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Note: This article
chronicles the near death of my
beloved wife Claudia Maria
Arevalo-Lowe in February and
March of 2003. She survived this
illness for another two years,
finally passing away from Septic
Shock due to diabetes due to the
asthma medications required to
keep her breathing. You can
find out more about Claudia
here:
I miss Claudia terribly
every single day. She is my best
friend and soul-mate. I am
surviving and moving on with my
life, but there is an emptiness
which I pretend isn't there.
In my experience there are
some good doctors, nurses and
other medical practitioners
(pharmacists, technicians and so
on). My own personal physician
and his staff are some of the
best there are. Unfortunately,
the occasional glimmer of
competence is so vastly
outweighed by the massive
incompetence (and, in the case
of psychiatrists and their ilk,
malevolence) of the field as a
whole that it's amazing we allow
the current state of affairs to
continue. Are people so afraid
of disease and death that they
will grasp at any solution
offered by anyone - even the
babbling idiots that currently
call themselves doctors? Do we,
as a group, simply refuse to see
not just downright incompetence
but the actual maliciousness
that exists in one of our most
lofty professions? Why do we put
medical doctors on such
pedestals in light of their
constant failures? And why in
the world do we tolerate
psychiatrists, the group that
created Hitler and is
responsible for the vast
majority of death, destruction
and evil in this world? (See
Citizens Commission on Human
Rights for more
information about the evils of
psychiatry).
Contents
Articles I
Have Written
The Worst Month of My
Life
Okay, perhaps I was naive and
maybe even a bit stupid. No
really. I have an IQ of around
150, yet now I feel just plain
idiotic. All of us have a day of
reckoning. A day when we learn
that something we understood to
be true, something obviously
real and factual is actually
false. The day like the scene in
the movie "The Matrix", when Neo
is pulled from the simulated
world into the real world.
Imagine the shock of
understanding that comes when
one learns that something basic
is a lie.
During these past few weeks,
I learned how Neo felt when he
heard the words "Welcome to the
real world".
My world started to change on
February 24th, 2003. It was a
Monday after a very long
weekend, which followed a long
and hard week. My wife was
having difficulty breathing, her
asthma was complicated by what
appeared to be an infection in
her lungs, and her foot was
giving her extreme problems. She
had filled with water (a side
effect of the drugs used to
handle asthma), and this
resulted in two huge blisters on
her feet.
The weekend was rough but
Claudia refused to go to the
hospital. By Monday, however, it
was obvious that there was not a
choice: her breathing problems
had gotten to the point where it
could not be handled at home by
me anymore. Even though the
doctor had supplied me with many
different options, I had run out
of things to do to keep her
breathing and functional.
I had a plan: get Claudia
down the stairs, into the car,
and over to Downey Community
Hospital. Our doctor (Alan
Frischer), an extraordinarily
competent person, would preside
over her handling. Since she and
I had been going to him for
almost a decade, this seemed to
be the ideal solution.
Unfortunately, events did not
support this plan. At 7:00 am on
Monday morning (February 24th),
I told Claudia I felt she should
go to the hospital. Much to my
surprise, she agreed without an
argument. Now, Claudia hates
hospitals and I suddenly felt a
small chill go down my spine. If
she was agreeing to go, she felt
bad indeed.
I asked her to get ready to
go and she started the routine.
Normally this requires about
fifteen minutes, and she was
still not finished over 2 hours
later. Her breathing was so bad
it was impossible for her to do
anything quickly. I finally
interrupted Claudia doing her
routine and told her we were
going now. She agreed and
started towards the stairs
leading down to the car.
She got to the top of the
stairs, looked down then back at
me, and said she was not going
to make it down. I pointed out
that she was going to the
hospital and if she couldn't get
down under her own power I would
have to call 911.
When Claudia, the woman who
has told me on more than one
occasion that she would divorce
me if I called the paramedics
for her, said that would be
fine, I felt a chill go up and
down my spine. Now I knew
without a shadow of a doubt that
she was very sick. Very sick
indeed.
I rushed to the phone and
called 911. I had this idea that
I could ask the paramedics to
come over and ask them to carry
her down the stairs to our car.
