Welcome guys to episode 169 of Behind the Shield Podcast.
As always, my name's James Geering
and I have an incredibly powerful story for you this week.
My guest, David Hughes, a retired state trooper,
lost his son, Drew Hughes, at the age of 13
after Drew fell off his skateboard
and then suffered a series of horrendous medical decisions,
medical errors that resulted in his life.
You will hear the story I once said in the intro,
but I want to preface by saying
this isn't a breakdown of what went wrong
and a blame storming session.
This is a how can we all learn from this tragic,
tragic story and honor this young man's life
by making sure that we learn and fix the areas
in our lives that are weak
and make sure this doesn't happen again.
There are many incidences of things like this happening
that get swept under the carpet, you know, that kept hidden.
And David was brave enough to tell Drew's story.
This obviously came out in public courts.
This is why we're able to talk about it as well.
But again, this isn't to blame the people.
Obviously they were wrong,
but this isn't just pointing our finger session.
This is looking in the mirror at our training,
at ourselves, at our department, at our hospitals
and asking how can we make it better
to stop this happening again.
So as I always say before we start,
please go to your podcast apps and subscribe to the show,
rate the show, leave feedback.
I love hearing your feedback.
But most importantly, take social media,
do something positive with it
and share these incredible episodes, especially this one.
Anyone in the medical field needs to hear this episode.
So share it, make sure people listen and help this grow
and honor the people that are telling their stories,
being so courageous and get them to the people
that need to hear it.
So with that being said,
I introduce to you David Hughes, enjoy.
["Skyfall"]
David, I wanna just start by saying thank you so, so much
for agreeing to come on the podcast.
The next hour and a half or so that we talk
is gonna be incredibly powerful.
And this is a conversation that needs to be had,
but the tragedy that happened to your family
is a story that I wanna tell so that we can learn,
learn the lessons from obviously the horrible,
horrible things that happened to you.
So I wanna start just by saying thank you so much
for coming on.
Thank you very much for, thanks for contacting me
and caring about Drew's story.
And thank you for having me on.
Right, well, so I wanna preface this whole interview
for everyone listening that we're gonna hear obviously
some horrendous mistakes.
And any of us that are in the EMS side or pre-hospital
or emergency medical side are gonna identify
some pretty large errors.
Now I wanna underline that by saying I've only been
in the EMS side for 15 years.
I've only been a licensed paramedic for the last six.
So in this conversation, I am by no means standing
on some pedestal looking down.
This is to me, the terrifying side of our job,
the fire, the EMS, the police, whatever it is that we do,
is that when we make a mistake, people die.
And that's what drives me to train so hard.
I have this phrase, how would you feel if your family died
because the responder hadn't trained?
And I live by that.
So I want this to be obviously to tell Drew's story
and keep Drew alive in the fact that we're all remembering
what happened to him, but end up with this being,
as I'm sure it will be, a lessons learned,
a kind of intervention if any of us are being complacent
with our training, whether it's individually
or in our department, to try and remind ourselves
that if we drop the ball as it were,
that these horrendous effects happen.
So that being said, David, my first question,
because this is kind of pertinent too,
as a tangent to this whole story,
where are we finding you right now?
Yeah, emotionally, physically.
This five, I have to be more specific.
So geographically to the house,
where are we finding you right now?
I'm sorry, yeah, I thought that was what you meant,
but I wanna make sure.
No, we live in Carteret County, North Carolina.
At the time we were living in a small town
called Emerald Isle, North Carolina.
It's right on the southern outer banks,
the most southern outer banks of North Carolina.
So if you look at a map of North Carolina,
we kind of stick out, it's like,
our island actually runs east and west.
So when we look at the ocean, we're facing south.
And so as we were talking about before,
we get a few hurricanes.
I think we're second to y'all
in the number of hurricanes we get.
We're recovering from Hurricane Florence right now,
as a matter of fact.
We're living in my, we're renting my wife's uncle's house
right now because our house is being remodeled
at the moment.
So anyway, but that's where we are.
All right, yeah, so I wanna put that in.
So not only have you been through this
and you guys had this horrendous hurricane
that took you home and is now being put back together slowly.
Yeah, slowly, kind of metaphorically for everything.
Everything seems to be getting put back together right now.
Yeah, I'm sure, emotionally, like you said at the beginning.
All right, so I normally talk my guests
through their own kind of early life and following through,
but I think what I'd rather do with this
is do the same thing, but with Drew.
So before we start with Drew's early life,
I do wanna touch on one thing.
You were actually a North Carolina state trooper.
Correct.
All right.
From 99 to 98.
Okay, so if you just wanna walk me through your decision
to join law enforcement and then your career,
why you were forced to retire.
Yeah, no, I, it probably sounds very cliche,
but I really, my father, when I was one,
I never knew my father,
but my father was killed in a car wreck.
And when I was a year old, so I never knew him,
but that was kind of one of those things that always,
was in my family or heard about my entire life growing up.
But, and I actually had a few highway patrolmen
in our neighborhood that I knew
and always kind of looked up to.
And I just, the line I say is kind of cliche
was the help people thing.
I think that was my main motivation was,
just I wanted to do something good
and kind of make a difference,
but be able to help people.
And the, so that's why I got into it.
All right, and then you were a trooper for six years,
is that right?
Yeah, I was on the road for almost six years.
And then I had a few incidents that took place
on the patrol and not knowing it at the time,
what it was, I developed some severe panic disorder,
PTSD, anxiety, and I had a lot of physical symptoms.
I was at the doctor a lot
because I had a lot of physical symptoms,
but this was kind of a time period,
I think people were just beginning to learn about
or recognize what some of these jobs do to people.
And so I just, it took me a while,
I remember riding, I was in the back of an ambulance
because I had been working a wreck
and I actually thought I was having a heart attack.
And on the way to the hospital,
one of the paramedics in the back asked me,
or EMTs, but anyway, he asked me,
he said, have you ever had a panic attack before?
My first question was like, what is a panic attack?
Never heard of it in my life.
And so it kind of went from there,
but after a little over a year or whatever,
I ended up having a retired disability due to that.
It was, it got pretty severe for a while.
And I don't wanna get into all the stories
that the things that happened while I was on the road,
but just, it was enough that it really took a toll on me.
Yeah, and it's interesting
because I've seen a lot of special forces guys,
some of the people that I follow,
even some I've had on the show already,
that to this day with all this acknowledgement,
I mean, they have the same thing where,
they're out doing all this motivating,
uplifting stuff on their social media
and then their day-to-day life.
And then there'll be a picture of them in the ER.
And they just had an event,
anxiety is a bitch or whatever it was.
So this physical manifestation is very, very real.
And from, there's not a scale.
These are the most elite resilient men on the planet.
Some of them, the seals and Rangers and Marines,
but still suffering years after combat.
So it's a very, very real thing.
Yeah, the mind is powerful.
What your mind can do to your body
is pretty unbelievable until you experience it.
And it's hard for people to wrap their hands around,
wrap their heads around the fact
that their mind is causing a lot of their problems.
And then it's kind of how you deal with it from there.
I haven't, I've actually done really well.
It's been many years and I haven't,
so far as having a panic attack, things like that.
I mean, I'm pretty much in a really good place with that.
Of course, and I'll add,
I kind of say this in a lot of the presentations that I do.
You know, I recognize PTSD.
I know what it is.
I've been there, done that.
I probably will always have some form of it,
but I still have it from,
so I recognize it with Drew's case, what happened to Drew.
I probably will always have a form of PTSD.
You know, it's kind of like I talk about to this day,
really, if I get behind an ambulance,
because in the story, if people read it or heard it,
and if they'll learn seeing, you know,
we were following the ambulance that he was in,
when they were transporting him to a vital.
And now to this day, if I get behind an ambulance,
I see Drew sitting up in the back of that ambulance.
It's one of those things I've got to get around them.
And it's one of those things
I'll probably always have to deal with.
And my wife has got things she has to deal with her own way.
I mean, men and women definitely handle things differently,
especially like this.
So it's tough, but it's one of those things,
it's a day by day thing, you know.
This is five years later, you know,
going on the sixth year after this happened.
And we've come a long ways, but it's a lot,
it's a lot to do, so.
Yeah, all right.
Well, let's start talking about Drew then.
So we'll start at the very beginning.
When was he born?
September 1st, it was born on our wedding anniversary,
but he was born on September 1st, 1999.
And he was actually born here in Carteret County.
He was used to joke that, you know, we were all transplants,
he was the only Carteret County native.
So, but yeah, he was a beach boy.
Yeah, he looks like a beach boy from the pictures.
And he's got two older brothers?
Yeah, he's got two older brothers.
His oldest brother, Brewer, he's David Hughes Jr.,
but we call him Brewer.
He's an officer in the Marine Corps.
And then my middle son, Zach,
he actually works at Cherry Point.
He's a logistics, he's a Department of Navy, I believe.
But so he's doing really well.
But yeah, he had two older brothers
that he pretty much chased around and tried to keep up with.
They were six years older than him,
so he was pretty much running after them from the day
he was able to walk and know what was going on.
All right, and then speaking of that,
did he have any career aspirations as he got older?
I don't know. He used to joke.
I mean, he really used to joke about being a highway patrolman
or a Marine, you know, that's what Brewer was pursuing
at the time Brewer had gone through his first round
of officers candidate school.
And yeah, I'd been a treaper,
but he always kind of joked about that.
I don't know, you know, his age, he just kind of was,
he was pretty laid back and just liked to go with anything.
He liked to go with things as they came.
He was just, he was always a happy kid.
I mean, he always happy.
He very rarely, if ever, was upset about anything.
You know, he's kind of, you know, with the two older brothers,
I think he learned from watching the two older brothers
what to do and what not to do.
And around the house, they'd stay out of trouble.
And he just kind of, he was just real laid back, easy going.
He was kind of the balance in our household
that kind of evened everything out a lot of the time.
But no, he's, he did say he didn't want to go to NC State
and play football.
I don't know if he would have ever done it.
He was fast as blue blazes, but he loved playing football.
But, you know, I don't know if that would have ever happened.
We'll see.
You never know the what ifs will get you
because, you know, what would he be doing right now
if he was still here with his personality
and, you know, the way people liked him, you never know.
That's kind of one of the things that, you know,
losing that is as hard as just about anything.
Yeah, exactly. That's the hardest thing from, as you know,
being a state trooper, the hardest thing is a responder.
You know, when you see someone as elderly that passes away,
you know, I mean, obviously it's sad,
but it's not anywhere near as sad as when you see someone
that's just beginning their life and you know the potential
of what they could have done and snatched away from them.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I know my grandmother, who I was very, very close with,
just passed away in the last few months.
She was 95.
And, you know, Drew's death has made me look at things a lot differently.
I think her death would have probably upset me a lot more
if Drew hadn't passed away before her.
But, you know, the first thing I thought of was, you know, she's happy.
She lived a really long life, a great life with, you know, a great family.
It's been experienced a lot.
And I don't think, I don't think hardly a tear came out of my eye
the entire time. I was more happy for her than anything.
One of my first thoughts was, well, now she's with Drew.
You know, that's kind of where we go with it instead of, you know,
because it was just backwards.
Everything that happened with Drew shouldn't have happened.
It was backwards from what, you know, normally it's the parents
go before the kids type of thing.
And this, it was, especially the way it happened,
it was tough to wrap our heads around.
Yeah, yeah. Now, what about sports?
What kind of, you mentioned that Drew liked football.
Obviously, we're going to talk about skateboarding.
Are there other things that he'd love to play as well?
Yeah, it's kind of funny, skateboarding was just a mode of transportation for him.
I mean, he liked doing it.
That's kind of how he got around the neighborhood.
But he, you know, he loved track.
He was really good in track. He was very fast, like I said.
He liked baseball. He wasn't crazy about it.
He loved football. He just loved competing and he loved running.
