When U.S. Army veteran Daniel Wilkinson started feeling sick last week, he went to the hospital in Bellville, Texas, outside Houston. His health problem wasn't related to COVID-19, but Wilkinson needed advanced care, and with the coronavirus filling up intensive care beds, he couldn't get it in time to save his life.
"He loved his country," his mother, Michelle Puget, told "CBS This Morning" lead national correspondent David Begnaud. "He served two deployments in Afghanistan, came home with a Purple Heart, and it was a gallstone that took him out."
Last Saturday, Wilkinson's mother rushed him to Bellville Medical Center, just three doors down from their home.
But for Wilkinson, help was still too far away.
Army veteran Daniel Wilkinson. CBS News
Belville emergency room physician Dr. Hasan Kakli treated Wilkinson, and discovered that he had gallstone pancreatitis, something the Belville hospital wasn't equipped to treat.
"I do labs on him, I get labs, and the labs come back, and I'm at the computer, and I have one of those 'Oh, crap' moments. If that stone doesn't spontaneously come out and doesn't resolve itself, that fluid just builds up, backs up into the liver, backs up into the pancreas, and starts to shut down those organs. His bloodwork even showed that his kidneys were shutting down."
Kakli told Begnaud that his patient was dying right in front of him. Wilkinson needed a higher level of care, but with hospitals across Texas and much of the South overwhelmed with COVID patients, there was no place for him.
Kakli recalled making multiple phone calls to other facilities, only to get a lot of, "sorry … sorry … sorry," in reply. Places had the specialists to do the procedure, but because of how sick he was Wilkinson needed intensive care, and they didn't have an ICU bed to put him in.
"Then I'm at my computer and, I'm just like, scratching my head, and I get this thought in my head: I'm like, 'What if I put this on Facebook or something, maybe somebody can help out?' One doctor messaged me: 'Hey, I'm in Missouri. Last time I checked, we have ICU beds. We can do this, call this number.' The next guy messages me, he's a GI specialist, he goes, 'I'm in Austin. I can do his procedure, get him over.' I said, 'Okay great, let's go.' He texts me back five minutes later: 'I'm sorry. I can't get administrative approval to accept him, we're full.'"
Emergency room physician Dr. Hasan Kakli. CBS News
For nearly seven hours Wilkinson waited in an ER bed at Belville.
"I had that thought in my head: 'I need to get his mother here right now,'" Kakli said. "I said, 'If he doesn't get this procedure done, he is going to die.'
"I also had to have the discussion with him. ''Dan,' I said, 'if your heart stops in front of me right here, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to do everything we can to resuscitate you and try and get your heart back? If that were to happen, Dan, if I were to get you back, we're still in that position we're in right now.'"
"He said, 'I want to talk to my mom about that,'" Kakli told CBS News.
Finally, a bed opened up at the V.A. hospital in Houston. It was a helicopter ride away.
Kakli recalled Wilkinson saying, "Oh, man, I promised myself after Afghanistan I would never be in a helicopter again! … Oh, well, I guess."
Wilkinson was airlifted to Houston, but it was too late.
"They weren't able to do the procedure on him because it had been too long," his mother told Begnaud. "They] told me that they had seen air pockets in his intestines, which means that they were already starting to die off. They told me that I had to make a decision, and I knew how Danny felt; he didn't want to be that way. And, so, we were all in agreement that we had to let him go."
Roughly 24 hours after he walked into the emergency room, Daniel Wilkinson died at the age of 46.
Kakli told Begnaud that if it weren't for the COVID crisis, the procedure for Wilkinson would have taken 30 minutes, and he'd have been back out the door.
"I've never lost a patient from this diagnosis, ever," Kakli said. "We know what needs to be done and we know how to treat it, and we get them to where they need to go. I'm scared that the next patient that I see is someone that I can't get to where they need to get to go.
"We are playing musical chairs, with 100 people and 10 chairs," he said. "When the music stops, what happens? People from all over the world come to Houston to get medical care and, right now, Houston can't take care of patients from the next town over. That's the reality."
As of last night, there were 102 people waiting for an ICU bed in the greater Houston area.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told Begnaud that she was prepared to open a field hospital, but as of Friday morning, hospitals in the Houston area were telling her they had extra beds — but not enough nurses. Seven hundred nurses arrived last week, but it's still not enough to meet the demand.
roboticArrow on August 27th, 2021 at 23:43 UTC »
My grandma was in the hospital (Kaiser) the past week for a non-covid emergency. She was stuck in emergency for 3 days without a room. Doctors from non-emergency were helping in the emergency department, trying to fill in where they could, and I ended up helping the nurses care for my grandma, adjusting her on the bed, helping put the pee vacuum thing in place, cleaning up accidents, etc.
She was stuck in a “not emergency, but no room upstairs” limbo for 3 days, and we got her a room just yesterday.
It was honestly worse in the room. The poor staff are so busy and are rushing around, the communication between shifts was just not going through. She ended up peeing the bed, was moved to her chair for cleanup, nobody came, my mom came to the hospital to visit/help 3 hours later when she was off work and discovered my grandma had been sitting in that pee for hours, to the point it was dried and sticking on the floor and her legs, and she had fresh pee in its place. It took more than an hour to get someone to come in to help clean her up. We did what we could but we don’t have the materials for a proper cleaning.
I had to remind the nurses every day/whenever someone came in that she’s a fall risk and if she doesn’t have someone to help Her go to the bathroom, she will have an accident. Every time I came in, her walker was too far from the bed for her to use and she was sitting in pee because the pee vac wasn’t put in place properly. I’ve visited her every day since she’s been in the hospital.
What’s sad is I’m not even mad. The care was awful, yes, but Jesus, they are trying their best right now. All their efforts are in the emergency room.
As terrible and insensitive as this sounds, I wish they’d prioritize non-covid emergencies over unvaccinated emergency covid patients at this point. My 85 year old grandma was playing the musical chairs game, with delta covid patients planted in the hallway, coughing outside of her sliding-door temporary room in the emergency’s hallway.
It was a nightmare for us, a nightmare for her, and a nightmare for the poor staff.
Get vaccinated. Save your own life, keep other people safe, and give the doctors a damn break. It’s complete chaos right now.
laubs63 on August 27th, 2021 at 23:15 UTC »
What kills me about all this is that these people keep saying they don't trust medical experts when it comes to the Covid vaccines, yet they stroll right the fuck over to their nearest hospital when they start dying.
Sailass on August 27th, 2021 at 20:07 UTC »
Oncologist sent us to the hospital for a not-COVID issue earlier this week.
Waiting room was packed.
They left a cancer patient who couldn't breathe well due to a tumor in with people waiting to be seen for COVID and didn't even bother to mention that we should probably wait somewhere else.
Hospitals are not doing well right now with the volume they are receiving.