Monrovia – A Liberian woman, residing in the United States, Ms. Edith Kitson Thomas has taken to Facebook to share a near death experience as a result of very bad hospital behavior she received few weeks ago in a US hospital. She categorically stated that the Coronavirus is not the killer but the bad treatment patients are receiving from the nursing staffs.
By Alaskai Moore Johnson, [email protected]
In the Monday, April 13 video she did to be shared far and wide, she began after introducing herself: “I believe I have a story to share and all I am kindly asking my audience is to just listen and pass it on. I believe by sharing this video will gain some attention and it will help others behind me not experience what I went through.
“I have an illness of sickle cell. Unfortunately for me, I got sick and I went to my hematologist as I usually will go to flush my pause. Sometime when I need IV pain medication and IV fluids I would usually go to my hematologist. Unfortunately for me, I got sick and was taken to my hematologist’s office. They did everything they could, and the pain was not controlled. After a blood work was done, it was then revealed that my hemoglobin was very low and that I needed to go and get transfused.”
Edith explained further it was probably not the best decision to have been made at that time but what else she could have done especially when she was in so much pain and there was nowhere she could be transfused without going to the hospital.
“I remembered looking into my husband’s eyes as they wheeled me into the hospital. I knew that would be the last day I would see my husband or my kids.”
She opted not to call the names of the hospital where she allegedly got the bad treatment nor any of the staff, who one way or the other also treated her bad or good.
Her reason: “I am not trying to downgrade, to belittle, to bring anybody down. All I am trying to explain is my experience so that somebody else out there can be saved.
“When I got to the hospital, I was under the impression that I was going for blood transfusion; I got placed in a room for four days. I believe that was the isolation room where you go until your Covid test is done and you get your result. In that room, is where I almost died. That room has left me traumatized. The staff were dressed like they were going to the moon. They were fully fully covered and protected; but they didn’t touch you. They didn’t make eye contact with you, they never touched you. They kept as much distance from you; they came in the room as limited as possible. So if you had medication that was due once a shift guess what, you saw your nurse once a shift. As for the GNA, if you were lucky to see your GNA, you were lucky.”
Edith further stated that before she had gone to the hospital, her pains was so much to the point where she wasn’t able to walk and couldn’t use her hands. “I became contracted from my shoulders so there was no way I could pick anything up to bring to my mouth, take myself to the bathroom. I couldn’t do any of that. I found myself in this room with no help and I remembered looking at the food but I couldn’t reach it. And I remembered dialing the phone which was so close to me, the hospital phone that all you have. You had no internet access that you could even ‘facetime’ your family while you were there. And I remembered calling on the hospital phone to tell my husband that I love him and that I won’t see him and the kids anymore because there was no way I was able to walk to get food to eat, to give myself any assistance.”
According to her, the hospital was allegedly telling her husband different story from what she was telling him about condition she was being given.
The whole aspect of holistic nursing care is gone. These people can dress, like I said they are dressed like they are going to the moon. Two, three of them came in the room at a time but won’t touch you, won’t turn you, won’t bring the food close to you, didn’t provide any help.
Edith Kitson Thomas
“These people gave the food through a door to your room; it was like a little door that had an opening outside in the hallway and they would put the tray in the door and that was it. If you couldn’t get out of the bed and walk to the tray, you couldn’t get no food.
“The whole aspect of holistic nursing care is gone. These people can dress, like I said they are dressed like they are going to the moon. Two, three of them came in the room at a time but won’t touch you, won’t turn you, won’t bring the food close to you, didn’t provide any help. The only thing they came to do was to push the IV fluid meds, the IV pain meds through the pipe and to check your temperature.
“On day three, it has gone almost two days just on fluids, the IV fluids that I was getting through my veins. I was fully contracted now eventually I just laid there. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t make calls no more, I just couldn’t fight, and I guess my only hope was if my test will be negative hopefully they will take me out of this room but if it was positive I guess this is how I would be dying.”
She pauses to catch her breath and resumes: “I am back this is part two of my video. So like I last said on that third day, when the result was due to come, I remembered my nurse coming in my room and all I heard him say ‘Her temperature is 103.9’ and he walked to the window by the door and he banged on the window and someone was sitting across the window and this person’s exact statement: ‘We are about to have another rapid response.’”
Edith, mustered the courage to ask a favor from him: “So I said to him, just so you know I am a nurse; I understand the language. I know I am not going to survive. I know I am dying, but I am just asking you, I have been in this room this is my fourth day all I am asking from you can you just help me get to the toilet so I can sit on the toilet. He made no eye contact with me, he said no word to me. My abdomen was like the size of a six-month pregnancy. It was so big, it was so hard. You could hit on it and it sounded like a ball. And when he had said ‘rapid response,’ the lady sitting across came in. She was a Caucasian lady all dressed like him and they were going back and forth whispering and I could barely hear the conversations and I said to the lady, she seems like she is in her mid-60s, I want to believe.”