Anything where he was running, he loved it.
I was just starting to talk to him about getting into lacrosse
because it was just becoming a thing.
It was just kind of coming in when he passed away.
But I think he would have really enjoyed that.
But anything where he was running, he loved to compete. He loved to race.
So I think anything where, you know, he was kind of showing how fast he was
and his speed and things like that, it was what he liked to do.
So, but that was his big thing.
Skateboarding, surfing, you know, he lived at the beach.
So those were kind of things that just you did down here, everybody did.
But it was really, that was just his mode of transportation around the neighborhood.
You go to a friend's house or something like that.
Yeah, but really kind of stung, I guess you could say,
is when I first discovered you and your story and, you know, drew and I saw the pictures.
I've got a little 11-year-old boy who's got the long straight hair.
You know, he would have it even longer if I didn't force him to cut it once in a while.
But it just reminds me a lot of my little boy who does exactly the same thing.
Just, you know, you describe my son to a tee as well.
So, and I'm sure it's, you know, the same with a lot of mothers and fathers out there.
So why don't we fast forward then to June 28th, 2013.
And, you know, let's begin the journey.
So if you want to just start by saying, you know, what drew was doing that day and how this was initiated.
Yeah, I mean, really the, you know, I was at work that day.
So I worked at a local hospital.
I was a systems analyst.
I worked in the IT department, information services.
And so something had happened that day.
And we were having to stay a little bit late.
So a lot of the computers were kicked off the domain to make a long story really short.
But so I was having to spend, you know, the evening there.
And I was, my wife had been communicating with me because we were supposed to eat dinner with some friends or whatever,
hang out with some friends of ours.
And she was calling me about dinner, what we were going to do and what everybody was doing.
And Drew had a friend over, Bradley, who was, it was still probably one of his best friends.
And they, you know, he was spending the night.
And so they were just all in the house kind of goofing off.
And my wife and my middle son, Zach, you know, he was in college at the time, was home.
He was, he had just gotten off.
He had delivered pizzas around the island and just to make money in the summertime.
So home from college.
And my oldest son, Brewer, was at OCS.
He was finishing his last session of OCS in Quantico.
So they, anyway, so yeah, that was kind of what was going on at the house.
He was just, you know, playing with his friends.
And when they had gone out, they ate dinner really quickly and had gone out.
And literally, my wife said it probably wasn't five minutes or so.
It didn't seem like, I'm sure it was a little bit longer.
But from where he had the accident to our house was literally maybe a block and a half or so.
And they had gone out skateboarding.
His friend didn't have a skateboard.
So he let him use his and he had got on his brother's skateboard.
And the trucks, the wheels on it were a little bit looser because the older one used to kind of like to do
faff on it and do some tricks or whatever.
And they were a little bit looser and he wasn't used to it.
But he was coming down a hill and all his friends said, you know, one of the things was, you know,
last things he said was, I'll see you on the flip side.
And that was kind of his last thing.
And when he got to the bottom, he got speed wobbles.
You know, the board, I guess you kind of can imagine the board started going back and forth real fast.
And he tried to run off into the grass.
But the yard that he was going to try to run off onto, which a lot of houses in the neighborhood do it,
they have kind of big rocks set up around the corner so people won't drive on the grass when they're making
turns or whatnot.
And there was also a pole and some other bushes right there.
So he couldn't really run off into it, but he the board came out from under him.
He fell backwards and hit his head.
So I got a phone call from at work as I was really I was fixing to walk out the door and I got the phone call
that from my middle son's eye that Drew had been in an accident and he had a concussion.
And we were familiar with it.
We'd been done the routine with the two older brothers.
You know, Brewer played football all through high school.
Brewer had a couple concussions during his high school football career.
Zach had had concussions before playing different sports.
And so we kind of knew the drill.
You know, the drill was just get him, you know, go ahead and bring him to the hospital.
He's going to need to get a CT scan done just to be safe.
You know, as a parent, that's the first thing you do is, you know, you want to do what's best for your kid immediately.
And you want to get the best care and you want to make sure everything's taken care of,
you know, the
And they did tell me whenever I was talking to Zach, he said he had some blood in his right ear,
which with my prior history, that was kind of a little red flag that shot up, you know,
because you don't know where the blood is coming from, of course.
But so I immediately said, look, bring him in, you know, he was and I'll meet you all in the emergency room.
And my wife was talking to him, to Drew.
That was one thing, Drew never lost consciousness.
Drew, when Kimley got there, he was progressively getting more alert,
but he kept trying to get up. And that was his thing.
He just kept saying, look, I want to go to the house and lay down.
And my wife was like, no, they had already called 911.
So he had a group of friends because, you know, all 13 year old boys got pretty excited pretty quickly.
And they had already dialed 911. And he was trying to get up.
So my wife kept having to tell him to stay down and just relax or whatever.
And she would talk to him and she asked him questions like, you know,
where do you go to school? You know, where do your brothers go to school?
And, you know, how old are your brothers? How old are you?
And just things like that. He answered everything correctly.
And so and like I said, we would talk back and forth on the phone, you know, periodically while they were while they were at the scene.
And the more I talked to her, the better I felt.
But I still knew that I wanted him to get evaluated by people that weren't available at our hospital.
And so my idea was and they hadn't even arrived yet.
I was in the AED when the ambulance was just getting to the scene where Drew was.
And I walked in the AED and I said, look, I said, my son Drew is on his way here.
He's been in a skateboard accident. He's got a head injury.
And I said, I want him transferred as soon as you can make arrangements for him that to be done.
I said, I want him to arrive here and go on to Vidant because Vidant, you know, they've got a great children's hospital.
They've got great pediatric neurologist, things like that.
And my thinking was to, you know, if there was anything, I wanted him where they could handle it too.
And also, you know, August, you know, he was getting ready to be a freshman in high school.
So August would be he would be starting football.
You know, I knew that might not be happening, but you never know.
So he was very active.
I think as we kind of gone over, he didn't sit still very often at all.
Anybody with boys, sons kind of knows what I'm talking about.
They're a little bit different and the things they like to do and move around.
He wasn't he wasn't one to sit and play video games very long.
He was balanced, something like that.
And so basically, it was what we needed to do to take care of him, to make sure that we did everything for him that needed to be done
so he could get back to doing what he'd like to do.
And so and that started the process.
They picked him up there and started bringing him in.
And I remember, you know, as I talk to my wife again, you know, she's she said he seems to be doing a lot better.
You know, he's talking to me.
I always joke that that the one that really the only thing that really stuck out to make me really concerned during the trip was that my wife asked him
if he wanted her to sing to him.
And he said, yes.
I said, well, he must have had a head injury because terrible voice.
And so she sang the doxology out with him, you know, to him to go into the hospital.
That was the last time she talked to Drew was in the back of the ambulance on the way.
And then they arrived at the D.D. and I was already standing in the D.D.
You know, I think about it. I really hope I didn't offend anybody by, you know, going in there and basically telling them I wanted him out of here as soon as possible.
But wasn't anything personal.
It was just I knew what the, you know, the capabilities were there.
I knew what I wanted for him.
So the you know, that was the thing I just really wanted my idea.
Ideally, I would have loved it if if he would have arrived there, transferred to an ambulance and gone about it.
You know, I him he was there for right at two hours a little more.
And that was too late. That was to me. That was two hours. It was getting wasted in my head.
You know, that's what I was thinking. I was the whole time. I was like, you know, what's the deal with transport?
What's the deal with transport? They would.
Vida used to have a critical care transport truck stationed in Carter County.
And that wasn't they weren't stationed here anymore.
I heard they might be stationed in an adjacent county in Oslo County.
But I don't know if that was ever looked into or not.
I think the first thing they went to was the helicopter.
And the helicopter from that would not fly because we had a lot of storms coming through.
And so they wouldn't fly that night.
So they had checked with Pedro, which is a Marine Corps rescue helicopter that was stationed in Cherry Point.
And they were willing to fly, but they would only fly them to Wilmington.
They wouldn't go back to the West.
And, you know, I always hate that, too.
It's kind of the stories that I hear. I'll get a little bit sidetracked.
So you have to direct me back on the path you want me to.
But there's kind of it's kind of interesting things.
There's so many people who come up and talk to us after the fact and told us that they knew what was going on that night.
People in the medical field.
And one was a physician that was normally worked at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune.
And he was actually working with he was a friend of our family and he was actually working on Pedro that night.
So he would have been on the helicopter with Pedro if they had picked him up.
And this guy is outstanding.
And I'm thinking about all these things that if they had happened differently, probably would have been different for Drew.
But Wilmington would not accept him because he was not for he was he was 13.
So he was considered pediatric. He wasn't 14 yet as far as by their scales.
So they wouldn't accept him.
And so they started having to make arrangements to get him about it.
And so.
All right. Well, let me stop you for a second.
So two questions firstly from him lying on the side of the road after literally just falling off a skateboard.
Was that a fire rescue EMS company that got him to the ER?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
The Amarillo ambulance came and picked him up and from the scene and transported him to to the local hospital.
OK. So at that point, they they treat him as a suspected head injury but didn't do any aggressive interventions.
Just got him to the ER.
Yeah. And he was you know, it was you know, he was he was doing really much better.
I mean, it was even in the records that, you know, the patients, you know, did better, you know, was, you know, acting better during transport or whatever.
You know, they had him in a they did put a neck brace on him, which that kind of was a bother to me because I know I know there's lots of debate on neck braces and things like that.
Depending on the type of injuries they put him in.
But that was one of the things was the the one they had him on was wasn't exactly the right size for him.
But if what they had and it was pressing right on his head where his injury was.
So he was in a lot of pain all the time because they had that brace on him all the time.
So that was something that even in even there, you know, he would talk about it, you know, and I was always like, you know, can we just get the neck brace off or can we put a do something differently?
Because kind of to jump forward a little bit.
But that was one of the first things they did when he got divided in Greenville finally that night was they took that brace off and put one on that was more comfortable and fit in properly and things like that.
And that's when they said they said that thing was pressing on, you know, so so he was kind of agitated all along because it hurt and he was uncomfortable.
But they, you know, they were great.
And they got him there, you know, pretty quickly and, you know, did everything, you know, as far as I know, you know, basically it was just getting him to the hospital.
But there were no there was nothing, you know, that happened in the back of that that small.
It was about a 15, 20 minute ride at most.
There was nothing that. You know, happened negatively there.
Yeah, well, and that's you had a good point as well.
They're not even so much the collar, but definitely the backboard.
I don't know if he was on a backboard as well, but that has been a knee jerk protocol in many, many departments now for years, certainly my entire career.
And there are some departments out there that are more progressive now that are getting away from them because we see as as EMS personnel.
Most of the time they do more harm than good.
And then and then it started coming to the surface that there actually wasn't any research to show that they were actually doing anything positive.
And we saw I mean, I certainly saw the patients sliding up and down and moving a lot more than if they just been in a in a kind of seated position in the back of the rescue.
And then obviously the the collars are effective if they fit right.
But there might even be a time where it is making it worse and you just have to use towels or some alternate method to work around that as well.
But that's that's not picking on the medic so much because I know a lot of us have to have these hard and fast rules,
even though there's actually not any science behind us having to do them in the first place.
Yeah, I think depending on the injury, that's one of those things in how the injury occurred.
What you know, like I said, he didn't have a you know, but it doesn't you know, that's one of those things that was really not anything that anybody did wrong.
It was just one of those things that to, you know, make you think about was that collar.
It was too large for him. And so the back of it, the way it sticks up was pressing on the back of his head all the time.
And that's where he hit his head. So, yeah, so his pain level was higher and he really had never never received any pain medication pretty much the entire time.
So that was another thing as well. So, but yeah, I know.
So he got to the hospital and I was standing in there and when they all came in, my wife walked over to me and they took him in the first room.
And and, you know, one of the first things that they did was check the check the blood in his ear, you know,
and there was no cerebral spinal fluid or anything like that in there.
