Posted on 10/19/2014 10:31:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
DALLAS - On Friday, Sept. 25, my uncle Thomas Eric Duncan went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He had a high fever and stomach pains. He told the nurse he had recently been in Liberia. But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and Tylenol.
Two days later, he returned to the hospital in an ambulance. Two days after that, he was finally diagnosed with Ebola. Eight days later, he died alone in a hospital room.
Now, Dallas suffers. Our country is concerned — greatly — about the lack of answers and transparency coming from a hospital whose ignorance, incompetence and indecency have yet to be explained. I write this on behalf of my family because we want to set the record straight about what happened and ensure that Thomas Eric did not die in vain.
Some have said my uncle knew he was exposed to Ebola — that is just not true. Eric lived in a careful manner, as he understood the dangers of living in Liberia amid this outbreak. He limited guests in his home, and he did not share drinking cups or eating utensils.
And while the stories of my uncle helping a pregnant woman with Ebola make him sound courageous, Thomas Eric told me that never happened. Like hundreds of thousands of West Africans, carefully avoiding Ebola was part of my uncle’s daily life.
And I can tell you: Thomas Eric would have never knowingly exposed anyone to this illness.
The biggest unanswered question about my uncle’s death is why the hospital would send home a patient with a 103-degree fever and stomach pains who had recently been in Liberia — and he told them he had just returned from Liberia explicitly because of the Ebola threat.
Some speculate that this was a failure of the internal communications systems. Others have speculated that antibiotics and Tylenol are the standard protocol for a patient without insurance.
The hospital is not talking. What we do know is that its error affects all of society. Its bad judgment or misjudgment sent my uncle back into the community for days with a highly contagious case of Ebola. And now, officials suspect that a breach of protocol by the hospital is responsible for a new Ebola case, and that all health-care workers who cared for my uncle could potentially be exposed.
What is most difficult for Thomas Eric’s mother, children and those closest to him to accept is that our loved one could have been saved. From his botched release from the emergency room to his delayed testing and delayed treatment and the denial of experimental drugs that have been available to every other case of Ebola treated in the U.S., the hospital invited death every step of the way.
When my uncle was first admitted, the hospital told us that an Ebola test would take three to seven days. Miraculously, the deputy who was feared to have Ebola just last week was tested and had results within 24 hours.
The fact is, nine days passed between my uncle’s first ER visit and the day the hospital asked our consent to give him an experimental drug — but despite the hospital’s request it was never able to access these drugs for my uncle. (Editor’s note: Hospital officials have said they started giving Duncan the drug Brincidofovir on Oct. 4.) He died alone. His only medication was a saline drip.
For our family, the most humiliating part of this ordeal was the treatment we received from the hospital. For the 10 days he was in the hospital, it not only refused to help us communicate with Thomas Eric, it acted as an impediment. The day Thomas Eric died, we learned about it from the news media, not his doctors.
Our nation will never mourn the loss of my uncle, who was in this country for the first time to visit his son, as my family has. But our nation and our family can agree that what happened at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas must never happen to another family.
********
Josephus Weeks (josephusweeks@yahoo.com), a U.S. Army and Iraq War veteran who lives in North Carolina, wrote this piece for The Dallas Morning News.
They might have been able to treat him, had he not waited four days when he knew he was sick.
What an ungrateful self-centered bastard.....
I guess that makes Liberia a nation of racists.
“The biggest unanswered question about my uncle’s death is why the hospital would send home a patient with a 103-degree fever and stomach pains who had recently been in Liberia”
Perhaps because he had not signed up for Obamacare?
Josephus- take it up with Obola- if you can get an appointment. Your best bet is to take up golf, maybe you play with him on threesome, or foursome.
Would he have been sent home if he said there was a very good chance he’d been exposed to Ebola?
Presbyterian Hospital spent $500,000 treating Thomas Duncan. What is racist about that?
That is how much on his direct treatment. They had to shut down an entire ward, and turn away other patients as a result. They probably lost 2-3 million because of that.
Josephus,
I’ve paid for my health insurance my entire adult life. If you uncle didn’t have it, he was owed nothing.
I have paid taxes my entire adult life, we are not picking up the healthcare tab (or welfare) for the entire globe. Why do you feel that people like me should pay his bills?
Also, seems your uncle’s story is changing a lot.
is there anyone in that family not looking for a payday?
Maybe some 8th cousin who doesn’t yet realize he’s related.
bump
We should sue him for bringing it here in the first place!
Yes, and if he'd followed Moochelle's lunch plan maybe he'd still be here.
Uncle Duncan sucked up $500k of free healthcare as he circled the drain.
Jumping Josephus! Where's the gratitude?!
I am seeing a slip-and-fall artist trolling for lawsuit bucks. Joseph Weeks reads like a dishonorable man.
media always writes this crap as if the guns themselves kill people, or the car itself drives off the road.
let’s just treat ebola that way.
EBOLA is racist. It originated in West Africa, where most people are blacks. It obviously targeted blacks because they’re black.
Doctors aren’t racist. EBOLA is racist. (let’s ignore it’s infected others who aren’t black too).
This jerk and the MSM keep blaming the Presby Hospital.
The ER there is run by a private contractor, Texas Health Resources, NOT the hospital. The ER sent him home after his first visit.
But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and Tylenol
But he was able to afford a flight from Liberia to Texas. So that means he could afford health insurance.
Had the hospital assumed Duncan had ebola this first visit then Weeks would be trashing the hospital for assuming sick Africans have ebola.
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