Posted on 03/28/2020 1:59:09 PM PDT by SteveH
My family needs your help so PLEASE share this to get the message out. My Dad, Dr. Arnold Weg, is in the ICU infected with COVID-19 and is fighting for his life. PLEASE READ IT & SHARE #SAVEARNOLDWEG We want the drug companies, FDA and politicians to move faster & your sharing this message will help.
The Finish Line: A race to save lives- By Russell Weg
He is in a race. The shotgun fires and thousands of people begin running. Race organizers scramble to ensure every runner is safe and well-nourished. My father, a 63 year-old grandfather to six, has run this race many times before and has crossed finish lines of countless marathons around the world. He places himself at the front of the line and is determined to meet that finish line once again.
When the coronavirus hit New York City, a shot gun was fired. Thousands of critically ill patients now run to emergency rooms and doctors’ offices in search of help, filled with fear that their finish line will come sooner than they ever imagined. Once again, my father, a primary care physician and gastroenterologist, who cares for over thirty thousand New Yorkers, put himself at the front of the line, this time to help.
An elderly longtime patient called his office four weeks ago with a worsening of his chronic cough he has battled for years. Reflexes engrained by caring for patients for over 30 years took over. “Come into the office” my father said. “I need to examine you to make sure you are okay.” This was before patients were encouraged to stay home and before New York was on lockdown. The patient came to the office and my father examined him. With personal protective equipment bought up by larger institutions, my father had no choice but to examine him without a mask for protection. During his lung exam, the patient coughed. He couldn’t help it. My father wanted to test him for COVID-19, but there were no tests available. Fortunately, the patient seemed okay and my father sent him home with empiric antibiotics and strict instructions to proceed to the emergency room should his symptoms worsen.
Five days later, my father received a call from the patient’s family member. The patient was in the intensive care unit and had tested positive for COVID-19. My father was heartbroken, concerned for his patient and the implications his exposure could have for the thousands of other patient lives he is responsible for. He called the Department of Health for advice on next steps. They encouraged him to keep practicing and treating patients as long as he showed no symptoms. He was fortunate enough to obtain six N95 masks from an employee’s husband who works in maintenance at a local school. Having no symptoms, he continued to work and mandated he and his five employees wear the masks day after day, all day, while continuing to help patients.
On a Friday evening ten days later, he developed a fever to 102 F. His legs radiated with debilitating and throbbing pain. Those same legs that carried him across the finish line of over 30 marathons could no longer get him out of bed. He was breathing okay and followed New York State Department of Health guidance to stay home while closely monitoring his symptoms. He checked his oxygen levels several times a day with a digital pulse oximeter he borrowed from his office. He took repeated doses of Tylenol when his thermometer kept indicating fever. My mother, putting her own life at risk for her husband of 40 years, nursed him along.
Several days passed, and Dad was holding steady. His fever persisted, but he had grown accustomed to the body aches and fatigue. He was thankful his breathing was unaffected and his oxygen levels were where they needed to be - the pulse oximeter read 96%.
Then, the virus took over. He was awakened in the middle of the night by a nightmare. He was breathing rapidly and gasping for air. It did not make sense. Just a few hours earlier his oxygen level was in the mid-90s. He grabbed the pulse oximeter, it read 75%. This nightmare was coming true. My mother found him in bed and rushed him to the emergency room at the hospital where he has been faculty, teaching medical students and trainees for over 30 years.
When he arrived to the emergency room, he was taken in from the waiting area immediately. My mother was not allowed in. They shared what they hoped would not be their last embrace. He was placed on oxygen through his nose and his numbers slowly improved. He was admitted to the hospital for monitoring and support, and testing revealed he too was suffering from COVID-19. Our family received updates from him and the providers, we were all encouraged by the news that he was doing okay. This was his first time ever in the hospital as a patient, and we were prohibited from visiting him for our own safety.
Over the next 24 hours, his condition rapidly deteriorated. He was requiring increasing amounts of oxygen to breath and his breathing was becoming more rapid and laborious. Doctors and nurses, the heroes on the front lines of this pandemic, grew concerned. They had seen this before and transferred him to the intensive care unit for closer monitoring.
Right now, my father, Dr. Arnold Weg, lays in a bed in the same intensive care unit which he has run to on hundreds of occasions to care for those in need of emergency gastroentestinal procedures. The same intensive care unit he nursed his father through when he was dying of cancer. The same intensive care unit his son worked while training in internal medicine, following in his father’s footsteps. He is gasping for every breath, thirty times a minute. His colleagues are working tirelessly to ensure he makes it through, worried day and night that they may lose one of their own. He, once their teacher, them once his pupils.