Everything looked good and and on that front or whatever.
But they went ahead immediately and got him pretty much as soon as they got him situated on the bed in there arranged for him to go ahead and get a CT scan done.
And from that, pretty much from that point on, I was with him the entire time in the AD.
I was right beside the bed. One of the things I will say is, and this is kind of one of those points that I talk about a lot also,
is that when, you know, when he came in, he was pretty agitated whenever he, you know,
whenever he got like his mom was with him in the ambulance, but when they weren't, when either me or her were not around him, he got a little bit agitated.
He was scared. And that's kind of one of those points.
I'm always trying to get across to people because he's a big kid and this, that, and the other, whatever, whatever you're looking at, he's still a kid.
And, you know, he liked having one of us with him. And I remember they were, he was pretty agitated.
I was like, it was all I could do not to go over there, but I didn't want to get in anybody's way.
And pretty quickly waved me over. And as soon as I got over to by his bedside, you know, I looked him in the face, I got his attention,
you know, because he was looking at stuff around the room. I said, Drew, I said, calm down. I said, you're fine. I'm right here.
And as soon as he saw me, he instantly chilled. I mean, you could see his body relax, you know, he was so tense and instantly he just relaxed.
And that was one of those things is important to note even later on through the night was it was documented in the in the physician's impression
after treating Drew that night that he was more comfortable with patients at bedside, with parents at bedside.
And so you're kind of like that's one of those things that I think in the whole scheme of the treatment and how he was transported,
everything else should have been communicated down through, you know, when you're dealing with a kid,
that's something you need to tell people. This kid asked differently when his parents are beside him versus what he does when they're he's by himself.
You know, that's that's an important point to me. You know, as a parent, I can I can pretty much assure you that your kid can make a facial expression.
And you know, your kid well enough to interpret that facial expression without him saying a word where other people would have no clue what he was trying to convey.
You know, it's just, you know, your kids better than anybody will ever know. You know, and so he could look at me, his eyes, a roll, eye roll, the way he holds his whatever.
You can get a lot of information just by their facial expressions.
And so, you know, it's having us around, I think, was very important, I think, for the trip, I think, for the transport.
I think, you know, that's one of the things I really wanted to be back there.
You know, like I said, when they decided they wanted to sedate him for the trip and he was basically asleep was the way it was put to me for an hour and a half.
I felt much better. That's one of the reasons I accepted not riding on the ambulance is because he was going to be asleep.
So, of course, that didn't happen that way. But in any event, so we, you know, we were in the DED with him and I walked with him back to where they did the CT scan.
And I was in the room with him during getting having the CT scan, you know, performed and I know there was there was there was a bunch of people behind the glass.
You know, I knew a lot of people there from working there. The lady that was running there was actually performing the CT.
We got along pretty well. But I remember, you know, of course, the first thing they do is get a head CT.
And she, you know, so I'm standing with him the whole time, is pretty much holding his hand or right there beside his bed the entire time.
And and I remember I remember she completed that she's watching the images that come through.
And I know they're not allowed to interpret, you know, anything they see.
But when you do hundreds or thousands of them, you kind of know what you're looking at after a period of time.
But I just remember her smiling and kind of give me a thumbs up from behind the glass.
And, you know, I knew from talking to Drew while we were in the day that he was OK.
I talk about this a lot as well as that his his concussion didn't scare me as bad as his older brother's concussion when he was playing football in high school.
I talk about it because the older the older son, I'll never forget, we were in the stands when he started just wandering around the football field, did not know where, you know,
and we start I was like to my wife, I was like, what's wrong with him?
And we went down to the fence and they got him off to the sideline and he started crying, didn't know where he was.
He forgot the first half of the game.
I mean, I could go into a lot of things. It was he had he's to this day.
He has no recollection of the first half of that football game, you know, things like that.
And he he was scared me worse because he progressively seemed to be getting worse instead of like with Drew getting better.
Of course, everything turned out fine with Brewer, just like everything looked like it was fine with Drew.
But but, you know, I just talk about the two because I've had, like I said, with all three of the sons, Brewer had a couple concussions playing football.
I've been around. I've seen him. I've dealt with people in car accidents and, you know, things like that.
Of course, there can be something going on that you don't know about.
You can't see. But going by what I had to go on at the time, the more I was with Drew, the better I felt.
And so, you know, once she came back with that and we were kind of talking, he's like, Dad, I just want to go home.
You know, and I'm like, I said, Drew, and this is the point where I told him, I said, Drew, you're going to be OK.
And I honestly believe that with all of my heart, I believe that he was fine. I thought he was going to be OK.
I knew we would have to get through getting him checked out, treated, whatever needed to be done.
And then and then, you know, that would be what we'd have to deal with.
We'd work on it from there. But there was nothing. I wasn't scared.
You know, initially, my initial phone call is apparent. You're scared, you know, because you think of everything.
But at that point in time, I was feeling really good.
And I remember telling him, you're going to be OK. So we'll get we'll get you home after the doctor check you out.
I'm with you. And it was kind of that time when the the lady kind of hollered out behind the glass.
She said, we need to do a CT scan of his lower spine. Can you take off his shorts?
And before I even had a chance to say anything, Drew said, if no, you're not taking off my shorts in front of that nurse.
So that would be that would be what we call AOTimes for if you responded like that.
He's pretty with it. Yeah, he was. And that's kind of and I say that.
And that's a lot of examples I get because during the entire event, he was alert and he and his responses were pretty with it.
He knew what was going on and he was hearing pretty well.
And of course, everybody behind the glass kind of cracked up.
And of course, everything came back OK. And and.
So when we went to and I can, you know, I can talk about the CT report real quick, real briefly.
But, you know, basically everything, if you're reading the report, is normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, right?
They did see the blood in his ear, you know, the fluid in his ear.
But, you know, I can kind of read this. You know, there was no fracture identified.
So on their CT scan, they did not see a fracture of any kind.
But they said there was a small amount of gas.
I'm reading this to you so I don't get it wrong because I wouldn't try to remember this anyway.
There was a small amount of gas seen within the right temporal mandibular joint,
as well as a tiny focus of pneumocephalus with fluid seen in the right external auditory canal, which was the blood in his right ear.
And mastoid air cell suggesting that there is an occult fracture through this region.
So based on that, though they couldn't see one, they were assuming that he probably had a basal or skull fracture.
And they were treating him as that. So, you know, that was reasonable.
I'm not, you know, I'm not, I can understand that even though they didn't see one.
I can understand that, you know, going with that.
So just to be, if anything, just to be safe, you know, you don't want to not say no, everything's good when there might be, you know.
But so there but there was no blood within within the actual cranium itself.
Yeah, no, there's the ventricles were normal size and contour, got contours, cerebrum, no masses, no hemorrhage, no midline shift, cerebellum, no masses, no hemorrhage, no alteration of density, no evidence of acute infarction,
extra axial spaces, no fluid collections, no masses, you know, orbits and globes, normal contour of globe without masses, you know, no fracture visualized, the small amount of fluid, you know, in the ear was basically what they saw.
Right.
And that's kind of what, you know, that's that's why I kind of go over with people because, you know, right after the fact, people, we literally heard things like they heard his head was cracked like an egg.
And I'm like, no, you know, that was very difficult in the very beginning because we knew what happened pretty quickly, had an idea.
We didn't know exactly what happened, but we knew something went wrong and something happened, but we didn't know what.
But, you know, here in, you know, the way news, you know, I think that was about the time that Instagram was just becoming a thing and social media was really taken off right about that time, which in 2013, the use of it.
And so word was really, really traveled quickly.
But the stories that we had to the fires we had to put out, the stories we had to correct, it was you talk about that was probably as difficult as anything during the whole process was constantly.
We have people, you know, even to this day, you know, we'll talk about, oh, that's the boy that had a skateboard accident.
I'm like, well, yeah, sort of.
I mean, that is what started, you know, and I always have to tell people, you know, when they bring that up, I'm like, you know, like I've mentioned before, I was like, dude, if you've got two or three boys or if you've got one boy, it doesn't really matter.
If they go through their entire life and you don't go to the emergency room, you are a lucky individual.
You know, that's you know, I'm being serious about that.
I mean, just the way ours were ours were climbers, runners, wrestlers, rough housers.
I mean, you know, everything little boys, a lot of them, most of them are at least mine were.
And I think most people can relate to that because they understand it.
But, you know, depending on what your situation was, it's it's it's like, yeah, he had a he had a skateboard accident, you know, but that really in the story.
And then I'll direct him.
Lots of times I'll have pamphlets or I'll just say, look, please go to our website to do it for drew.org and read the story, you know, and learn about it.
And then people will come back.
Oh, my gosh.
You know, you know, I think they'd look at they'd look at Drew's picture and they read that story of what happened to him and they put it together.
And it's like, especially for parents and a lot of time, most of the time, it's mothers because dads don't like to think about this stuff.
The majority of the time, they don't like to look at it.
They don't like to deal with it.
You know, they're not the ones that are going to sit down and watch This Is Us on TV that often, you know, they're there were wired differently.
But so especially the moms, if they look at that story and they read it, they get it really quickly.
And it's that that gut feeling that you get kind of like when you, you know, it's like you watch a movie where a kid gets abducted, you know, and you as a parent, you've been in a store where your kid disappears for 30 seconds and your mind instantly goes nuts.
And then you find them and it's like, you know, you're half mad at them, half relieved to see them.
You know, imagine being in our shoes where you don't ever wake up from that.
You know, it happened.
And you know, you're that feeling.
It's kind of like, you know, I tell us, you know, that feeling that people get when they hear these stories and see them on TV, they can change the channel.
They can divert their brain to something else.
We're stuck with it because that happened to our son.
And there's nothing we can do about it.
You know, it's and so people read the story and it hits them.
But then it's kind of like, I don't like thinking about this.
I don't like talking about this because it hurts.
And that's why I think what we're doing is with the foundation is difficult because it's not a thing that people like to talk about or think about because it hurts.
You know, you know, as we talk about death by medical errors, I know I'm getting a little bit off track, but I'll get back.
I know where I'm going.
When we talk about medical errors, you know, the number of deaths caused every year by medical errors, people don't like to think about it.
You know, you know, they is I know the numbers and you've probably seen them too.
The studies that show it may be the third leading cause of death in the United States.
They're all over. The numbers are kind of all over the place, but kind of the general consensus of numbers is maybe 200,000 deaths a year.
Well, that's if that's the third leading cause of death, that's more than opioid abuse, you know, drunk driving, you know, all these hot button topics that you that you get so much publicity.
Every day, you know, like Drew's case, I met with a group of state medical directors back in a couple years ago and the way it was put to me, this is just intubation errors.
What happened to Drew was not common, but it's not uncommon.
That's kind of the way it was worded to me.
And that's kind of scary because just in the time that we formed the foundation, the number of times where intubation errors have caused serious injuries or deaths,
we get messages about a lot of them because people know what we do with the foundation and they send them to us.
But, you know, all I can really do with them is direct them somewhere to somebody who can probably evaluate their case and help them.
But it's tough, you know, because we see it all the time and we work with a couple of different groups around the country.
One is Securitism Medical.
This is Dr. Arthur Canawas.
He contacted me one day.
He read Drew's story or he looked over to watch the videos and stuff like that.
He just contacted me and said, I can't stand it.
I said, you know, we've got to be helped some way how this got involved.
And, you know, they just because it happens too often and, you know, the numbers are just with unplanned extubation and intubation errors,
you know, maybe as high as 33,000 deaths a year just on that, the complications.
And that's in hospital ICUs across the country that they can document, that they can kind of keep track of.
So then I go like to EMS, how many times in the field is someone intubated and maybe the tube dislodges or, you know,
it didn't put there correctly to begin with, but it's not noticed how, you know, it could be a person could go without oxygen for several minutes
or not be getting enough oxygen for several minutes, whatever.
