Autopsy Fund

I am beginning this go fund me regarding the death of my husband, Mark on Sunday, January 15, 2023 on a highway after being discharged from a local hospital merely 10 minutes before.

My husband had been hospitalized since January 9, 2023 after being brought in by ambulance for a blood infection, cellulitis in his left leg and a 103 degree temperature. After 5 days of IV antibiotics for the blood infection he was converted to oral antibiotics the day before his release and subsequent death. He was released with oral antibiotics after much discussion about continuing the IV antibiotics from home with a visiting nurse. This plan was, as in October 2022, changed back to oral antibiotics instead of the planned IV therapy. We both became very concerned about the catch time while waiting for the oral antibiotics to catch up to the same treatment level of IV antibiotics. Would this catch up time allow the infection to grow again like it apparently had after the October 2022 hospitalization?

This same procedure had been done at a previous in patient hospitalization for cellulitis of the left leg in October 2022 . The Dr. told my husband and I during this hospitalization that he believed the infection he had in October of 2022 had never cleared up entirely resulting in the current blood infection he was now being treated for. He was supposed to have had IV antibiotics and a visiting nurse at home in October as well but that decision was changed to oral antibiotics then as well.

The night of his discharge I was told to wait at the main entrance to the hospital with my car and my husband would be brought to me in a wheelchair. That did not happen.

After the first 15 minutes, Mark called me and said his blood pressure had shot way up and they wanted to wait a few minutes and check it again. Saying that the exertion from him packing up his belongs may have been the cause. He had great difficulty walking to use the bathroom in his room and was on fall precaution the entire time he was hospitalized.

After another 15 minutes he called and said he was being released and was waiting for transport to come get him.

After another 15 minutes I see my fragile husband who could barely make it to his room bathroom walking up to the front security desk unaccompanied, pushing a wheelchair with his belongings on the seat huffing and puffing. I watched this all from my car.

He spoke to someone at the front desk and became upset by what was said and pushed the wheelchair, his belongings and walked himself out the front door, still unattended. I jumped out of my car and ran towards him loudly asking what the hell was going on? Why on earth are you pushing this wheelchair and not IN IT! He stated that he’d waited and waited for someone to come but no one showed up so he put his stuff in the wheelchair and left. He had walked out of his room by the mini charting station right outside his room, past several nursing stations and many staff on the way and finally the person at the front desk who he made a comment to that he’d walked on his own because no one showed up to take him out. NO ONE OFFERED TO ASSIST HIM EVEN THEN! My husband told the desk person that transport never showed up. The desk person stated, “Well, it’s really not transports problem.” The conversation ended at that point and my very sick husband continuing to push his wheelchair out the door of the hospital until I jumped out of the car to help him, expressing my shock at him coming down alone pushing a wheelchair instead of being in it like I was told he would be, out to my car. I removed his things from the wheelchair while he got into the car.

When I got in the car, he was completely exhausted. I asked him if he needed help and he said he just needed to catch his breath. I was furious that he had been left to push a wheelchair with his belongs in it from his room, by several nursing stations, across the entire length of the hospital, up into an elevator to the third floor to the exit completely unassisted. This was a man who could barely make it to the bathroom!! I call this exit his “walk of death.”

I waited a few minutes for him to catch his breath and pulled away and headed home. He would never make it home ever again.

I was approximately 1/2 a mile from an exit on a major highway when I heard a horrible sound. I looked over at my husband, who I had just picked up 10 minutes before from the hospital and he was making a snorting sound and his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped back into the seat. No sound from him was heard from that point on. It was an instant in time!

All I could think was to get to the local Fire Department for help. I put on my flashers, hit the gas, started screaming at him to not die on me and drove through red lights and traffic and got to the Fire Department in about 1 to 2 minutes from when it happened. I pulled up to the front of the bay door and honked and I jumped out the door to run for help.

I vividly remember looking back at him when I jumped from the car and I saw his eyes, fixed and unmoving, mouth hung open and no sounds, nothing.

I ran into the station and those incredible people came running out to me and went straight to Marks side of the car. At that point the paramedic in the car said the words, “full cardiac arrest” to the other firemen and started CPR right in the car. They then lifted him out, put him on a gurney, all the while still doing CPR and took him into the bay and me into the office. They left with Mark fighting to save his life. It was my very worst nightmare. I had just picked him up from The hospital and now he was dead or dying. We were talking and then he was gone!

A fireman drove me to the hospital. We walked into the waiting room and sat down. After a few minutes someone came out to me and told me that he was on life support. They hadn’t been able to get a good rhythm on him and he had been shocked multiple times. They told me they were going to shut off the machines to see if he had any spontaneous heartbeat and if not it wouldn’t be a good outcome. He had been worked on now for about a 1/2 an hour already.

I walked back to his room with the fireman who had driven me to the hospital I got to the door, stopped, looked at him through the glass door and walked into that room. I grabbed Marks hand and held on for his life while they shut the machines off.

There were about 3 beats and then he flatlined. Everyone in the room kind of bowed their heads. I knew it wasn’t good. The doctor said they could continue but he would end up in a vegetative state, most likely.

At that instant, my husband of almost 40 years, who I had just picked up from this very same hospital was now lying dead in front of me. They called the time of death.

I asked how this could have happened? What was going to happen to Mark from this point on.

I was then told that he would be prepared by the staff, sent in for an autopsy because he had died right after leaving the hospital, and on the side of a highway and then sent to the morgue. I would have to contact my funeral home and have him transferred after that. I wanted an autopsy. I needed to know what had just killed my husband. I was told this would happen so I’d have some answers to why I was now a widow instead of being home with my husband who had just been released from this hospital!

I contacted the funeral home while holding my dead husband’s hand in mine and gave them all the necessary information about the autopsy being performed first and then I could have him sent to the Funeral Home in our home town.

Our family had to say a goodbye that came when it wasn’t supposed to have. He should have been home that night with his children, grandchildren and me, his wife of nearly 40 years.

I contacted the funeral home the next morning and spoke with our funeral director and she informed me that Mark’s autopsy had been DECLINED! I was flabbergasted! I was told because of the circumstances of him just leaving the hospital and then dying on a highway that there would definitely be an autopsy! Why did this autopsy get declined? We, his family, need answers! I need answers as to why I watched my husband die in the car next to me and me being forced to desperately seek help from the highway to try and save him just 10 minutes after being discharged from this hospital.

We need answers that we were told would be given and then the autopsy for those answers was declined. Now, I am forced to pay upwards of $10,000.00, depending on how many body parts to be examined in an independent autopsy that I was told would be performed right after he died.

I just had to put his bare minimum funeral on a credit card. I don’t have any savings, investments or life insurance to help me get these answers as to why my husband, father and grandfather died in my car that night. They are holding his body in the crematorium to give me a chance to get an autopsy done. Time is running out. I am desperate for help to get some answers. I would be so grateful for any help to get this autopsy done.

Thank you, Debbie Stone, Widow