Nighttime emergencies
Family woken up and pressured to make instant life and death choices with little information. Staff attempting to “scare them” or “confuse them”.
These testimony clips are drawn from interviews conducted by CHBMP with families and survivors. Each clip stands as evidence and remembrance. We share them to honor those who came forward, to seek accountability, and to ensure these experiences are never forgotten.
“"I had one night nurse that was really scary... I was kinda calling out because I time was ticking.”
From the testimony of Gail Seiler
“"So that same day as after we get that phone call from that nurse and after we go to the hospital, they put them on my they vent my dad... around five in the morning... they're saying that he's coding.”
From the testimony of Constantine Kotsanis
“"He had been calling me at one thirty every night since he had been in the ICU just scared to death saying, I don't think I'm gonna make it out of here. I think I'm gonna die here.”
From the testimony of Hunter Harms
“"At one twenty in the morning on nine twenty one, they called me and said we're going to have to innovate him.”
From the testimony of Steven Martinez, jr.
“"Well, his condition continued to get worse that week. I called an ambulance three times... And the reason I called him out was because his oxygen level was really dropping low, and he started having pain... the same thing happened. They got his oxygen level up. But, of course, the minute they leave, his oxygen level starts going down again.”
From the testimony of Leonard L. Brown, Jr.
“"They called me about eleven o'clock at night and said, you need to get here now. He's not gonna make it. You need to remove the DNR. And I said, I'm not removing the DNR. And they said, then you can't come. ... It was just really kind of sick look on their faces. They removed the tubes. We weren't allowed in the room at that point. They were only gonna allow two of us in there. ... he had three tears running down his face. He tried so hard, and he just wasn't treated.”
From the testimony of Lori McPherson
“"But then the night that she was sick, she started making the phone calls to please come and be by her side, and nobody came because we were in such great fear. My oldest daughter has to live with the memory of her grandmother calling her and telling her, please, Stella, come to my home. I wanna sign over my mobile home to you.”
From the testimony of Barbara Ann Roberts
“"Okay. She just kept pumping her full of poison. So the remdesivir. The night that she went into shock, they had given her an, like, a anti anticycle So psychosis. Psychosis medication. So they had given her the Haldo, if that's pronounced right. I'm not sure. And Ativan, and they just, I mean, they just continuously pump that into her. I mean, it was I can't believe reading her medical records, I can't believe how much they were giving her. And, like, today is the first time I read her medical records, so it's I'm having a hard time with it. And one of the I had a girlfriend of mine who's a registered nurse, a nurse practitioner. I had asked her to help read these records with me. And, when we sat down in front of the computer, because they're all on a disc, she just said, what what exactly are you looking for? You know, what what do you wanna know? And I said, I wanna know what happened the evening of November twenty fourth into the morning of November twenty fifth. And as she's scrolling and scrolling through all these pages, it skips November twenty fifth. It goes November twenty fourth to November twenty sixth. There is nothing in there for November twenty fifth. I have I had I did, request that date, with medical records. I'm still waiting to hear back from them. I asked them to email it to me. I'm still waiting for that. It still has not come through.”
From the testimony of Barbara Lowney
“"I asked, the nurse that had shown us the labs to please inform the doctor that this patient had pneumonia and needed to be treated right away. And she said, sure, she'd do that, but no doctor came. So twelve hours later ... I got an infectious disease guy on the call at two o'clock in the morning ... the nurses got up and walked out of the room, completely abandoning my roommate ... they called the security, had me tied to my bed ... If you're gonna abandon that guy, I have no idea what's going on with my care, but I want out... he decided to, Baker Act me, which means he decided that I was a danger to myself or others.”
From the testimony of Suzanne Moore
“"About an hour later, I get a call from doctor Gomez that he's gone into cardiac arrest... And on the way, about halfway on the way there, she called again and said he had gone into cardiac arrest again.”
From the testimony of Steve Gregory
“"And about four AM on the twenty sixth, so that night, I get a call from the doctor, woke me up at four AM, and said they needed to do emergency surgery on my husband. Said he had a gastric perforation and said that if they didn't do it, he would die. But with COVID, he might not make it through surgery either.”