And you don't know what happens or what's caused, but nobody's going to walk into the ED and say and self-report themselves.
So, hey, you know, I had the two been wrong for 10 minutes.
You know, how many people are going to do that?
There may be a few, you know, I know there are a few, but there's a lot of people who their first instinct is, you know,
cover their rear end and you don't know what took place.
So and there's no way of knowing because, you know, so it's one of those things where the training and the
there's got to be some way of improving lots of things.
And that's kind of one of our things as we work on.
But I know I'm sidetracking a lot. So, no, what I want to I want to just kind of underline something before we move on chronologically.
So just from a medic's perspective, you know, we there's many times we take a patient in and it turns out to be something obscure
and the patient there, the medic beats themselves up, but they forget that they found that, you know,
whatever it was through all these, you know, high level imaging devices that they have in a hospital.
There's no way you could have known pre-hospital that it was a triple A or whatever ended up happening later.
However, therefore, we have the option, obviously, to err on the side of caution and, you know, blood and blood and
drusio definitely would have have made me want to probably go to a trauma center personally, just just so that,
like you said, you end up in the facility that is most appropriate.
But again, for me, where I work, that's not a huge drive from from my last department.
It was probably 30 minute drive to be uber safe.
But what you do have to fall back on is his level of consciousness and all the other areas that weren't present.
So then now we've gone into the ED, they've done all their their assessments.
They verified that it isn't some sort of bleed or, you know, doesn't seem to be any traumatic, you know, uber traumatic injury to the brain.
So from the EMS and and the ER from right now, a baseline is yes, he's injured, but there's there's nothing that's life threatening.
It's not not, you know, giving terrible vital signs or any of the areas that we would look for.
Correct. And he and he and he and on the Glasgow Coma Scale, he was scored twice by two different nurses in there and he was given a 12 by both of them.
And then the physician's impression, she gave him a GCS of 13.
So, you know, perfect scores 15. So it at most and pretty much, I think this is pretty much nationwide.
Where you start looking at intubating a patient is when their GCS is an 8.
Right. I mean, that's pretty much what I've read as a standard.
I kind of try to keep up with as much as I can.
Things change all the time. But but, you know, the one of the reasons,
you know, he was given, you know, he was the GCS of 13.
You know, the why he was gigged the two points for for that were his answers to some of the physician's questions,
because she would ask him questions and his response was I want to get home.
OK, so we can make that all day long, but still, a 13 was probably reasonable given,
you know, everything that took place and what was going on, you know, and and, you know, I wouldn't fault anybody for that.
I think that that I think that reason is kind of goofy just because like I'll say it a hundred times.
He was a 13 year old kid. He's got he's got enough adrenaline running through him,
you know, probably to charge a couple of car batteries.
I mean, it's just he's, you know, and he's and then, you know, later on, of course, he starts crashing.
He's pretty exhausted. You know, he was he was tired.
I know it comes it comes out at times. And I like to mention this because well,
and I'll get to it in just a second. But so he was, you know, that's when it was approached to me after after the CT scan that
and what basically what had happened was the crew that normally works in the hospital,
that's the EMS paramedics who work on site that would normally do transports, things like that.
They had just they had transported a patient to about it that earlier that evening.
So they weren't in the building. And because of the problems we're getting,
you know, like I said, I still don't I'm still not sure never have really found out what was the deal with violence.
Critical care transport truck that they had stationed nearby. I don't know if it was available.
I don't know if it was even looked into. I don't know.
But they basically decided to assemble a crew that, you know, to take to start the trip.
And the plan was was to meet the ambulance coming back from Greenville, switch crews with that.
So the crew that was working that night could complete the trip.
And then, you know, that was basically their plan. So I don't know who came up with this plan.
The and then of course, then it was who they assigned to the to the truck.
There were two county paramedics who just happened to be in the ED that night.
And they asked them and they one of them agreed to start the trip driving and one of them agreed to be in the back with Drew.
So then they had needed to get it.
They want this is when it was mentioned to me about intubating Drew for the trip.
And, you know, my first reaction was why?
You know, why why do you intubate a patient?
You know, because he just he didn't seem like there was anything wrong.
You know, he was breathing on his own things like that.
So my initial gut reaction was even though I didn't know much.
And that's that's one of the things that, you know, they still kind of buzz me.
I didn't know much about intubating a patient as far as I knew what it was for.
I knew why I was done, but I didn't know.
I had no idea that intubating a patient was as delicate a procedure as it was.
I didn't know that as soon as you intubated a patient, it became a critical care transport.
Had no idea. I had no idea that, you know, there are complications in the rates of incidences with intubation, intubating a patient, the risk just of,
you know, things like after the fact, like getting pneumonia or whatever.
Those, you know, things like that.
Those are little things compared to.
But I'm talking about, you know, the little things like if the tubes, you know, placed a little bit too deeply or a little bit, you know, too shallow.
Or if it's if it's if it becomes dislodged, you know, you talk about talk about putting someone in the back of an ambulance and going down a road for an hour and a half with a tube in the throat.
And then especially in truce case, if they're not sedated enough, which, you know, we'll kind of get.
But like I said, I didn't know a lot of this stuff and it was never really it was never really discussed with me at all.
It was the way it was put to me was it was it was for a precautionary measure because we couldn't ride the truck with him.
So they wanted to sedate him so that he would sleep for the trip.
And they wanted to to intimate him to predict his airway in case anything happened.
So I think they cut. I kind of feel like they may, you know, now looking at it, I feel like they may have been kind of over doing it a little bit just to be safe.
I mean, maybe the fact that I worked there at the time played into it a little bit. I don't know. I don't know what the thinking was on that.
But in any event, you know, because I couldn't ride in the back with him, like I talked about earlier, I knew how he was when we were with him by his bedside versus how he was when we weren't.
Now, why could you not ride? Why could a parent not ride in the back with a child on the transport?
They when the earlier trip that the paramedics had taken, they used the larger truck that they have.
So all the remaining ambulances they had were smaller trucks.
And you really couldn't have more than three people in the back. Now, we could have maybe ridden in the front.
I could have maybe ridden in the front with the driver. At least I'd have been able to talk to him, you know, or but I think it was just decided that it wasn't a good idea.
You know, and I somewhat understood it just because, you know, I didn't want to be in their way, you know, if it would be crowded or whatever or just.
But this was after they'd already observed that he was a lot less anxious when the parents were next to him.
So that to me would have been a deciding factor.
I mean, you can't just magically make a different vehicle come.
But there's been many calls where we've configured a way to enable someone to be in the back.
Because, I mean, normally you have the bench seats or like you said, even if even if you're in the front seat and you're talking to them through the little window in the back.
I know you're there. Yeah.
I mean, again, I'm under mourning quarterbacking it now, but there's a lot to be said for the calming effect of a parent there.
Well, a lot of that goes into it. I mean, you know, we talk like I said, we talk about a lot of stuff because you start thinking about how the decisions were made.
You know, first of all, well, you know, to kind of get to it, you know, like how the decision like the paramedics who were decided that agreed to drive and be in the back, which they weren't.
They weren't dealing with Drew's treatment in the ad at all.
You know, so they didn't know what his deal was, why he was there, why he was being transported.
And I requested him to be transported before he even got to the hospital.
So there was a lot of communication that wasn't relayed along the pathway to where they were going.
And then you've got the the whole, you know, the way the crew was assembled because when I finally I did, I finally I agreed, you know, like I said, in my head, it was he would sleep for an hour and a half, which, you know, wasn't a bad thing.
He needed to relax. He needed to calm down. Whatever. He would sleep. He'd be good.
We'd follow up there and we'd be there when he woke up and he's good.
So I was, you know, I didn't like it. But if the only way I was going to do it, if he is, you know, is he was going to basically be asleep.
So I was OK. All right. We're fine. And you can. And there, you know, there's one point where you kind of have to just put your faith in the people, you know, taking care of you or taking care of your family member that they're, you know, they know what they're doing.
They're doing the right thing. And it was best. You can't, you know, you can question everything.
But, you know, at some point, you can't control everything. So you kind of get, you know, I was like, OK, well, that's fine.
So I agreed to them intubating him. And so they intubated him in the ED.
And I remember going out and they closed the curtains and they sedated him and got him intubated.
And then they opened the curtain up. And that's when it first hits you that intubating somebody is a little bit more serious than you think it is.
You know, the the the we talked about earlier, like, you know, just what I see on watching a TV show when they intubate a patient, it just doesn't seem like it's that complicated, that serious, whatever.
You know, you walk in there and you see them, you know, when just before he had been talking to me and he was he was, you know, answering questions, things like that.
You know, I walk out of the room to let him intubate him. I was like, I love you, Drew.
And he's like, I love you, too. And that's the last, you know, that was the last four words or so he said to me is.
Well, it's difficult because now you go in there and he's asleep, his eyes are closed, he's got this tube in his throat, he's hooked up to the machines.
It's just it looks so much more serious. I think that's when it kind of hits you.
This is more serious than what you thought it was.
And so I was standing next to his bed and it hadn't been it literally had not been two, maybe three minutes.
And I was standing right there kind of with my hand on his arm.
They were trying to get everything ready to transport him.
And he woke up, sat straight up on the bed right beside me and started pulling out the tube.
And they hadn't been literally hadn't been three, three minutes or so since I'd come back in the room or in the area with the curtain and pulled.
And so that freaked me out a little bit. I will I will say that that freaked me out a little bit.
And because I was like, you know, I don't want this happening to him on the trip.
And so just to just interject, who was doing the intubation?
Is this a respiratory therapist in the ER?
There was a respiratory therapist there that was in the ED who did the initial intubation.
And the thing about that was she had to leave at 12, so she wasn't going to be able to make the trip to the transport.
And there was another RT in there that we knew that we really liked that had a lot of experience that I first thing I did was ask her, I said, are you going with him?
She was like, no, they don't they won't let me go.
Because she was the charge RT that night, kind of like, you know, kind of like the shift manager, whatever you want to call it, I guess, but they got the charge RT.
She was the charge RT, so they wanted her to stay.
So they got another RT that was there who had not even worked with Drew the entire evening to make the trip.
That was kind of like I said, they're putting these pieces together, but the people they're putting in the places had no interaction with Drew.
You know, the nurse that ended up making the trip was in the ED when all this was going on.
But somehow or another, I just think a lot got lost in communication about what was going on, why it was taking place, you know, things, you know, there was a lot of it.
I think it was a lot of things that just didn't get translated.
And then, like I said, then it was who got assigned to the crew.
Because like I said, I did not know that transport and intubated patient was a critical care transport.
So then it's like, well, was it a critical care transport team?
I get asked that all the time.
I'm like, well, not really.
Yeah, but then initially it wasn't.
That's the thing.
If they hadn't knocked him down in the first place, he could have just been sitting there, you know, and and being a regular transport.
But they turned it into.
And again, I'm not I'm not trying to stand from from a high place, but from a medic's perspective.
And I'll tell you a story in a little bit as we get into the about where I saw this go horribly wrong myself personally.
But you said Peyton Airway, you know, definitely aware enough and just I don't see any reason at all to to intubate this patient whatsoever.
Well, and I and I don't disagree with you there.
But that's kind of but it's one of those things that where you I kind of somewhat understand the logic, even though.
And like I said there at the time, you know, I didn't disagree with it.
But knowing what I know now, you know, like I said, I have issues with it.
Like I said, I think if it had been explained to me what intubating a patient meant, it would have never happened.
I don't think and I know it. I mean, I for a fact know it because I know the initial reaction in my gut when it was suggested to me.
And I know it would have been a no.
But, you know, but you know, one of the statement, one of the kind of one of the statements that kind of sums up.
And this is one of those things where it wasn't, you know, even the crew that was put on the truck withdrew.
It was like how those people were picked and who picked them and who made these decisions and things like that.
