The love of my life was only 57 years old and in good health when he was taken. No underlying health issues. He came down with covid on June 25th. On June 28th, he was having trouble breathing so I took him to the hospital. Hospital said his lungs were fine, they gave him a steroid and some oxygen and released him that day.

July 1st he was struggling again, so I took him back to the hospital thinking he would get some additional oxygen support and be home that same day.  I never thought for a minute that he would never return home.  He called me later that day and said they were going to keep him for three or four days. After 3 or 4 days, I was told that he was getting worse. I asked what they were doing to help him, and they said that they were doing the standard protocol of steroids and remdesivir and supposedly vitamin D3. He was in such good health.  Never would I have thought he would need to go to the hospital. I now struggle with thinking that it was a mistake taking him there.

On July 11, the ICU doctor said he would need intubation and probably wouldn’t survive. They said his inflammation markers kept rising. I asked what they were going to do about it. Then I was referred to the infectious disease doctor. Well, it was her NP that called me and was such a jerk. I asked her what other therapies they were going to do, and she basically blamed my husband because he had not been vaccinated. I told her that was irrelevant to her job of caring and trying to save my husband. I asked her what she and the doctor were going to do again. She said since his inflammation markers are higher now, he can try another therapy. I then called the hospital and talked with the patient advocate about this nurse practitioner and said I didn’t want her to see my husband, that only the doctor is to see my husband. I was not going to have someone with that mentality taking care of my husband.

Since I came down with Covid on June 28th and recovered from it, I had requested to be able to see my husband, and they told me no. They said that he would not be cleared for 20 days. So I asked 20 days from his diagnosis or 20 days from the date he was admitted into the hospital? They said, 20 days from the date from being admitted into the hospital, which made no sense to me at all. I called daily saying that since I had Covid,  what was the concern of me seeing him?  No one could answer anything specific only to tell me that was the hospital rule.

I would call to ask about various treatments, Ivermectin, hydro therapy, hydroxychloroquine, and was told those were not “evidence based medicine”.  When it came to the hydro therapy, I said it was just water.  What science information did she need to give him water bath treatments?  I would routinely ask about supplements, and they told me he was getting zinc, Vitamin C & D. I think he was some, but not consistently.

Then on July 14th, one of the charge nurses called me and asked me for the place that diagnosed my husband with covid because he was declining, and they needed to intubate him. So the charge nurse was going to push through allowing me to be up there on that date. They got it approved and I went running up to the hospital to be with my husband.  He seemed to improve that day, and the next two days so we were optimistic that perhaps he just needed his family with him to boost his morale and improve.

The ICU doctors continued to tell us both that he probably would need to be intubated in order to survive, but we were trying to avoid that. I had heard so many terrible stories of people not getting better after intubation, so we didn’t want to do it.  It just didn’t make sense to me. He was healthy.  He did not have all of these comorbidities we heard that caused complications.  I just knew he would pull through.

However, on July 18th, they told us that due to the struggles he was having, he could go into cardiac arrest.  If he does that and they try to intubate him, he would not survive it. I asked the doctor what he would do if this were his spouse, and he said he would intubate. So Mike and I talked about it, he felt like it was his only chance at survival.  He was exhausted because he could hardly breathe even with all the oxygen support, so we agreed to it.

They had me wait in the waiting room and within a few minutes I heard the code alert and his room number called, so I went running to his room. He had gone into cardiac arrest.  It took them 8 minutes to bring him back. At this time, they allowed our daughter to come up.  The ICU doctor told me that he was glad we intubated him, because he was so close to going into cardiac arrest.  If they had waited, he would not have survived at all. We were still clinging to hope that this would do the trick.  It would give him the added oxygen support and time for his lungs to heal.

He never got stable enough to do a tracheotomy, so they said, the longer he was ventilated the more complications he would encounter. He ended up needing dialysis.  We did see signs of improvement until he aspirated. I was there when he vomited and I asked the respiratory therapist if we should be worried about it getting into his lungs, and I was told no. But in the middle of the night, I was summoned to the hospital because it had gotten into his lungs, and they didn’t think he would make it. My daughter and I went racing to the hospital preparing to lose him, but he pulled through. He was really strong.

During his last week, there was a Dr. Blow on the rotation. There was a new doctor every week.  Dr. Blow would talk to me about discontinuing the ventilator. He made comments that it was not living.  He commented that if Michael got off the ventilator, he will never be the same, and he would have to live in a skilled nursing center. I felt like he was trying to make me feel bad by keeping him on the ventilator and putting my husband through this.  I was not going to give up on him. I told Michael to ignore what Dr. Blow said to him or around him, hoping that he could hear him and give up.

Dr. Blow told my pastor that the hospital was full because people were not getting vaccinated.  A visiting nurse told me that she was very surprised at how quick the doctors were on giving up on people.  She said she came from a smaller town and that the doctors in the bigger city were very different.

On the morning of August 11th I woke up to a missed call from the hospital, and I was frantic that I didn’t hear my phone. Immediately, I called the hospital, and was told that he had aspirated again but he was stable. The nurse on duty said she was the same nurse that was there the last time, so she knew what to do. I asked if he was fine, and she said yes. I said, should I come rushing up there now?  She said, no but the doctor does want to talk to me when I do come up.

So I decided to go into the office for a few hours, and I sent my daughter up to the hospital to be with my husband. My daughter called me frantically saying that his oxygen is declining, and no one is doing anything. I called the hospital and was told that they were waiting for me to come up there to talk to me, and I was furious. I told them what the nurse had said, and I had no indication that there was a sense of urgency for me to be there. I went racing up there and my husband’s oxygen was now in the 80s, and the doctor (Dr. Blow) said there was nothing more that they could do. I wanted to just scream at the doctor I was so mad, but I didn’t want my husband’s last moments to be like that.

They were completely ignoring him, just allowing him to go.  A few things that I didn’t understand: 1) How was it that most of his “episodes” occurred at night, when they only had NPs on duty?  2) how is that Michael passes while Dr. Blow is on rotation, and just a day to two after him telling me I should turn the ventilator off?

When I realized that they were not going to do anything, I called my oldest daughter who lives in the area, and she came up and my pastor came over.  I was able to lay in bed with him, and hold him and talk in his ear the whole time.  Two of our daughters sat at his bedside, and held him while our pastor sang songs and recited scripture until his oxygen did not register at all.

Not too long after that, it was announced that my state’s governor tested positive for Covid.  Even though he had been vaccinated, and he had no symptoms, they gave him a certain treatment, to be safe.  And I thought, well why didn’t my husband get that when he was diagnosed?  If this is to protect the health, why wasn’t it available to everyone? I’m mad because I feel like there may have been other therapies they could have tried, but didn’t.

Ultimately, I think it was all the complications from their treatments that ended his life.  I often wonder if we made a mistake with the intubation.  I miss him so much.  I have struggled with feeling like I failed him.  We trusted the medical professionals to care for him.  There were some medical professionals at the hospital that seemed to truly care.  One nurse tried to give Michael the vitamin supplements I passed to her.  One therapist came, checked on him, and gave him additional breathing treatments.

This has been a nightmare—so senseless.  There is no reason why he should not have recovered.