During Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) roundtable on COVID-19 hospital care today, Brad Seiler described the desperate effort to get his wife, Gail, out of a hospital after staff told him she was “unsavable.”
When Brad finally got her discharged, he said hospital staff wouldn’t let them leave through the main entrance. Instead, Gail was taken down a freight elevator used to transport bodies to the morgue and escorted out through doors used by funeral homes.
A nurse told him, “She’ll be dead tonight, or before you even get home.” Gail survived.
“Today, Gail is alive, healthy, active, and enjoying life with our grandchildren and children,” Seiler said.
Seiler was one of 21 patients, family members, doctors and nurses who testified at the “COVID-19 Hospital Protocols: Real Stories from Real People” roundtable. Johnson said that as of Sept. 26, his office had received 583 testimonies from people in 46 states.
“Today I am providing a platform for these stories to be told so that this kind of cruelty will not be repeated,” Johnson said.
‘It is our responsibility to make sure this never happens again’
Stephanie Williamson of New Jersey described losing her husband, Dave, after what she said was a series of decisions made without informed consent or family input.
“My children never saw their father again. Dave’s dad never saw his son,” Williamson said.
She said she was pressured into consenting to her husband’s intubation.
“The night my husband was intubated, I realized I was coerced into consenting to put him on a ventilator,” she said.
Williamson said she had waited four and a half years to tell her husband’s story.
“This is about humanity,” she said. “Patient care should not be driven by reimbursements. A doctor’s hands should never be tied, and no patient should ever be left alone. It is our responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”
Florida registered nurse Donna Lowery said she was fired after 31 years on the job because she advocated for a hospitalized patient and recommended ivermectin. Lowery said once the drug was stopped, the patient deteriorated quickly, was placed on a ventilator and died.
“For me, there was a patient. There was a family in need of help, and there was a choice,” Lowery said. “I chose to help. I paid for that decision, but I would make it again.”