She again made her request this time to the lady. “I said to her, M’am, I am a nurse, and I know you guys are just waiting to announce my death. I said but I have one wish before I die. Can you please put me on the toilet, she said to me ‘What difference will it make now?’ I said it may not do anything but that is just my dying wish. She doubled up her gloves on top of how much protection she had on and I promised I would help to move myself I just needed some assistance. I was all contracted from my shoulders to my hip. So it was almost like dragging me from by bed to the toilet. Once I got hold of the bar, I sat down. For the first time in my life, I heard this big sound, sounds like when you open a wine bottle that pop sound that you get, that was what it sounded like. And immediately that happened to me, I started passing gas non-stop and I just started to pee non-stop, it just kept coming. The urine was just coming and I was sitting on the toilet seat. I could just feel my abdomen declining like it loosing pressure. Immediately, my blood pressure, heart rate everything dropped from critical and I could see I began to sweat that’s when I knew I was still alive.”
Explaining further, Edith said her husband called to announce that her test result had come back negative. She added: “I believe the death angel and the guidance angel crossed by.”
“I will tell you, the virus is not the killer this is the reason why I am sharing this story. It’s the system that is in place. It is the treatment that you are getting from your nursing staff. That’s what killing people. You are already going through isolation of not seeing your family. They isolate you, they don’t let you in touch with your family and then they don’t stand in the gap to help you. They abandon you. Nobody gives you cares, nobody treats you nicely, only very few who still believe in the Nursing principles are still making the difference. And if you don’t have a strong heart to fight, that is where you die.
Ms. Edith Kitson Thomas
“So, I got the result that I was negative. My temp dropped to 102.7 after that bathroom incident; my heartrate was a 157 and if you took me off of the oxygen, I immediately dropped to 74. I was on the oxygen five liters. I got taken to the third room because when I got there the first night, I was in one room and then I spent the other three nights in this last room that I left. I got to the third room that Sunday evening, I got a bed bath after four days of not washing my private part, brushing my teeth and taking bath. I got a bed bath. It was just soap and water, real quick wipe: my chest, my legs and that was it. Still nobody is trying to touch you; still they are coming in for a very short time; I wasn’t able to eat all of Sunday just because of how long I had been out of food, my stomach couldn’t handle food. And I was traumatized, I was just emotional. I just was grateful; I was so grateful to God that I still didn’t believe that I was still alive.”
According to Edith, for the rest of the seven to eight days in hospital, it was all “ups and downs, bitter and sweet.” “You will get one nurse that believes in the Nursing discipline that will give you an exceptional care. The next nurse you will get will take you to hell and back: won’t talk to you, won’t tell you what they are giving you, won’t give you your medication on time. As for me, pain management was a big thing for me dealing with the sickle cell.
“So, I now found out that I was having so much pain in my ribs and my side and the reason I was on oxygen is during the time I was in that isolation room for the four days, I developed pneumonia. My lung was blocked and that’s why I was on the five liters of oxygen. So I was now on antibiotic. Nurses came in when they wanted to give you your meds, delay your meds, they didn’t talk to you, didn’t touch you, the aids, you didn’t see at all for the entire shift, your food came and it just got dashed on the table. If you could open it and eat, lucky for you if you couldn’t open it and eat oh well, that was the moment I was having.”
In this midst of this, however, she was grateful that she got access in this room to talk to her family now frequently. “I came across an angel who was able to give me her wireless password in my phone that I was able to speak to my mom and my brother who are in Africa.”
She became very straight to say that most of the people are not dying from the Covid-19. “I will tell you, the virus is not the killer this is the reason why I am sharing this story. It’s the system that is in place. It is the treatment that you are getting from your nursing staff. That’s what killing people. You are already going through isolation of not seeing your family. They isolate you, they don’t let you in touch with your family and then they don’t stand in the gap to help you. They abandon you. Nobody gives you cares, nobody treats you nicely, only very few who still believe in the Nursing principles are still making the difference. And if you don’t have a strong heart to fight, that is where you die.”
In her narration, Edith stated that at some point, she had given up all hope of survival. “I remembered there was a day I gave up, I said I won’t call my family no more; I don’t want to put them through too much pains.” She described her ordeal as one being through hell and back and one who God has a purpose for. “And this time, I will fulfill that purpose but I will not stop speaking about my experience. I will continue to push as hard as I can go as far as I can go to get this word out. People are dying because of the isolation, because the nursing staff neglecting their patients. They are not touching their patients; they are not caring for them; they are not doing what Nursing is about. If you have any illness, any underlining illness, if you are limited in range of motion during your time of isolation that is when you die. And even when you come out of the isolation, until the day you are discharged, you go through the same torture and ill-treatment as if you are positive. I was never positive. I went in there for blood transfusion and I ended up with pneumonia and that’s how I went downhill.”