no longer want to cover for their clients who have never been given anything for free but have been paying a great deal of money into their accounts. Please, share this piece with politicians as this corrupt system clearly and loudly calls for change. Billie's passing should not have been in vain. Thank you!