It's kind of a cascade of things that just that just went through the entire event that you're just sitting there going, if this had been done differently, if this had been done differently, if this whatever.
But, you know, even in one of the in one of the interviews that was done by some anyway, the Department of Health and Human Services were looking into the his death or whatever.
And they were talking with the physician about it.
And the way they the way they isn't written in their report was that she reported that a team had to be in quotes thrown together that included two paramedics, one RRT and a nurse.
And I say this in every presentation I do.
If if you're in a transport where the crew has to be thrown together, don't leave the building.
Don't you know, I mean, you don't know.
Like I said, I'm learning all this after the fact.
But it's like, you know, people come up to me all the time and they're like, do you really understand?
You know, the more I go is the more I understand what took place.
But but, you know, throwing together is not a term you like to hear when you're dealing with this.
You know, so anything was was like I said, the RRT and people they had not worked with with Drew.
So we're just kind of like that's you kind of trust.
And, you know, they're in that job because they took they, you know, they did all the training.
They are supposed to know what they're doing.
And and at the time until after the fact, you don't know all the risk and things associated with it.
So in any event, so after he woke up and they came back in and I walked out and they re intubated him in the ED.
So that was the first time he sat up.
And he was just just on was it out of van and propofol at that point?
It wasn't on any. So no paralytics at all at that point.
No paralytics at all.
It was just the out of van and propofol.
And he was he they had him on five micrograms at 1.9 milliliter an hour to maintain sedation or propofol.
I say that because just about everybody that I talked to says it should have been three or four times out of mouth if they were going to have him intubated.
Whatever, you know, I will say that, you know, the one of the things was as he was highly reactive to stimulus the entire time.
And that's kind of something I'll get into in a second.
But he in any event, you know, like I said, it's things you learned after the fact that we didn't know at the time.
I mean, you know, this is as far as what took place.
But I think it was based on his size more than his age.
And I think anybody listen to this knows that a child burns through sedative a lot faster than an adult at a much different rate.
And metabolism there, you know, their bodies, his body is working quickly.
The one thing I do like to mention is because anybody who looks into this or is interested, you know, gets into this case or whatever,
you know, one of the things that was brought up after the fact too was that they said that his that he was declining,
that his status, status was getting worse.
And it was kind of like, well, how, you know, how do you get that?
And they were like, well, his last Glasgow Coma Scale assessment was done at twenty to twenty,
you know, just before them doing the transport and they gave him an eight on that Glasgow Coma Scale check.
And the thing about it was is that he was intubated about 10 minutes before that.
So they were doing a GCS assessment on a person that had a tube in their throat that was sedated.
So I don't know how exactly you do a GCS like that.
But in any event, that one is pretty much irrelevant to me because I know how he was right before he was intubated.
And I know what he was after the fact.
So the but that's that's I like I always I give I give everybody the facts.
I go through the medical records. I go through the timeline of events.
And I pretty much say this is what this is what this is what you know, because you can kind of put it together yourself as a puzzle.
But once you put it on, you know, you kind of put all the pieces together.
It's kind of like, you know, you know, I'm sure you've heard the Swiss cheese analogy as far as medical care, prevent medical errors.
You know, usually one piece blocks a hole.
So there's no something stops the chain of events from a disastrous outcome.
And in Drew's case, every layer of cheese that was laid on there, every hole lined up, you know, negatively for Drew.
But so we so to get onto it is, you know, that's what you know, they were ready for the transport at that time.
And we were we were going to follow him in our car.
And I'll never forget, you know, my wife saying, let me go kiss him by, you know, he was on the other side of the room and they were getting ready to take him out.
I was like, look, kiss him in Greenville.
I said we wanted I wanted to get in the car so I'd be ready to get behind him because I didn't want I want to be right behind him the entire way.
And I was like, you know, kiss him when you get to Greenville, he's going to sleep for an hour and a half and he's going to be fine.
He's I said, I said, Kimberly is good.
And I've always felt bad about it because.
You know, I was always a, you know, having been a highway patrolman and a lot of the things I did, she knew my personality, she knew me,
she knew I took care of what needed to be taken care of.
They they kind of when it, you know, were lots of little things, you know, the boys all went to her mom, you know, for what they do things.
But when it was something serious, they came to me because they knew I would handle whatever needed to be handled.
And I'm pretty good in crisis situations.
Sometimes it's like a lot of people is after the fact that it kind of hits you like a ton of bricks.
But during I'm very good, I can think quick and I know what I'm doing.
And I've always had kind of that.
That's been one of my things, I guess, a gift or whatever you want to call it is to be able to think fast and make good decisions and do what needs to be done and under pressure and understand situations.
So she just looked at me, said, OK, let's go, you know, let's get in the car.
So we got in the car and the ambulance started the trip and we were maybe and being very serious about this,
we were maybe five minutes from the hospital when we met the ambulance coming back from Greenville that was going to we were going to switch crews with.
So, you know, at that point, I don't know if they weren't communicating.
I don't know what the deal was.
I don't know if I was in the ED and the ambulance told me we're five minutes out or so.
Just wait. Yeah, I probably would have waited.
And even even that even that's, you know, even the paramedics on that truck said, you know, we would have felt better if we had been there when the transport initiated, I think.
And there again, that's that's where that's where and that's where a lot of things, just a lot of, you know, a ball got dropped.
That's another thing that happened, but and I think you saw it in the deposition, but it's like but when you know, so we pulled over,
I was like, God, that was quick.
You know, we were literally like we had just gotten out of town when we met him and I was like, wow, so they pulled over in the medium.
And, you know, you're you know, just think about it.
You know what being in the back of an ambulance is like, you know, there's bright lights.
It's in summertime. The fans are going.
So it's keep it cool about there.
I mean, it's loud. It's noisy.
Doors opening and shutting.
And so the paramedic gets out and and trades trades with the person who originally said, you know, that would originally make the trip with them.
And and there was not one word spoken between the two.
And I think you might have seen that in the in the deposition.
They didn't they didn't communicate at all.
Yeah, they said a one minute turnaround time, which was questionable in itself, I think.
So, I mean, I guess she was, you know, the nurse that was had been in the ED that was on the back of the truck.
It was basically taking notes.
She documented the entire trip.
You know, I had a couple of questions about that later on.
But but still, you know, she she kind of updated, you know, what was going on.
So when they got on the truck, you know, they the nurse told the paramedic when she got on the truck,
she said he was highly reactive to stimuli that he reacted to everything.
And I'm reading this straight from the deposition.
Loud noises, lights.
He reacted to any type of stimuli, he would get a response from it.
So when you're when you're saying that about a person who's supposed to be sedated to be in a.
You know, they're he's reacting to everything.
Had they increased the dose of the adavanopropofol after the first event?
I don't there's no record of it, because the only thing I've got in the records is that he was on the point five micrograms.
I don't know if he was on less than that before.
I don't know what I don't know how that was done.
I really don't. But right now he was being ventilated properly.
So the tube was in place at this point.
Yeah, the tube was in play.
They you know, nothing had changed.
He had been asleep from the ED to that few miles out of town.
And so then the.
And then, you know, they switch crews and all that takes place.
And then we started back up again and it wasn't maybe a couple of miles when,
you know, my wife said, Drew just sat up.
And then I could see him, you know, through the back windows of the ambulance that Drew had sat up.
And we made it a few more miles to the next town.
And that's when they pulled over on the side of the road and the driver got out.
He'd gotten back with the people in the back.
So now there were four of them in the back with Drew.
So we knew he had woken up again and which that was a that was the second time he had woken up.
And so, you know, for whatever reason, I don't know.
I mean, you know, that's one of those things I look back on like, why?
I didn't feel like I needed to get out and go up there.
But I guess I guess it might have been part of me from being a high-level whatever.
I just kind of want to stay out of the way.
I didn't want to get in their way.
I want to let them do their thing.
You know, it's kind of one of those things where, you know, they're the they're trained to handle this stuff.
That's what you're thinking.
So you kind of don't want to get in their way while they're doing what they're doing and distract them from doing the right things.
You know, that was kind of me.
But I knew he was OK.
That was that was kind of the pervasive thing in my head was Drew's fine.
You know, there's nothing wrong with him.
That's going to be life-threatening or whatever.
There wasn't anything physically to him result from the injury or blah, blah, blah.
And he'd already woken up once in the ED and they'd gotten it corrected.
So I was like, well, so but the thing was, it was taking a really long time.
So we were sitting behind him for a little while and finally.
I got out and I actually went up to the back window and knocked and the nurse that was on the back actually gave me a half smile and a thumbs up.
You know, but had I had any idea that I'd open the doors at that point right then, Drew was not doing well.
It was so, you know, I can read this, you know, because this is, you know, this is from his medical records. They said, OK, so when Drew started waking up, what did you all do?
We had a discussion to either increase the drugs he had or use Vekranium to keep him completely down.
OK, and the drugs that he was almost out of and a purple fall.
So you could increase those or give Vekranium, which is a parallel.
Right. So, you know, the thing was, is he did like he did in the day.
He went from basically being semi asleep, sedated to, you know, he got an adrenaline rush.
And this is kind of what you know, you think about it.
You got a kid who's very athletic, who's very active, who's very strong.
You know, he's got two older brothers he wrestled with, played with, he plays sports, who the last thing he remembers is he's in the emergency room with me standing beside his bed.
Then he wakes up in the back of an ambulance, so he doesn't know where he is.
He doesn't know any of the people who are with him because he hasn't seen them before.
And I'm not there.
And there's a tube in his throat.
So the first thing he does is what a lot of people do is get that fight or flight.
And some people, you know, flight, some people fight.
He fight, he fight, he fight, he fight it.
That's good grammar.
He fought. You know, that was his thing.
He immediately went to pull him out of the tube and they were trying to prevent him to pull the tube from pulling the tube out.
And he tried to bite the hand of the respiratory therapist when she was trying to keep him from pulling the tube out.
And you know, he may have actually bit her a little bit.
And then the pair was at that time that the paramedic went for the vacuronium.
You know, I've got a lot of this is this is not necessarily this is not anything about the paramedic.
This is more to do with this is one of those.
This is the thing I have an issue with is the skills that in the in the drugs that paramedics have access to.
I don't have a problem with them having access to them, but I do feel like that the people who are allowed to access some of this stuff need to be.
There's got to be a method of of them demonstrating that they have the skills, the training, the ability that, you know,
it's kind of like every time you you it's kind of like, you know, shoot, it's like when I was working on computers or whatever,
every time you got a different Microsoft certification or whatever you did, whenever you could demonstrate that you could perform a certain skill,
you got to get a little bit more responsibility.
I didn't want to tinker around in the vein of a hospital network if you didn't know what you were doing because you might crash the whole network.
Well, you know, or anything, when I was a highway patrolman, they weren't going to let you walk up there.
You know, our training was pretty rigorous and, you know, you went through heated driving classes and firearms training and,
you know, all these different courses you went through because you're going to be allowed to do certain things if you couldn't demonstrate that you could do these things properly.
So I started to want, you know, that's my thing is just because, you know, just because it's there, you know,
I don't I don't know that there should I don't think there should be a blanket that if you know, like an every state's a little different.
But I think there has to be another way of deciding who can do certain things.
You know, the skills that are given and the responsibility that is given to there's got to be because the access to the aquarium still bothers me because I don't think that should ever been even thought of to begin with.
But it was pulled pretty quickly and he was given 10 milligrams of the aquarium pretty quickly.
So he's pretty much awake. And the thing about it is, and this is in the medical records,
that the profile was stopped at 2315 after giving VecuRonium.
So there was no sedation going into his body when that VecuRonium was administered.
And so he was as alert as anybody could be alert, you know, and there are circumstances, especially with that amount of adrenaline going through him.
And he was paralyzed. That had to be terrifying for a 13 year old kid.
And I can't even imagine, you know, I don't I don't I usually don't let my mind go there very often.
