Medical Equipment for my Dad

Due to request, I will be writing my dad’s 9 month journey. However I’d like to sincerely thank those that donated without wanting to know the details, I have a lot of respect and gratitude to you all.

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My father was at work on May 16, 2016 when he had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. They discovered that he had 3 blocked arteries and needed to get a triple bypass. The surgery was successful but unfortunately immediately after, he suffered a hypertensive crisis and needed to be resuscitated. He had to be transferred to an ICU and placed on ECMO and an IABP to avoid any more trauma.

This was an ICU where people are presumed to die and it’s practically like being in a morgue. What’s worse is that the doctors and RNs don’t put a lot of time and effort towards patients in this particular ICU because they assume everyone there will eventually pass on. Fortunately my father was improving and was ready to come off of ECMO so there was definitely hope for him even though he was treated otherwise. Now, my mother and I put all our trust in the doctors and nurses thinking they’d do everything they can, unfortunately we were wrong to leave him in their hands.

Being intubated he couldn’t speak so one day they assumed he was being “violent” and tied him down to the bed when in reality he was trying to tell them something was wrong. Turns out he was having an ischemic stroke and was trying to tell the nurses, but they just gave him some narcotics and went back to their desks to play Sudoku and listen to their music. For the next few days he kept crying and trying to tell the nurses something was horribly wrong with him but they continued to give him more and more pain killers to get him to sleep so that they could have an “easy shift”.

Once ECMO was removed we were shifted to another ICU where the nurses and doctors were just as worse. We were desperate to see my father wake up but they kept delaying it, days later they finally decided to begin weaning him off the narcotics and to their surprise he wasn’t responding to commands. I remember that day really well because my mother had a break down and began to panic when my father didn’t recognize me, he just stared straight through me. The following week the doctors decided to do a CT scan to see if anything was wrong neurologically, to our horror he suffered multiple ischemic strokes which they didn’t discover until now and it was far too late to do anything.

The next few weeks were nothing but torture for my mother and I. The doctors just wanted us to give up on him and remove him from the ventilator in the hopes that he would crash. They tell us that recovery time will take months and determine in one week that “any recovery would be impossible”. It was blatantly obviously that they didn’t care about my father’s life and just wanted the bed for the next patient. One nurse even said to me that “time, resources, and money was being wasted on a patient that didn’t need them”. I told the doctors I needed more time to determine what they were saying was true considering they kept changing their stories. Apparently I was asking for too much from them because they removed him from the ventilator without my mother’s consent and he began to struggle to breathe. They knew he was not ready to be removed from the ventilator but they were hoping he’d crash. Fortunately my father was able to fight through it and no longer needed to be on the ventilator after a day or two. During the next few weeks my father had a Tracheostomy and a J tube put in.

At this point I had ZERO trust in any doctor or nurse at that hospital, so I decided to live in the hospital with my dad 24/7 from August 2016 – December 2016. During that time I received training for managing his J tube, giving him his feeds, giving him his water flushes, repositioning him to prevent pressure ulcers, range of motion, washing him, changing his dressings, and even trach suctioning. So pretty much everything the nurses were supposed to do.

In mid December 2016 the hospital forced my father out and transferred him to a CCC Facility where he was neglected and became quite sick, all because they wouldn’t let me participate in his care like I did at the hospital. It was then that my mother and I decided to bring my father home where we’ve been caring for him since January 13, 2017 and he’s only been improving.

Unfortunately being unemployed for as long as I have been, having no luck from my internship, and being rejected/not eligible for funding, I need help getting his medical equipment.

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Please help me pay for my dad's medical equipment. I can't do this on my own and need your help. Any amount of donation will mean a lot to my family and I. Trust me, it will help us immensely.

Thank You~

Hospital Bed = $2824.00

Trach Humidifier = $2750.00

Manual Wheelchair + Electric Lifter and Sling = $4793.00

Stationary Feeding Pump = $283.00

"It does not matter how much we donate; it matters whether the donation is meaningful. How to define meaningful? Let society and history judge." - Ronnie Chan