My husband was admitted in Dec28, 2021 for Covid along with my 17 year old daughter. For the first 10 days I was with my daughter but in communication with my husband by cellphone. He stayed in the ER for 48 hours, did not allow him to have his cpap machine, nurses took forever to come into the room to see what he needed for his call light. I knew through the course of days he was not improving. He was transferred to a sister hospital, I was not able to talk to any doctor even at his request to call and reassure me that he was doing okay. I called patient advocate 3xs with no help. They transferred him back to the main hospital since that was where my daughter was at. It took 24 hours for a doctor to see him after he was transferred back. He did convince that doctor to call me and he did and said my husband was not doing bad and he could tell if he was headed down the wrong road. He said he would come to the room my daughter was in and show me all his records and images which they had not done another X-ray since being in the ER and did one at my request and I do not know the findings of those as the doctor never got back in contact with me.

My husband complained of the oxygen not working his his room. He complained many times. A guy nurse finally came in and took several hours and figured out the issue and fixed it. I believe the next morning I got a call stating he was transferred to icu and needed to be out on a ventilator. I was able to convince them to wait and try the proning. After about 8 hours they said they needed to vent. I had begged my husband but he said he wanted to trust the doctors because they knew better. They called and said it was touch and go but was successful. I am waiting for medical records to see all the medications given but I do know he was given remdesivir, sedation medications. 5 days later they put him on ecmo and blood thinners. The did a single cannula and his number were not improving. His vent was always maxed out. A few weeks went by and they realized the cannula with the turns move it and would not work properly. They them did a cannula is each leg and when they took to neck cannula out they realized the pic line was intertwined and ripped it out when they pulled the cannula out. They soon realized that my husband was to tall and they couldn’t get enough length between cannula placement (he did not grow in this time so they knew how tall he was) was not at 10 but 8 and the new blood was just being recirculating out before going to his organs. Then they did a 3rd cannula placement and left the right cannula in his leg and went back into his neck to gain the 10 space limit they needed. His number started to improve.

Then one day I noticed blood coming out of his cannula. My husband had been trying to tell me something. I called the nurse in to see if she could tell what he was saying and we saw the blood coming out of his neck. The cannula was just hanging out and had moved. Mind you the ecmo tech did not hourly check the placement of the cannulas with a flashlight like others did. He also before this had to have dialysis because the ecmo circuit had a clot and it affected his kidneys. My husband then they said got air out of his lungs and they would watch it. The air dissipated and they didn’t have to do anything. Then a few days later the main doc said it came back and he advised to do a pneumothorax. Ultimately I agreed and within 8 hours my husband had gone into cardiac arrest. Over 30 minutes off and on for cpr. They got him stable for a little while then he crashed again and I made the choice to stop all life support. After he had the pneumothorax done the nurse was to turn the blood thinner back on at 1pm. I asked her at 115 if she did and she said she did. I knew she did not because it was not dripping. She came back in and said oh your right I made a mistake. Things happen we all make mistakes. I had also noticed his heart rate all over that day. Not normal from other days. I questioned that and the same nurse said oh it’s just from the procedure. When I went to the hospital that night for the first round of cpr I told the doc about the heart rate and he said he was probably going into heart failure then. So, if the nurse would have listened to me would he possibly be still alive?? They also offered to bypass his heart with ecmo and I declined as he had already been on several life saving machines. The doc on shift agreed but the main doc was the one who suggested it and he was the one who did the pneumothorax that day. I’m sure I’m missing things and I need to go through my notes. And I’m waiting on the medical records.