I then thought I could drive my
lovely wife down to our hospital
so she could be attended by our
doctor.
The paramedics arrived in
less an three minutes (here in
Los Angeles we have an excellent
emergency system). I went
outside to guide them to our
house. I still had this idea
that they would simply help me
get Claudia down the stairs.
Sigh.
Seven men jammed into our
apartment and looked my wife
over. She was barely conscious,
and was having extreme
difficulty breathing. I was
quickly informed by one of the
emergency team members that my
plan was unworkable - they had
to get Claudia to the closest
hospital immediately. If they
didn't, then they were afraid
that if something happened to
Claudia I could sue them (my,
how that short, three character
word forces so many things to
happen). They were going to
drive her to the nearest
hospital, which was Queen of
Angels.
Angels my foot. More like
Angels of Lucifer. But I'm
getting ahead of myself.
I watched as they put a mask
on Claudia's face to give her
some oxygen. I noticed that her
cheeks were a beautiful shade of
blue and although conscious she
didn't seem very aware of what
was going on. The paramedics
spent a couple of minutes tying
her to a gurney, then carted her
out the door, down the stairs
and into the ambulance. I jumped
in with them, as the hospital is
within walking distance and I
didn't feel like driving.
I had been with Claudia to
the hospital a few times in the
past and I knew the drill.
Sometimes the hospital will
allow the spouse into the
emergency and sometimes it
won't. This time, the hospital
would not allow me to go in with
her. I had some things I needed
to tell the doctor, but they
simply were not interested. I
felt I had important information
to relay - such as how she got
this way, what drugs I had
administered and her past
medical history, but my attempts
to pass this information on were
ignored for quite some time. I
wondered how the doctors could
be making intelligent decisions
about what treatments to give
her without any information, but
there was nothing that I could
do.
For example, I thought it
might be important for them to
know that I had administered, at
my doctors orders, an Epipen
(this drug, essentially
adrenalin, will get an asthmatic
breathing again very fast). This
would make Claudia's heart race
and might make her pulse higher
than normal. I also had
information about her long
medical history that was vital.
After a couple of hours, I
was finally allowed to get into
the emergency room with my wife.
She was unconscious and had a
large number of bottles and
tubes hanging off her arm (she
had a PIK line in her arm
already due to taking
intravenous antibiotics for an
infection). As I gazed down upon
her I realized how vulnerable
she was and understood how much
danger the woman was in at this
time.
As far as I could tell, the
emergency room doctor was not of
much value. He would not talk to
me for more than a few minutes,
simply telling me she was being
moved to ICU in a few hours (as
soon as they could get a room).
Her condition was very serious.
He did tell me that if we had
waited a few hours more to get
her to the hospital Claudia
would not have survived. That
was a sobering thought.
I decided it would be a good
time to go home for a while.
Claudia was going to be moved
upstairs to a room, and there
was not much that I could do in
the meantime. The nurse told me
she would be moved within a few
hours. Time enough for some
badly needed sleep, some food,
and some time to recover my
composure.
What I hate about the
medical profession, especially
doctors, is they believe they
are gods. That is not what they
say, of course, but it is true
that they understand they have
the power of life and death in
their hands. A brain surgeon can
make a cut one way and the
patient lives, a tenth of an
inch to the left and the patient
is a vegetable, and another
tenth of an inch and the patient
dies.
Not only do most doctors
seem to believe they are
absolutely gods, but they also
simply do not care about their
patients. Recently I watched a
roundtable discussion on
television which involved a
number of people in or related
to the medical profession. On
this show, these people debated
the ethics of telling the
patient this or that, the moral
issues they faced and the agony
they went through with each
illness.
It was absolute bull. In
the years that I've been
married, my wife has seem
perhaps forty doctors and
hundreds of nurses and medical
technicians. I can honestly say
that only two of those doctors
really cared about ethics, how
my wife felt or had any concern
about her once she left their
examination room. Only two of
those doctors have ever treated
her like a human being - to the
remainder she was an object,
something causing them distress.
In fact, I've seen more ethics
in the corner butcher than in
95% of the doctors and other
medical "professionals" that
I've come in contact with.
 
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