From the testimony of Steve Gregory
“"he had been trying to get someone's attention, and what had happened when Neil came in...the overnight nurse had had not emptied the catheter bag, and so everything was backing up, and he was in pain...he was so thirsty that but they wouldn't give him anything to drink...the look in his eyes, it's like he's not even hearing us. It was so disturbing to see that.”
From the testimony of Steve Gregory
“"No. We didn't get to see her none just till she got ready to die. I probably had fifteen minutes with her. [...] They called us that night time of probably about seven o'clock that night.”
From the testimony of April Wyatt
“"But you murdered my child in the hospital. You doctors and you nurses that's supposed to took care of her. And and I'm not getting to go to no court, and I'm not getting to say this was wrong. There should be somebody held responsible for taking my child away from me. [...] They called us that night time of probably about seven o'clock that night. Soon as we got in there, they was tell telling my youngest daughter to take me out of the room, and they was calling CodeBlue.”
From the testimony of April Wyatt
“"I woke up with an uneasy feeling, and I called him on his cell phone, and he didn't answer. It was early in the morning. ... I called the nurse's station, the same number I call every time.”
From the testimony of Edward M. Garza
“"at that point, I'm still not able to get up and go to the restroom by myself. And, sometimes I would push my button, and it wouldn't work. And one morning, I was having breakfast, and I needed to use the restroom. And I'm pushing the button, and nobody's coming. So I just laid in my bed praying to God that I fell asleep so I wouldn't have, you know, any accidents. So, they finally came in, and I explained what happened. I told them that I felt ignored. I said I could have been dead. I said no one popped their head in. No one came to check me. Nothing. I said, I wanna go home. I wanna go home now.”
From the testimony of Annette Alves
“"He was sleeping when I got there, and I pulled the covers back because I smelled the urine. His bed was saturated, and dried, including up to the top blanket... that day ten, when he was in the hospital, he already had bed sores. Pressure sores.”
From the testimony of Charles V. Domine; aka Chuck
“"it was in the beginning, they called me in the middle of the night and said, get to get here. He's in a coma. You need to get here right away. We're gonna we're gonna send him to the hospital. Well, I had to fight to get him to the hospital.”
From the testimony of William Phillips
“"My mom did get a call in the middle of the night that they had to put restraints on him because he kept trying to pull cords out and continued to pull the mask, unhook the mask, and take it off. ... my mom could not stay. My mom said that he was a shell of the person, and it was awful that she could just see the absolute pain and torture he was in, and she couldn't she couldn't stay.”
From the testimony of Martyn T Schenck
“"when he would come in, he would take my, nurse button, which I had pinned to the bed, and he would move it out of reach so I could not even reach the emergency call button. It was terrifying every night because I had to make sure...”
From the testimony of Cheryl Holley
“"Well, he didn't even get admitted into that hospital until, I don't know, maybe four in the morning. And and it when he had gone in the night before to Sycamore, it was probably, like, ten. So I kinda wondered why there was that big of a gap between, getting him from Sycamore to Grandview.”
From the testimony of Robert "Bob" Hamm
“"we weren't given that opportunity to just to ask him if he wanted to be vented, and I'm sure he did not want that. But because I was put in the situation in the middle of the night, being sick myself and trusting the medical community that I made this choice. So my son comes in and says that's not what dad would wanted. And I said I don't have a choice. Like if I don't do it, he's gonna die. If I do it, he might die. You know? But I I wish I could've just had a chance to say, Frank, what do you wanna do? And he would say, well, take me home.”
From the testimony of Frank W. King III
“"Within a few hours of trying to request the records, we received a call that my dad was, quote, actively dying, end quote. And if we wanted to see him, we needed to do it soon because they said he would pass away during that night.”
From the testimony of Nicole Palma nee Bidaut
“"he it was it was it was at one point, he had to go to the bathroom, and he had all the leads on him. He put the light on, nobody would come. He had to go to the bathroom. He didn't bring him a bed pad, so he disconnected the leads and went to the bathroom on his own.”
From the testimony of Anthony Battle