This is difficult to rehash. Emotionally it’s devastating and frustrating. Much of what happened is like a nightmare that I can’t completely remember. Between the trauma of knowing what they were going to do to  him and the fear of what they may have been doing, on top of I myself recovering from the effects of COVID, I didn’t keep track of everything.

Steve went to receive Monoclonal treatment. I dropped him off at the hospital’s clinic and waited for him in my car. Next thing I know, they call and say he was admitted to ER without me. He had no advocate to tell them what he was allergic to or refused to let me stay. His O2 was very low and he wasn’t thinking clearly. He wore a medical alert necklace around his neck because he was paranoid of being given drugs that could kill him because it had happened in a hospital before and had there were serious consequences. Apparently they didn’t care. I don’t know if he told them about the allergies.

Somehow they knew that he was allergic to the antibiotic, but nothing else got put in his chart. He’d been on the drugs several days, when I managed to pull up his chart online and noticed what they had him on. I immediately called the nurses station and was told they couldn’t take him off the drugs. His brother called and was told it was of no concern. Steve’s lungs progressively got worse and he went into kidney failure.

The hospital couldn’t do dialysis and refused to look beyond one other hospital for an available bed. I was told he’d die waiting. I was asked a few times to sign a DNR, but refused until I knew there was no hope and they consented to let me stay with him until he passed after removal of oxygen. The patient advocate was absolutely useless to us.