By Branden Bieber – July 30, 2022
It was a month ago, June 30th 2022. As I sat at my desk and contemplated how to articulate my disappointment with our Elected County, State, and Federal Official’s I received a text that read “911 was called for your Mom, and the ambulance is taking her to Emergency Room.” I stopped writing, got in my car and went to see her at the Emergency Room.
When I arrived at Curry Health Network my Mom’s Priest was administering “her last rights.” They told me the Priest stood outside the room and blessed Mom through the Emergency Room glass doors. She had been diagnosed with CoVid eight days prior, and now the diagnoses was “Terminal CoVid with Hypoxia.”
The Hospital Manager explained to me that because of the Covid diagnoses, they were going to quarantine Mom with no access for 10 days. They proposed I don the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and they would allow 15 minutes with her before isolating her for 10 days in Gold Beach.
It was at that life changing moment, when I requested Mom be released into my care and taken home. The previous six month’s, Mom was a resident at an assisted living center. Despite having some of the most compassionate, and dedicated staff their just weren’t enough personnel to adequately administer the needs of so many residents.
To my surprise, the Hospital Manager received my request with compassion, and helped save Mom’s life by facilitating her release.
It was a mutually beneficial proposal. Mom comes home to be comfortable, and the Hospital gets relief from an overburden industry. The Hospital Manager arranged the consultation with the doctor who expressed his reluctance to release Mom into my care. He diagnosed Mom’s condition to be terminal without Hospital Supervision. Curry Health was administering 20 liters of Oxygen to Mom, 5 times the available capability of home applications. Dr. Maurer expressed his professional opinion that Mom couldn’t survive more than a few hours without the Hospitals aid. I expressed my resolve to take Mom home, a request for the Hospital to reduce Mom’s Oxygen, and after taking a picture of Mom through the ER doors I went for a 2 mile walk.
Upon my return to the Hospital, I was told they wouldn’t release my Mom into my care. Only with persistence and countless blessing it was finally agreed Mom would be taken to her old house in the ambulance and released into my care.
Now, a month later 87 year old Mom has made a full recovery from CoVid. She is regaining some of the movement in her arm and leg that had previously diminished at assisted living. Mom’s Alzheimer’s makes her prognosis dependent on several variables, but this last month has been a series of blessing with her at home.
My heart goes out to all the friends and families that lost someone special as a result of CoVid. My heart also goes out to all those friends and families that lost someone special as a result of the Health Care Industry’s inability to meet the needs of their patient’s. Lacking PPE, isolation requirements, artificial mandates, staffing retention, “you name it” the local health care providers seem unable to staff a workforce capable of addressing rising health care concerns.
Mom is not a CoVid statistic, but how many deaths have been illegitimately blamed on CoVid. When in fact, it’s just an excuse for an overpaid health care industry to blame their inabilities on an artificial crisis.
Life is worth saving, not sentenced by a Doctor to terminal isolation!