I can talk about it, but I don't think about it. You know what I'm saying?
I don't let me think about Drew being in that situation because it's very hard on me because I know what was going through his mind was that his dad was going to be there any time because always was that his dad was going to fix it, you know,
or one of his parents. But, you know, I kind of be the person and stuff like this.
And I wasn't. So so the thing was, is between that time and when they re-intubated him at 2320 was basically five minutes.
And they were bagging him. They didn't have a TV at that time.
They were using a bag valve mask to ventilate him. And during that time period, there's no indication of his having any problems.
As a matter of fact, in their notes, they had, you know, when he did start declining after re-intubating him, you know, they it was noted there was zero difficulty bagging him before.
So they had him. They were bagging him for about four to five minutes with his O2 sat staying up, him being OK.
And then they re-intubated him at 2320, 1120. And so after re-intubating him at 1120, at 1121, and this is this is the notes in his medical records, his color was dusky.
His O2 sats were 86 percent. And they said they suctioned the ETT for possible obstruction, though reported zero difficulty bagging.
So, you know, more than likely, I mean, that's it. It's kind of, you know, I talked to high school class, you know, there were nearby.
There's a high school that, you know, when you graduate from high school, you're an EMT basic and they do the program while they're in school.
And, you know, so they're on the lowest level, learn, just learning, you know, decide if they want to be in a medical career or whatever.
And, you know, as soon as I say that his sats were 86 percent, the hands start flying up.
Excuse me. And so at 2323, two minutes after that, his O2 sats were 40 percent, continuing suction, heart rates in the 40s.
And then his heart rates in the 30s, there's no palpable pulse. And then they start CPR, blah, blah, blah.
And that's when they contacted the ED and the physician told him to check the tube because she felt that it was respiratory related.
And they said they basically that the tube was in the right place.
Well, this is all going on the back of the ambulance while we're sitting behind them.
And then when they driver gets out, I guess, after they paralyze him and they started all this, he got out and start driving to back divide it.
And we started following them again and we were right behind them when they really floored it.
And we were going over 100 miles an hour and I was I was right with them.
That was not a problem with that. So but we didn't get we weren't we were kind of in between towns and kind of nothing through through where we were at.
There's not a lot around us. And I got stopped by a highway patrolman.
And, you know, it's kind of funny, the sequence of events, I swear, it was kind of I think at that point, I'm a pretty religious person myself personally.
But I feel like, you know, I feel like at that point, things were put in place to help us and things were put in place.
You know, Andrew was no, I think the I think the decision, you know, the fate was already there.
I mean, Drew, at that point, I don't think I think it was on the wall was going to happen.
You know, we didn't know it, but I think that, you know, it was there.
But that trooper stopped us and because if he hadn't stopped us, we would have continued following that ambulance and we would have followed them when they diverted to the next closest hospital and seen what was going on.
And I think that would have been not good.
So we it was literally 30 seconds.
And I told the trooper what was going on. I told him, you know, what was happening and where we're going and everything.
And he was like, please slow down, drive careful. I don't want anything to happen to you.
So we left and we didn't know that the hospital that the ambulance had diverted to the next closest hospital.
And the so we went on to Greenville.
And during that time period, you know, of course, while we're driving to Greenville, they have stopped in at Carolina East Health Systems in New Bern.
And, you know, they had a crew people, they had people waiting on them when they got there.
And they did. And they they recognized pretty quickly, you know, the two.
But they they immediately re intubated Drew.
And that was about 25 or so to 30 minutes when they arrived there.
Drew had at that point gone without oxygen for about 30 minutes.
And, you know, it's it's so anyway, we but when they when they did get him re intubated and they got his heart started back.
And as soon as they got him going again, as I to sat shot back up to right at 100 percent.
And they immediately drew the blood to check his blood gas levels.
And he had a pH of six point eight and a blood gas CO2 level of eighty eight point seven.
So I think everybody knows what I'm talking about, knows those numbers, knows exactly what I'm saying right there.
You don't get a blood gas CO2 level of eighty eight point seven.
That's that's a that's pretty long duration of not having adequate oxygen going into you.
He was I think at that point, basically drew with brain dead.
We went on to Greenville and we were in the day.
Drew, it took a while for them to get there.
We matter of fact, we we were just coming into the Greenville city limits when we got the phone call that that they had had to stop again.
That drew and pulled the tube out again.
And at this point, I was kind of like, gosh, that would have been the third time.
But it was actually, you know, just anyway.
So I bet that they were back in route and drew was OK.
That was the last thing I heard from the ambulance that drew was on.
So we get there and that's when the trauma physician and neurosurgeon come in, comes in right behind him.
We're in a little room. And that's when he tells us that Drew has no brain activity.
And it's basically from that point on, it was just our new world, our new reality.
It was just dealing with everything that was happening that, you know, three hours before, two hours before, whatever.
Our son was one thing and now he's brain dead.
You know, and you're kind of having to process this, you know, because Drew.
It's not a. It was pretty instantaneously.
Every alarm bell went off inside my head that could possibly go off.
It was just finding out why, why.
But, you know, then right then, you know, it's like, get us to Drew, let us see our son.
And, you know. So we can be with him.
The rest of it could wait. And so we basically, you know, we spent the next several hours.
You know, it was less than a 24 hour period. I mean, that's the thing about it.
It was less than 24 hours from the time this all started till, you know, finally we were able to get his oldest brother Brewer back from OCS.
We had to get to the Red Cross and get Brewer back so he could be with his brother.
And, you know, he, you know, he got there and then it was about 30 minutes later that we told him to go ahead and turn off the life support.
And then, you know, then the anger started kind of setting in a little bit.
I just remember, I do remember and a lot of people, you know, ask me about this later on.
You know, do I ever think about donating, you know, like being an organ donor, things like that.
And I can tell you in all honesty, after the night that we had, I wanted him home.
I didn't want anybody else to touch him. That was my feeling. I was that.
I was so angry at that point. I was like, nobody else is touching my son.
I want him home. So it was like as quickly as we could get him back to Carter County so we could do what we needed to do with Drew.
That was all it was going through my head. And so we had to make the drive back, you know, like I said, it was the initial accident happened at 830 and this was 530 the next day.
So it was 21 hours just about exactly after this is all started.
You think about you talk about your life changing. There is a is there's no way to describe it and no way.
There are the only people other people who will understand that are people who lost children, you know,
and then you got to look at the circumstances that we lost him in and the way we lost him.
And you're just kind of like that's that's a little bit harder to deal with.
So then it was just a matter of coming back here and dealing with the aftermath of everything that took place.
And, you know, you're talking about literally thousands of people.
His memorial service we had there was so many of the kids.
That was my main concern was the kids.
Yeah, the people who were there for the moral services are often waiting in different parts of the building.
I want all the kids that can get in the sanctuary to get in there.
I want all the kids in there.
They were his friends. And then, you know, it was just having to deal with that.
And then the thing about it was, you know, we knew at his memorial service,
basically the gist of what happened on the back of the ambulance.
And we were just having to, you know, go with it as it was.
And then, you know, eventually when we when it all came out,
we, you know, when we released everything that happened to drill an ambulance,
it was kind of like, you know, thinking all those kids, they were like eight going into ninth grade.
That's a pretty transformative, transformative period for these people, for these kids.
Starting high school and everything else, those ages, their hormones are crazy.
They're going, you know, there are all kinds of changes going on and friendships and everything.
And they're having to deal with this.
And then we basically, you know, smack them upside the head with this is what happened on the back of the ambulance.
And it's tough. It's still tough.
I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot a lot of kids that it really affected.
His Instagram page, like I said, he had just really kind of started.
There's one picture on there on his Instagram that people still post on, you know,
every now and then you'll see a friend comment on or whatever.
You know, we do we do have there's there are, you know, after this many years with our foundation and everything,
there are still people that don't like us that post veiled kind of hateful stuff or or kind of,
you know, try to jab us a little bit with things, you know, you know, the the whole
if he had been wearing a helmet, it wouldn't happen type of thing.
Well, technically, maybe. But like I've said before, I said he might not have had the accident
or he might not have been injured during the accident, whatever.
You don't know. Like I said, my oldest son had a worse concussion than Drew did playing football with full gear.
So, you know, I don't know. He still might have had a concussion, still might have done the exact same thing.
I don't know. You know, but that's kind of like I can I can debate people about that all the time.
But like I said, it's just kind of the nature of the kids at the beach in the summertime going to their friends houses.
It wasn't what, you know, I won't go down that road with it because that's another topic in itself.
But I have a lot of topics with the foundation.
We've kind of run into so many things when we're especially in the medical field that we deal with a lot.
It's like every time you go down one little path, it opens up 50 other paths that you see all these things.
I just personally there are so many things that I feel like need to be addressed and can be.
I think there's so many things I think can be so easily improved that aren't just because of politics and ego and.
And. Ego is probably the biggest one, but.
There are there's there's lots of things I feel like there are simple fixes to it's just a matter of.
People putting aside their personal.
Whatever they get out of it, you know, and feelings aside and doing the right thing.
There's there's some changes I feel like need to be made, but I'm not going to get too much into it.
So right this minute. But yeah, so here we are.
A few years later with the foundation and we're we're trying to, you know.
Let everybody know about your story and like I encourage everybody to go to the website to go to do it for do it for drew dot org or go to our Facebook page, whatever.
And kind of look at pictures of Drew, learn about Drew.
That's one of the things I do in my presentations is, you know, I try to get you to know who Drew is.
And because you being in the medical field and the first responder and everything that you're doing.
Y'all read about stuff and hear about stuff all the time.
It's kind of like, you know, I did as a trooper and just just being type person I am you see stuff on the news.
You can't get away from it, but it's just there's no personal attachment to it.
You can kind of brush it off and move on because it isn't sad.
I feel like the more people associate with it, the more you can put Drew's face with it, more personal you can make it to him, the more it sticks with and the more of a difference it makes.
Because, you know, you're not going to make a change.
Otherwise, you've really got to give somebody that incentive that push.
You got to give them that motivation and that reason to do different to do better to to take that extra training whenever you can get it to make sure that you know what you're doing.
You know, it's like the best thing to ever happen to Drew would have for him to never been intubated, re intubated.
You know, if they just bagged him for how, you know, I know that's difficult to think about.
What it was is, you know, this is kind of really important topic.
But you probably know this, but, you know, when you use a paralytic, you are required to use continuous waveform capnography.
Doesn't matter what the situation is, if you use a paralytic, you use continuous waveform capnography.
It's not a suggestion.
It's not a guideline.
It's a you do this.
Even without a paralytic, just an intubated patient, the capnography is a lifesaver.
And the ones that go into the monitors now are incredible.
And the moment that you get any change in that CO2 monitoring, it lets you know.
And like you said, the most aggressive way of dealing with that, if you can't get a good tube replacement, is to remove the tube and bag.
If you're getting good compliance before, chances are you're going to be at oxygen.
I've done that many times.
I'm, to not be too dark and moody, I'm the kind of medic that gets the people that don't make it.
That seems to be my thing.
And I've never had a cardiac arrest that I've brought back.
I've had, you know, precodes, but I'm just, that's been my medic route.
And because of that, I get the airways where, you know, it's constant emesis and, you know, all these extremely challenging cases that, I think, you know, like you said, these people a lot of times are older.
Very, very poor health at the beginning.
So, yeah, you can't do the traditional things, but there have been many times where we've tried to intubate and the intubation just doesn't work.
And the other thing that blew me away about this whole thing is we have that middle step, which is the King tube.
You know, the tube that you put in that's not a complete ET tube, but still very, very effective and it just goes, you know, higher in the airway.
And so not using capnography, not trying a King tube or not just going to bagging the patient.
If you're seeing those sats go down, I know I'm again, Monday morning quarterbacking it, but from a medic perspective, especially if there's two or three people in the back.
