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Five Days at Memorial Chapter 7 Questions
1. Why did the small group of doctors decide to meet? What decisions were made at this gathering? At the official gathering in the morning?
On page 186, Doctors met early in the radiology suite with Surgery Chief John Walsh. The doctors were unhappy about the helicopter rescue being discontinued from Tuesday to Wednesday and that there was no government organized rescue and Tenet’s rescue helicopters might not be quick enough to rescue everyone. Walsh and an anesthesiologist left at first light on a fishing boat to organize a more concerted rescue effort. The doctors, Pou and Culotta, were to re-triage the patients and the message at the end of the day was to be a positive one: everyone would be getting out.
On page 187, Mulderick notes the food, water, and people at the hospital – making note about the horribly sick – the second-floor Memorial patients and seventh floor Life Care patients. Human waste was an issue to be discussed and then Dosch tells them about Tenet Bob Smith being on the working cell phone telling them that Tenet was sending private helicopters and satellite phones that morning to aid the rescue. The doctors met on the ER ramp. They started to discuss what to do with the sick patients, very openly hinting at euthanizing patients – making patients comfortable because they were suffering and going to die.
1. Finally, the open conversation about euthanasia comes out. What side does Dr. Deichmann take? Can you tell that Susan Mulderick thinks? Dr. Pou? Dr. Cook? What are your thoughts?
On page 190, Deichmann made it clear that the idea about euthanizing patients should not be considered. He was totally against it and euthanasia’s illegal page 191. The plan was to evacuate everyone. Deichmann would not want a physician to go to jail because they were trying to help a patient by doing (euthanasia) something illegal especially after being through this whole ordeal.
Mulderick’s idea was to rid the patients of their pain and dull their senses to the point they would no longer care about the feces (human waste) they were lying in (page 190). We are told she possibly said to Deichmann that it would be humane to euthanize the hospital’s DNR patients in a quiet hallway meeting. She wanted to end the patients suffering just like they did with the pets.
As for Cook, on page 194, Mulderick knew Dr. Cook would know what to give the sickest patients to make them comfortable and Mulderick worked under Cook as head nurse of the ICU for years – Cook did not shy away from ordering drugs to relieve suffering. Cook considered the Life Care patients to be “chronically deathbound” and he did not know how they could be evacuated (nine patients down five flights of stairs) at the end of the day (page 195).
On page 184, Pou’s priority was to keep patients comfortable and give them morphine and pain killers. She felt sad, frustrated, and helpless too because “the greatest country in the world and the sick could be abandoned like this.” She continued to administer drugs so the patients could go to sleep and die on both the second and seventh floors.
As for my thoughts, I would never want to be in any of these doctors’ shoes and doing what they felt had to be done to survive this situation. I am thinking along the same lines as Dr. Fournier and Dr. KIng on page 196-199. I do not agree with this idea of euthanizing anyone or anything in the first place (mercy killing) and it goes against my being Catholic and how precious life really is – animal and human.
1. What tensions arise between caring for pets and caring for people? Do you think that somehow euthanizing pets made it easier for some of the medical staff to accept euthanizing patients? Later boats allowed the evacuation of pets, making the earlier deaths senseless.
On page 188, Dr. Fournier, and her cat – she is worried about her cat’s health and tells Mulderick. Mulderick wanted to slap Dr. Fournier silly because how could a doctor have more concern for a pet than a patient at that very moment. Pets were everywhere because the staff avoided the rules to keep the pets out of the hospital. Mulderick believed that much focus was on euthanizing animals and not enough on sick patients (page 190).
On pages 192-193, Cockerham, an emergency medical doctor, agreed with Mulderick on euthanizing patients. She expressed empathy by putting herself in the patient’s shoes that if she were one of the life care ladies she would want to go to heaven. And that it was almost criminal what they were already doing to patients, putting them through a tortuous process of suffering (page 193).
Yes, the earlier pet deaths were seen as senseless but those pets, the ones needing immediate medical care, were euthanized so they would no longer suffer because they would suffer without vet care.
1. How are you feeling as the last of the patients who will leave Memorial alive to load onto the helicopters?
On page 184, Rodney Scott was worried he would be left behind and was too big to be evacuated. The nurses assured him he would not be. With the help of 18 staff members, between going out of the hole in the machine room wall, on a pickup truck bed being taken to the stairs to climb up to the helipad at 9 PM at night – Rodney Scott was the last patient to leave the hospital. However, one of the ICU nurses was injured when Scott’s wheelchair pushed him into the helicopter as Scott was put on board. People were still lying in the garage dying while Scott was evacuated. Culotta saw a patient named Merle Lagasse in respiratory distress, she was no longer being tended to and laying on the garage floor. Culotta decided Lagasse was to be given medications and brought into the hospital to pass away (paged 222-224).
I am relieved that this situation is coming to an end but saddened and heartbroken that it is coming to an end with horribly ill patients dying and not being airlifted to safety. It amazes me with the amount of money our country has that the federal government did not prepare the federal and state officials and hospitals better for this type of disaster.
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