My mother tested positive for Covid on August 18th and we were managing her symptoms at home fairly well.  On the 22 nd of August, as she wasn’t getting better, we decided to get her the Monoclonal injection to help with the recovery.  We arrived at the Manatee Memorial Hospital ER in the afternoon of 08-22-21 so that she could get the Monoclonal Injection. I was told on the phone, prior to arrival that we needed to go to the ER entrance, which is where they were administering the IV. When I saw the sign for ER, we walked into it, but the reception didn’t know anything about the monoclonal treatments being administered there. Later, I was told that I walked into the “NEW” ER entrance, instead of the “OLD” ER entrance, which is where they were actually doing it.

They immediately started the intake process after we told them she had Covid, was 85 and unvaccinated.  During the intake process, when the nurse learned she was unvaccinated, her demeanor changed, and she pretty much admonished me/her for not getting the Covid shot.   After the intake process, they took her in for an X-ray and then we proceeded to wait in the reception area for MANY hours before any attention was given to her.  The whole time, I was not allowed to give her any liquids, as she had thrown up a little when we first arrived, and her fever medication was wearing off, so she was progressively getting worse while we waited for any attention from the staff.  I was running around asking for anyone to help her, and finally got someone to respond.

A lab tech came in and couldn’t get the IV started, she poked my mother’s arm many times, for what seemed to be almost an hour before she finally called in for someone to help.  Finally, at 8 pm, they took her blood work and again, we proceeded to wait until a doctor came in around 10 to give us the news that she did have some “minor” inflammation in her lungs and they were going to admit her for treatment with Remdesivir and that she will probably be in the hospital for a few days and then be sent home on oxygen tank.  At this time, I told them that I had a prescription for Ivermectin for her, with me, and wanted them to try that first, they refused immediately.

The morning after she was admitted, she complained that the lab tech hurt her very badly when drawing the blood, the same tech came back again in the afternoon and hurt her even more. Her arm was hurting really bad hours after the blood was drawn and she said the tech was very rough and rude with her. She said that it felt like she was pressing so hard, that it felt down to the bone.  I, my father and brother had spoken to our Mom several times on Monday, August 23rd, and she seemed to be doing OK.  Around 3 am, on the morning of August 24th, I received a phone call from the Rapid Response Team, telling me that she went into Covid Shock and they had to sedate and intubate her.  They pressured us to sign/agree to the Do Not Resuscitate order, and we refused.

That same morning, I spoke with her attending physician, and she told us that because my mother is 85, has Covid, is unvaccinated and is on the vent, that they didn’t think she had much chance of survival, gave us approximate 5% survival rate.  The entire time after they intubated her, they kept trying to refer us to the Hospice department to discuss taking her off the vent and letting her die peacefully because she is 85, sick with Covid, not vaccinated and will not make it out of the hospital.  They made daily calls to me, asking if we had made the decision, etc.  They allowed us to go visit her with on Saturday, August 28th, so we could say “Good Bye”, and continued to pressure us into putting her into Hospice.  She had no patient advocate assigned to her until over a week later when I discovered there was no one, and I had to fight for someone to be assigned to her and provide us with any information.  Some of the nurses I spoke to on the daily basis sounded cautiously optimistic about her recovery, others were flat out cold and rude, and telling me directly that my mother will not be coming home.

While my poor mother was fighting for her life in that hospital, we were fighting the system in trying to keep them from letting her die and actually pressuring us into taking her off the vent, instead of trying some other protocol.  We even asked if they could do another Covid test to see if she still had the virus, they refused, stating that it wouldn’t matter much at this point.  She fought for almost 19 days on the ventilator.  We had actually hired an attorney to try and force them to give her Ivermectin, and we were about to file the paperwork with the court on Monday morning, September 13th, when I received a call from a nurse telling me that she was filling up with fluid too much and that sores were forming and that she had internal bleeding, and that her organs would start to fail soon, and that basically she was dying.

They allowed us to come see her one more time on the evening of September 11th, and even then I had brought the Ivermectin, pleading with them to try and give it to her through her feeding tube as a last attempt, and of course they refused, made me leave the medicine in an office before letting us into her room.  There, we could see that they had already removed her feeding tube and inserted 2  very thin, yellow tubes into her nose, so even if we were given permission to administer Ivermectin, we wouldn’t be able to do it now.  On Sunday, September 21st, at 3:56 pm, my mother passed away.