One of the biggest questions I ask when I'm in the back is we've done X, Y and Z.
What are we missing?
Because, like you said, that's the ego now.
I'm tapping out.
I'm, you know, I'm not seeing what's, you know, what we're not doing.
Is it us or is it just this person circling the train?
There's nothing we can do.
But having, like you said, lowering the ego and asking your EMT, you're a medic and, you know, ask your EMT.
Are they seeing something with fresh eyes at you or not?
But those things specifically, that's a very, you know, specific thing is drummed into you.
If you're not getting oxygenation through whatever you're doing, you have to try a different way, even if, you know, if it's a case of, you know,
doing a trach, cutting a hole in the airway to get that way.
We have all these areas of doing it, but if we cannot get oxygen to the patient's blood, then everything else is futile.
Everything else. Yeah, it's irrelevant.
Yeah, and that's what I talk about a lot.
I'm like, and so this is a skill that, you know, paramedics have that you've got to be proficient.
You've got to be good.
You've got to, you know, if you don't do, you know, and I've thought about doing this and it's something I think about every presentation.
It's like, you know, raise your hands if you haven't intubated a patient in the last year or whatever.
I mean, if you don't intubate a patient or don't get the hands-on training or some, there's the thing about a mannequin.
I always have a problem with a mannequin.
Well, first back to the waveform capnography, my feeling is it should be on every patient that's intubated, no matter why they're intubated,
no matter how they're intubated, no matter what the circumstances, nothing, everything.
If they have a tube in their trachea, they should be on waveform capnography.
That's my feeling because it's just not that, you know, people say, well, that's just not realistic.
Well, why is that not realistic?
I don't understand. I know that's been the protocol where I've worked for the last 15 years.
I mean, it's the only, the gold standard of making sure that tube is in the right place.
I mean, you can put a little easy caps, those little, you know, the little boxes you attach to the end of the tube and the little paper changes color to, you know,
I'm like, yeah, that gives you a snapshot of that exact moment.
But five minutes from now, what if something changes?
You know, you checked it then and everything was good.
Well, then five minutes later, if something's not good, you don't know it because you don't have it continuous.
You know what I'm saying?
There's lots of different things out there, but it's just a matter of, you know,
something to about the the the vacurolum that just still, you know, kind of blows me away was, you know, in his medical records, you know, the
when it was asked about, you know, the discussion on RSI, what was done with you or whatever, and
the vacurolum was brought up again, the vac was given for continuation of sedation and to paralyze him to keep him down.
You may remember that from what that sentence right there tells me a lot because vacurolum is not a sedative.
No, no. And like you were saying, if he was pulling the tube and the only thing that you did was add a paralytic,
then you already know his mentation. You already know that he's somewhat alert and then you just paralyze him without addressing that.
You know, like you said, you don't want to relive. You don't want to think.
I mean, it just makes me nauseous now thinking about if that was my son as well.
It was it was it was to control Drew. It was it was it was used as a chemical restraint versus being emergency,
emergently necessary to maintain his airway.
Yeah, but a chemical restraint should be a sedative, not a paralytic in all the protocols I've ever worked for.
Oh, yeah. And I agree. That's what I'm saying. I completely agree.
And that's and that's where, like I said, we could go down roads for days about, you know, what alternatives there should be and what should be allowed.
And, you know, it was brought up to me one time, you know, why don't they have the, you know, the paralytic reversal agents like Shigamedex or whatever.
I think that's how you say it. There are drugs that reverse the effects of a paralytic.
You know, if you're going to if you're going to put a paralytic on a truck with a paramedic, why not put the reversing agent?
Is there something about the reversal agent that's more dangerous than the paralytic itself?
I mean, I don't know. It's it's stuff that seems like common sense to me that when you talk about it, it's like, how to get that.
Or people have been talking about the use of ketamine.
You know, there's that seems to be a big topic nowadays because ketamine is so effective.
But I think there is a very good tool to have.
I think people, you know, there are people are worried about addiction or overuse or abuse of it or blah, blah, blah, blah.
I hear all these things and I'm like, but if done correctly, is it better?
Does it help? Does it work? You know, what is there?
So many things I'm just sitting there just all the time.
I see these topics and I'm just like, this isn't real complicated to me.
It is really not really all it becomes.
It becomes more about the bureaucracy and the politics and the egos than what's the right thing to do or what's the easiest thing to do or the best thing to do.
It's just it's ridiculous.
And you get so frustrated because it's like it could be changed.
You know, really quickly, you know, you know, that's the thing is it just there's so many things you could look at.
And I do I really feel in this case, you know, there were the two people that were doing Drew's medical kit, you know, were really responsible with his care.
Of course, like you mentioned to earlier, I actually asked, you know, asked somebody with the nursing board.
I was like, because the nurse did a pretty good job for the most part of taking notes and everything.
But I asked, I was like, at what point does this is my exact question.
I said, at what point did she quit being a secretary and start being a nurse?
Because I don't understand how there were three people sitting on there and somebody somewhere had to have something in the back of their mind going.
There had to be alarm bells going off somewhere. Somebody I don't I just I just don't it doesn't it doesn't make sense to me.
Well, there were physical alarm bells going off. The monitor would have been screaming out there.
Well, there were, but you know what I mean? It's not even like you need to be, you know, shaken into it.
Well, y'all the thing is they became so and I understand, you know, I understand.
I understand the tunnel vision, the cognitive dissonance, all these little terms you hear, whatever, in stressful situations, they became so focused on his heart.
You know, to keep his heartbeat going. It was like then that's the only that's kind of the only thing I try to put in my and put me in those shoes.
I'm like, why? Because it seems like that was everything from the point on when his heart rate started dropping.
Everything was to get his heart going. It was not. Why is his heart stopping?
You know what I'm saying? It was it was just focusing on it was like it was like and that has a lot to do with training and experience.
And that's things that you know, you can't use, you know, the which, you know, which didn't seem to be there.
You know, there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of things that just those people did not seem to be ready for what happened on the back of that ambulance.
Well, you hit on a point. I just want to interject for a second, because it's so pertinent.
You said when when you stop being a secretary and start being a nurse or a medic, here's the sad fact.
And I will never forget that I went to a very, very good paramedic school here in Okalus, attached to the State Fire College, and their bar was set way higher than the minimal requirements.
We did clinicals the entire year, every third day. If I wasn't at the fire station, I was either at school or doing a clinical.
So absolutely loved it. But there was this one day where this guy came in.
He was a medic bragging about all the expert witnesses that he'd done in court. And the whole the whole lesson learned was and this carries through my whole career is to scare the shit out of the medics.
And you have to document, document, document, and you have to write these huge essays describing what you did instead of the focus being you need to document well.
But let's be honest, it's your skills and your knowledge and your understanding of the protocol that's important.
But the way that our profession has become terrified of lawsuits and rightly so because you have the legitimate ones like Drew's case and then you have all the frivolous ones that these poor men and women are dragged into court for these fender benders, you know, just trying to get money.
And it's it's completely corrupted the system where instead of the focus being on us being the best medics, having the best skill set, the best understanding of drugs and indications, the contraindications, we're just beat down with QA on reports.
Oh, you missed this. Oh, you said this wrong. But then, like you said, once a year, maybe you'll intubate a mannequin. They'll check a box and then you're good to go again.
Now, I have to say, my last apartment, I take my hat off to them. Our training captain actually organized a cadaver lab.
And less than a year ago, we got to intubate all these different shapes and sizes.
And but that's the kind of thing that people have to understand is the same with the fire training.
You cannot sit on and watch a PowerPoint on intubation and then check a box and then spend three hours learning about documentation and then ignore like you're talking about the real hands on training.
That's where we should be constantly drummed in as being the best we can because you're not going to get intubations in the field very often.
We all know that. Right. And I will say this. I went to a I went to a we did a presentation in Tennessee and a couple of years ago.
It was wonderful. It really was. But, you know, in the in the room, I guess, I guess where they had a lot of the displays and booths set up and everything like that.
And, you know, there were a couple of mannequins and they were showing all the different, you know, intubation devices and cool things with the cameras and things like that.
But I was like messing with it and like within a few minutes, I was intubating a mannequin myself and I've never touched one in my life.
And I'm like, it's not realistic. And I don't mean that bad. I mean, it kind of gives you the basic understanding of what you're doing and how it's done.
But when you have a real person with their head moving different directions or even so, let's say, you know, however, or if they've got a collar on that keeps their head steady or whatever, even so, their throat spasming or their swallowing or whatever they're doing.
I mean, or depending on the injury or whatever's happened to them. Physiologically, people are different than mannequins, period.
If you haven't done anything but intubate a mannequin once in the last year, I really question how well you're going to be able to intubate a person in an emergent situation in the back of an ambulance.
Yeah. And the decision to intubate as well.
Well, that too, yes. But of course, the respiratory therapist that was on the truck was responsible for maintaining his airway. So that's what she basically that's what they train to do. That's their whole thing is to do that.
So, you know, but still not if not if you're not prepared for it in the back of an ambulance and you're not prepared for the situation of having a 13 year old kid wake up on you and pull the tube and your adrenaline shoots through the roof and you're never handled in anything like it before.
Because this is your first year being an RT. I mean, you know, what do you this person's never been in this type of situation before. So what are you going to expect?
It's kind of like, you know, there's so many there's so many analogies, you know, similarities to different things. It's like it's kind of like muscle memory. It's like when I was in law enforcement or whatever, you know, if I didn't shoot my gun pretty regularly.
Or, you know, whatever. I mean, if you went for a couple years and never shot it and also you had to pull it out, you're not going to be quite as good with her, accurate or whatever. I mean, that's not near quite the same thing. But it's training is the things you learn and you keep doing it. You keep doing it because you lose things.
It's just it's just the way it is. It's not saying it's anything bad against anybody. But if you don't have the access to it or don't have that training and the experience and you're not put in situations, maybe they should, you know, maybe they kind of like, you know, maybe I wish people have more access to cadavers.
I sounds kind of morbid, you know, but it's the only that's the best. It's the best training you can get when you're into a patient. And if you have someone standing there yelling at your ears, telling you, you know, really making it as realistic as possible, saying this guy's has or this or this or this. He's dying. He's dying. You know, someone's really making it realistic, like a real situation.
You know, putting these people in stress and then you see how people respond to it. I mean, there's got to be there's ways I get in my head. I think of all these ways of training that I feel like people should be put through. They have to demonstrate that they can do this before they should be able to be able to do this.
And like I said, there is no, this is not just geared at paramedics. This is anybody because this was a system failure. I mean, there were so many, like I said, there were so many decisions that were made that put Drew in this position that could have been done differently.
And it's, but it's every, I think everybody in healthcare is not just, like I said, this is never directed just at paramedics. You know, even though I get on that because we get involved with them a lot. Respiratory therapists, nurses, physicians, you know, no matter what your field is, you can learn something from this case.
There's there and anybody that has a heart that's in the medical field will get something from this. And they even if it was the physician who said maybe I should have been, you know, maybe I should have spoke up more about who is doing the trip or what was going on or the communication that was given how things were, you know, how things, how things were put in a place to begin with, you know, whatever. I don't know.
I have a lot rattling around in my head. And it's tough, but it's, but it's, it's, it's fixable. That's the thing about it is it's preventable. And that's, you know, we say it all the time. It is preventable. And this case is a very good example of how many ways it was preventable.
And it just didn't, it wasn't prevented. It didn't happen. Drew died. And you're just sitting there now and now all you can do is learn from it. And, you know, we've, we've talked to a few people who've really wanted us to present in different venues before. And a couple of them, you know, a couple of times they really didn't want us to present because they were worried about it being too soon or them. They worried about us hurting somebody's feelings.
They were worried about you hurting someone else's feelings.