Unable to visit him, our family works day and night to do what we can to help. We call pharmaceutical companies pleading for increasing access to their promising experimental drugs so that his and others’ lives can be saved. Unfortunately, access to these has been limited by pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). There are small trials taking place, but this is not close to meeting the needs of thousands of patients praying they get access to one of these potentially lifesaving drugs. We call his patients asking them if they can do anything to help urge pharmaceutical companies and the FDA to increase access to promising therapies and to bring attention to his life, a life like all the others we need to save. We pray for him, we pray for the doctors and nurses trying to save him and we pray for all of the families affected by this crisis. We pray this is not an obituary.
The shotgun has fired, this marathon has begun. Thousands of patients run to the emergency room in desperate need of care. The elderly are the most vulnerable. The organizers - doctors and nurses - stand at the ready, knowing it may be their lives that get trampled along the way. The finish line is inching ever closer. But this time, no one wants to meet that dark and unknown place.
-Russell Weg, MD
**Russell Weg is an internist in New York completing his fellowship in Gastroenterology. His plan is to join his father in practice to fulfill their dream of working together in the care of their fellow New Yorkers.**
**Dr. Arnold Weg is a practicing primary care physician and gastroenterologist and faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical Center. He has been responsible for the care of over 30,000 patients for the past 35 years and has trained countless medical trainees along the way. He is a husband, father of four and grandfather to six children. He is currently awaiting access to receive a trial drug called Remdesivir, an antiviral medication produced by Gilead Pharmaceuticals that has shown promising efficacy in defeating the SARS-COV-2 virus. The trial he is eligible for has reached its limit of 400 patients nationwide. An amendment to increase patient enrollment is pending and efforts are being made to establish access for compassionate use of Remdesivir for patients ineligible for trials. There are good people at the drug companies, the FDA and working in our hospitals. Society needs these establishments to do more to increase access to potentially life-saving medications. Contact your elected officials, call everyone before it is too late. There are over 500,000 people affected by COVID-19 worldwide. Your family may be next.**
TDS has gone pandemic and whacked out the Health Care Systems.
Didn’t the Israeli’s just send several million doses of Hydroxychloroquine?
well, no...
there is going to be a massive class action lawsuit against these agencies that allowed KNOWN cures to not be used....
Why don’t they increase the number of patients in the trial? Go from 400 to 800 or 1,600 or 3,200.
Where is Plaquenil + AX + Zinc in his possible therapeutics? Why isn’t it mentioned?
Does he have any physician friends in Texas?The minute the Trump malaria medicine + erythromycin got onto he market, doctors in Texas began hoarding it for themselves and their families.
Gov. Abbott had to step in and try to put a stop to it. If that’s the only chance my dad had, I’d offer cash money to someone who knows someone in Houston or Dallas. Not all doctors are as honorable as your wonderful father. God grant him healing.
Plus, they're pretty expensive at about 20-30 bucks for a full treatment course.
Betcha the good docs here spend that much on a bottle of nice wine at the local bistro...
#OrangeManBadLiar
Trump needs to declare a Nationwide emergency wrt TDS.
Those afflicted need to be locked down for their own good over the duration of the infectious conflagration.
The danger from Covid-19 was well known a month ago, yet this doctor refused to wear a mask, or to have stocked up on them beforehand.
Everyone was out of Masks the week after Christmas.
People paying attention saw this coming.
Pretty sure this story is a lie because i just read a thread where experts here claimed the virus isnt even as bad as the flu..and that hospitals arent being overrun in NY...and anyone concerned about this virus is a lunatic...and these experts who get nasty and vile are quite certain they are right
So Dr Weg MUST be lying...or....
god speed to his family as he deals with a nasty unpredictable virus
And unable to call in to their shows on CNN/PMSNBC/SeeBS/FauxNews/ABCNews/NBCNews/NPR...
The Ching-lees were buying up the stocks of PPE in Australia staring in early January...
The Ching-lees were buying up the stocks of PPE in Australia starting in early January...
The withdrawal symptoms may be too much and could overwhelm the Health Care System.
Tanking much of the LSM would be a good thing in the long run though.
That can’t be true, because he’s not a smoker.
[Little irony and sarcasm there. I hope that he recovers.]
“”An elderly longtime patient called his office four weeks ago with a worsening of his chronic cough he has battled for years.””
Something odd there. My husband and I both have COPD - his is severe and mine less so. Our first doctor visits for coughs resulted in immediate chest xrays and prompt diagnosis. Why was this patient of the doctor battling a chronic cough for years? And why would a medical doctor need to borrow an oxygen pulse meter from his office? I’ve bought them online for less than $25.00 and we both carry them.
I have an old high school friend who lives in FL and he’s been fighting a chronic cough for months now and he’s been through all kinds of testing but without a diagnosis. Not a word about the above patient undergoing tests.
“Why don’t they increase the number of patients in the trial? Go from 400 to 800 or 1,600 or 3,200.”
We don’t need no stinkin trial, France has proven the effectiveness of the treatment beyond a shadow of a doubt. Treat everyone who is critical with chloroquine/Z-pack it works!
Cuomo has lots of Hydroxychloroquine. Why did Weg not get any?
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