Mt. Vernon, IL

My mother Dawn Mobley went to the hospital with symptoms of Covid, they sent her home to get worse.

My mother Dawn Mobley went to the hospital with symptoms of Covid, she had trouble breathing, chest tightness, and fever. They swabbed her and diagnosed her with Covid then sent her home. She was given no breathing treatments, no X-rays, and later we found out that they sent her home when she already had pneumonia. Had they done the proper testing for cough, congestion, fever, they would have known it was more than Covid. Four days later, her symptoms progressed, and she was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. She was then admitted for Covid pneumonia in Centralia IL at St Mary’s. She was on regular oxygen for two days then she was placed in ICU and put on the bi-pap because she was demanding higher oxygen. She was on the bi-pap for four days.

During this time, she wanted to talk to her children, but was denied and told she needed rest. We tried to FaceTime her, but we were denied. They made it sound like they didn’t want to bother with FaceTime, so we brought her a phone, and they never gave it to her. Mom had anxiety prior to this so we were demanding to talk to her to keep her calm, because the nurses were saying that she kept turning on her call light and wanting someone in her room. The nurses said that they couldn’t just be in her room all the time. I asked them over and over, please let us talk to her and FaceTime her, she needs comfort and they refused. Mom was scared and they refused to let us talk to her.

On the fourth day, I received a phone call that she, along with her husband who was also in ICU with Covid, were both being placed on vents. They did not ask us, they told us. We were unaware of their stats and why they were being placed on vents. On November 9th, my mother started declining with kidney failure and was then transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital in Mt Vernon IL for dialysis. They stopped proning her, which was helping improve her oxygen. She was filling up with fluid, she had blisters on her face, and her eye was bulging out of her face.

She received 5 dialysis treatments in the short time she was there and then she transferred on November 12th to another hospital. We were told that she had a speaker in her room and that we could call, and they would transfer the call to the speaker in hopes she can hear us. We called, but nothing happened. We could not see her, but we held prayer chains outside her window. We were told we had to stop calling as it was becoming too much. Then we started getting more and more bad news that her temperature was only 95 and that she was declining. On November 19, I called for my update and couldn’t reach anyone for two hours. Finally, after reaching someone they said they were in my mother’s room and I would have to wait an hour for a callback.

“They gave her the death meds and pulled the plug.”

Eventually, I received a call back and they said that we need to make the arrangements to have her taken off the vent as she now had an internal bleed, and they could not do a CAT scan, because her oxygen was too low. We got to the hospital where we were told that if they let her code and revive her that she would suffer broken ribs, or she would die alone. They told us our best bet would be to pull the plug and let her pass with us there. We didn’t want our mother to die alone, we went with the option of her passing with her family present. They told us to come back in a couple of hours, because they had to let the paralytic wear off. When we came back, they gave her the death meds and pulled the plug. Mom died 9 minutes later.

Before she was vented, I asked about the antibodies, but they said she couldn’t have it, because she was too far into the illness. I was told that they did all they could, my mother laid in a freezer at the funeral home after her service for a month because her POA was my father who was at the time still on the vent. We had to wait for him to have his rights back to sign off on Mom’s cremation, so a month later my mother was finally laid to rest.