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.
Holy sh!t. Talk about one hell of a hospital bill.
And your good uncle just had to vomit all over the place and share his illness with numerous people.
One of the very first things my wife and I do when taking our family out of the country is check our health insurance coverage at our destinations. If there are problems, we change our itinerary. It’s simply a wise personal responsibility. Apparently common sense and self-reliance isn’t a characteristic of the Duncan’s.
......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......
interesting statement that he never helped a pregnant woman hasn’t it been confirmed he did?
in order to avoid culpability it needs be shown he did not lie on his screening form..which the dead woman assistance would negate someone has been talking to a lawyer imo..
Brilliant graphic, as always.
You know, I cannot remember a time when our medical system in America was able to call down miracles. This article is so insulting but this is what we get for developing a welfare society to help people who do not understand the first thing about what it is to deal with a disease like Ebola with little or no information. Ebola is a plague-like illness and there is NO cure. Mr. Duncan was already sick when he entered our country and that very thing has caused widespread panic and untold cost to our citizens, not to mention the two precious nurses who are now ill because of him. We did the best we could to heal him but we are NOT God and we cannot perform miracles and turn back the events in the lives of people from other nations. If we continue to let people in here from those hot zones, we will get more of this ingratitude. Perhaps we should march in the streets until this is changed.
Most of us have jobs or disabilities. We’re not the type that march, protest, loot, riot and rabble-rouse unless pushed to our limits. Then all hell will break loose and Ferguson, Watts, the ‘92 riots and such like will look to be an Easter Egg Hunt or lyceum.
No sympathy for the idiot who boarded a flight knowing he had it or was exposed to it. Now every single person who dies from it in the US is because of him.
Maybe Junior should be held financially accountable for everyone his ‘uncle’ has sickened since he lied about his exposure to a disease with a 70% kill rate that had never come to America until it piggybacked here on that Liberian.
Ain’t it cute how Junior is suddenly REALATED to a man his ‘ontee’ never married??
This has the fetid stench of JJ all over it.
Maybe Junior should be held financially accountable for everyone his ‘uncle’ has sickened since he lied about his exposure to a disease with a 70% kill rate that had never come to America until it piggybacked here on that Liberian.
Ain’t it cute how Junior is suddenly REALATED to a man his ‘ontee’ never married??
This has the fetid stench of JJ all over it.
“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.”
—
Can this idiot prove this?????
Ridiculous statement.
.
good catch - that’s exactly what this piece is about.
All of the doctors in Africa couldn't have saved him. And, sorry to say, Ina sane world he'd have been turned away at the border.
Yeah, “the man” is out to get all you blackies. sarc
It was probably the evil white man the created through WHO, and introduced it to Africa just to kill the mud people. sarc It couldn’t have been through stupid behaviors with bats and dead people. sarc
Maybe instead they should have quarantined him in jail for attempted genocide or at least criminal negligence leading to the harm of another for:
1. In a country plagued by a deadly highly contagious hemorrhagic disease, hands-on helping a bleeding woman into and out of a cab that you share with her with almost certain blood contact. then
2. Flying to America and lying about your exposure
somehow, the statement seems so well written, I doubt it was written by the nephew.
“Eight days later, he died alone in a hospital room.”
Yeh, Josephus? Where was your pathetic selfish ass during his last few moments alone?
You Mr. Weeks are a disgusting ingrate. Your Uncle lied to gain entry into the United States.
Over 70 health care workers courageously acted in the face of fear to save his life. Two nurses have fallen I’ll with their selfless acts of compassion and duty.History will record the number of deaths attributed to the selfish, reckless act of Mr. DUNCAN. GFY!
“Attempt to save his life”.
Correction to my last!
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