On Christmas morning, I took James to the ER. He just felt terrible. He had a small seizure at the ER due to low oxygen levels. They tested him for COVID, which was positive.  They did some blood work, and an MRI because of the seizure. Then, they sent us home with oxygen and steroids.

James used the oxygen and took the steroids as directed but by the night of December 28, 2021, his oxygen level dropped to very low levels into the 70s. I called our family doctor. He told me to put him on the highest level of oxygen that the tank would allow, and to take him back to the emergency room.

The ER doctor told us they were going to admit him, but they didn’t have a bed at the moment, so we had to wait for quite a long time before he was actually admitted from the ER.  I was told I would not be able to see him after he was admitted.

I called the hospital and left a message for the patient advocates, asking that I be allowed to visit him through the window. They did allow me a 30-minute visit every day through a window. Usually a nurse would tell him that I was there, but sometimes his bed was positioned that he could not see me.

The day that he was put on the ventilator, I came to see him. He had ordered a hamburger and was starving. Luckily, the CNA helped him eat the hamburger. He told the CNA he didn’t even want ketchup on it because he was so hungry. The CNA would hold up the oxygen masks so he could take a bite, and then put the masks back over his nose so his oxygen level would not drop.  He just inhaled that hamburger because of how hungry he was.

I asked the nurse why he wasn’t able to order more food. She told me they were giving him Boost and Ensure instead of food. I felt hopeful that he was able to eat some thing that day, but that night they called me and told me they had to put him on a ventilator, and he was heavily sedated.

After that, I don’t know that he really ever knew I was there. I was allowed window visits in the ICU also. I was pressured to do a DNR after James was put into the ICU. I was told the terrible things that would happen to him, and that his chances of living were very poor if they would have to do CPR.

Being on the vent for about a week, he began was crashing somewhat, and the palliative care team told me I should call my son who lived in Texas to come see his dad for the last time.

My son came right away, and the doctor on call took James off of isolation so we could be in his room with him. James rebounded once we were able to be in the room with him. Once his son, his daughter and I were able to talk to him, hold his hands, massage his legs and feet, he seemed to do better.  Although because of his sedation, he could not communicate with us.

The nurses seem to take very good care of him. I did have to ask that the blood that he had on his face and in his mouth be cleaned up he was having a lot of bloody noses and bleeding from his mouth due to the high doses of Lovenox.

Palliative care had two meetings with us as a family to discuss the outcome of being on the ventilator and the outcome of the Covid pneumonia. As a family, we wanted our loved one to live, and so we were willing to find a rehab place for him to go after he was discharged from the hospital.  I had decided to take him to the gulf coast in Texas where he could breathe easier when he was discharged from rehab.

The palliative care team kept telling us that there was really very little hope for him, but we would not take that as the final word for James. We knew he was a fighter.  On the night before James died,  he had come off of the fentanyl was on low doses of the other medications. He was off of the paralytic. He was on a low-dose of nitric oxide.

I spoke with the nurse, and said I really wanted him off that nitric oxide the next day so we could begin trying to wake him up after being sedated for so long. The nurse agreed with me that that was a great plan so I was surprised the next morning, Friday, January 28, to get a call that James had suffered a downturn.

When we got to the hospital, we were told that his arterial oxygen level was really bad. I noticed that he was on 100% oxygen again. The nitric oxide was at 100% and his oxygen saturation levels were in the low 80s. I realized this would cause brain damage and irreversible organ damage, so as a family, we decided enough was enough and chose to let him die in peace.

We asked that the ventilator be removed so he could be free of that horrible contraption. I will always wonder what they did to him that night to cause him to crash like he did as I felt he was starting to maybe get a little better.

After reading his records, I knew they had given him Remdisivir early in his hospitalization before he was put on the ventilator.  I had access to his patient portal, so we were watching on a daily basis, all of his blood work numbers and notes from the doctors.

Most of the doctors said he did not have a chance because of how severe his in illness was.  One of the doctors gave us some hope by saying he would go 3 days to see if there was any change, and if there was, then we would go three more days. He seem to be getting a little bit better every day until day 30 when he died.

James had a double bypass two years before, but I was told by his surgeon that his heart was in excellent health. It took his heart a long time to stop beating after they took off the vent, so I do not believe that pre-existing conditions were part of the reason for him dying.  James was part American Indian and I have read since, that this man-made virus hit the Indian population very hard, and there were a lot of deaths within the Indian nations.

James was not vaccinated. He was a patriot, and he was very suspicious of the government regarding the lockdowns, wearing of masks, separating people, separating families. He did a lot of research about the vaccine. He knew it was not something he wanted for him or his family