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So it's kind of like, I'm kind of like, I don't really understand that. I was like, our son died. We lost our son. We will never get that child back ever. There's nothing, there's nothing that we can do. We live with it every single day. And you're worried about hurting someone's feelings or it being too soon.
I was like, when is it ever too soon to improve, learn from something like this and improve. And that's something I, this is something I kind of bring up every now and then too. It's like, when it comes to the apologizing thing, I'm gonna bring this up really quickly because I, because I think about it a lot. It always bothers me.
There are several hospital systems that have gone with the blueprint of if there is, if they do something happens and they are responsible for it and they know it. I mean, every, there's not a system in the world that if something happens, they don't know what happened, you know, pretty much.
But there are, there's a few systems across the country that have taken this approach and that if, if they make a mistake, they own up to it and they, they admit and they apologize and they say, we're sorry. And they include the family in, we're never gonna let this happen again. We're gonna do everything we can. They include the family and what steps are they taken to prevent it from ever happening again, things like this.
They're finding out that, and I'm gonna read this right there, despite fears and the new approach would encourage lawsuits, the opposite has approved too. True. In Michigan, the number of lawsuits was cut nearly in half and the hospital system saved about 2 million in litigation costs in the first year after the new model was adopted in 2001.
That's just, that's one little blurb out of this big article. I keep all these different articles and things I read. But because they find out all the family wants is to be able to get closure, to move forward with their lives.
And the quickest way, excuse my language, but to piss off a family is to lie to them and to try to cover up what happened. That's the, because especially when you know what happened.
And I'm not speaking just in our case necessarily, I'm speaking about how we get messages all the time. And I understand it because it's just, it's so frustrating because you know it shouldn't be this way. People, you know, it really makes me, it bothers me sometimes because I'm like, you can't be this cold or you can't be, but it's the hospital healthcare system.
And it's like you said, you know, for every valid case, there are so many frivolous ones. And so it's just a constant thing. But like I said, there's not a hospital system in the country, I don't think, that doesn't know when there's a valid case.
They know all the frivolous ones, I think, if they really look into it, but they know pretty quickly if there's a valid one. And when there are those valid ones, and there's too many of them as there is already, they've got to, their approach to it and how they handle it has got to be different.
And that's why I was like, I talk about a lot with this foundation, when people ask us, what exactly do y'all do? And I'm like, how long do you have? Because every time there's every part of Drew's case, there's another topic that we feel passionately about that comes out of. This is one of them.
This is just reforming the way healthcare is handled. And I think also, I think that if this were the case, that more systems took this stance, people would be more willing to come forward when they screwed up. But also, you know, if they do, then you look at the person, like if the person screws up, and they're, you can see.
I say this all the time. I say that a lot too. Because I think there are, just from being in law enforcement, there are a lot of people just walking around with a badge and a gun that have no reason, have no business carrying a badge and a gun.
I respect the profession immensely. I was in that profession. I'm one of those people, not that I wasn't good at it, not saying that, but it wasn't the job for me. I found that out. Unfortunately, it was probably better that I'm not doing it anymore.
But just everybody's emotionally different. I mean, I think that that's just one of those things that, you know, and lots of times you don't know it till you have to deal with some of this stuff. But there are lots of people in healthcare that have no business doing that job.
You know, they really need to, there's, you got to, you know, there's just got to be more, you got to hold people to what they do and you got to expect the best and you'll get the best.
Right now I've got about 10 things that I want to say going through at once. So that's, like I said, that's kind of one of my curses is that I can think about a lot of things at once. And it kind of gets away from me.
Well, you mentioned about not everyone should be doing the job. And like you said, you put yourself on that as well as far as, you know, being tested in these professions. And we don't know, like you said, we don't know if we're going to be any good at this at all until we actually do it.
But I wanted to kind of go back to a story that I don't know if it haunts me as the right description, but I certainly think about a lot. When I was a medic student, we had an elderly lady that was found, had a massive stroke.
She'd been there for a while. She, again, her sats and vitals and everything were good. We weren't too far from the hospital.
But I was a medic student. So I'd said, well, you know, we could leave it just with a mask, a bag of alb... I mean, excuse me, a non-rebreather.
The medic that I was under made the decision to RSI.
She had a very, very swollen tongue. So we weren't able to intubate, but he put in that kink tube that I talked about. She was being ventilated fine.
But again, as a medic, we got to think about the knock on effects of our decisions. When we got to the ER, here's the arrogance and the ego that you were talking about.
I will never forget this. There was a physician who came in.
I mean, it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd had entrance music. This guy was so up his own ass.
But he decided to pull this kink tube out and spent, and I'm not exaggerating here, it was like 20 or 30 minutes butchering this poor old lady's airway, trying to get an ET tube.
And every gadget that they had from the bougie to the video device that you're talking about finally got it.
But the trauma and the time that this lady was not being oxygenated and she was being bagged efficiently in between each one.
But again, like you said, this wasn't an RT, this was an ER doc. You see that. You see that with medics that scuffle to the rescue, rolling their eyes, already deciding it's going to be a bullshit call.
The ones that treat homeless people different than if it was a celebrity that they know. All these different things.
And it all boils down to ownership of the position. And it is. It's this police, fire, EMS, military, medicine.
These are all professions where it's not for everyone. And I talk about this a lot on this show, especially with the physical side, with the fire side, how our bar has got lower and lower and lower.
This is the problem is that when you lower that bar, you invite people that have no business being in our profession in, which is all well and good until you get a case like this, where it's not like I'm used to example of time.
A plumber screws up, you flood someone's house. Not a big deal. A medic screws up, someone dies. And obviously with Drew's case, that's exactly what happened.
You had a medic, a nurse, and a respiratory therapist in the back. And it was the perfect storm of disaster because obviously there was no ownership between the three of them.
And I just want to kind of buffer what you were saying, is the only people that should be allowed in these professions are ones that take their jobs seriously.
And then the only people that should be allowed in the management positions that we work for are the ones that understand that and invest in the tools and the training that the men and women that are worthy of being in those professions can use to be the best firefighter, police officer, medic, doctor, nurse that they can possibly be because it is so damn important that we do our job properly.
Yeah, and you know, something like I mentioned earlier, but I've had a few people say, well, even in the medical world, and I'm not going to say where, who, how, but we were told, it was like, well, if he had been wearing a helmet to begin with, he wouldn't have been there.
Or, you know, and I'm like, okay, I was like, if you're going to decide on your level of care based on how the person was injured, you know what I'm saying?
Because I know I've watched TV and people do some stupid stuff. I've seen people do some really reckless, stupid stuff. Drew wasn't being reckless and stupid. He was being a 13 year old kid. He was just riding from one house to the other.
And he just happened to have an accident. It wasn't like he was, you know, skateboarding off the side of a huge whatever. I mean, it's hard for me to say because it wasn't like he was doing something reckless.
But still, the fact of the matter is it just blows me away that people would ever say that that would be their first thing. Well, that they wanted to blame him.
And I'm like, you know what? Think about how many auto accidents there are where the person's texting or while driving around. I've been to fatalities where the person was looking down at their radio.
And there's something, whatever, people, things happen. Yeah, they shouldn't have been doing it. But people, you know, but you're so or just say that, you know, the person with a drug overdose or whatever, are you going to not as aggressively treat them because they were being stupid and shooting drugs into their arm just because of that?
Or are you going to treat them? Are you going to try to save your life? I mean, what you know what I'm saying? You're going to get my point is, I mean, is is how they ended up there going to determine the level of care and the way that you treat them and the way you, you know, it's it's it's it always it always blew me away.
Because people can be and I guess that was the thing people can be really hateful. They don't because it really surprised me. And I understood that there were people that were, you know, maybe some maybe the friends of some of the people who were involved or whatever. We've gotten some pretty ugly comments and things said to us by people that were friends of people that were involved or whatever.
And I think it was more, you know, trying to defend or whatever, because I know it was tough on a lot of people. But it just blew me away. And, you know, I'm like, I don't I didn't understand it. I really still don't understand it. I mean, I just I just I don't I don't.
I really don't know how people can be that way. But and then, you know, the other thing to talk about the train and just, you know, in Carter County alone, there are 16 different departments. The last time I checked it, it may have changed by one or two, but throughout the county and every single one of them are at different levels.
And every single one of them is there is not it's not consistent. I'm sure, especially there's a lot of states that have more rural counties or don't have as much money or whatever. That is, you know, it's more difficult. But, you know, like I said, depending on where you live in our county, the the the carry that you receive is going to be completely different.
You know, and it's crazy. You can you know, you live on one side of an imaginary line. You're going to get really good response. The ambulance arrives is going to have some really well trained and pretty on top of the people. And you live on the other side of the line. And you are going to, you know, you're going to get empty basics, maybe intermediates, whatever that can only do certain things and not saying they're they're probably in their great people. I'm just saying, I feel like the whole the whole way the system is going to be.
The whole way the system is set up is like the way they get like how they get their continuing education is completely different. The type of continuing education I get all the you know, whether someone has access to, you know, re intubate on a cadaver or whether they have to get they are able to get into a class where they're using mannequins and they have at least a pretty good instructor and they go through it.
Or whether, like you said, they're sitting through a class and listening to somebody talk, you know, or they're doing it online or looking at. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. That's the thing about it is it's all over the map. There's no.
There's no uniformity, I guess is the word I'm saying, you know, basically they all go through the same program in school to get their certificate. They all go through the same schooling there. You know, all those requirements you have to fulfill.
But once they get out in their departments, how they keep up their skills seems to be all over the place. I'm sure maybe maybe some people contact me and say, well, now we're doing this and this and this, you know, because a lot of people don't like to talk to us.
You know, they a lot of people avoid us for, you know, like I said earlier, because they don't want to hurt somebody's feelings or it's too soon or because we ruffle somebody's feathers.
You know, that's where I'm like, please get over yourself. You know, this is a much bigger topic and it's so easily corrected.
But then you start getting into, you know, the departments in different areas of the counties that they've done it their way for a long time. And these people have their certain positions and their certain status and they don't want to give it up.
They don't want it to change. And it's like, I don't know. Yeah, it's difficult.
Well, and I see that I've worked for four departments. I'm just about to start with my fifth now.
And as you saw, doing the medic training for my county where I live as a volunteer, which is brand new for me. I've been a career fireman for 14 years.
And so I've seen a lot of departments, you know, and I've seen what works and what works is setting the bar high at the door and then maintaining those standards throughout your career, you know, and having.
But that means funding to that means, you know, staffing your department properly, funding the training.
But it's so important because if you invest at the front, then if you don't give a rat's ass about human life, which sadly some people on this planet seem to function that way, then even fiscally, you're going to avoid the lawsuits and all the things that follow when your people screw up.
If you just train them well and equip them well. But more importantly, what should resonate deeply is that human life is worth more than anything.
So why would you not invest all that? So when I hear things like, oh, you know, we don't have the budget for X, Y or Z.
It becomes an issue. Yeah. Yeah. But it shouldn't.
Because when you prioritize, you know, the life in general, what's at the tip of that pyramid? It's human life. That's the top.
So, you know, if you need more money, then you need to work out a way, whether it's federal, whether it's higher taxes, whatever.
And the people that we serve need to understand that, too, and not fight every time.
You know, the department says, look, we're going to need X amount more to be able to deliver the service. But it's it's every single level. There's progressive people out there that are trying to change.
But especially for some reason, at the moment, our current climate that helping other people's philosophy doesn't seem to to be popular.
It's the kind of I got mine, screw everyone else that seems to be good.
And that's the enemy of the fire service, the police service, EMS, because the only way that we can function effectively is that we are prepared for the worst case.
We're thinking about the other people, even if you're fine. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a yeah. I said there's there are so many.
So many things I said, you know, like I feel like there's a lot of smaller counties, but it's kind of like, I'm like, why don't they run EMS service, kind of like they run a sheriff's department in the county?
This is just kind of like a basic one thing I was thinking of one day.
Like you have a central office that's got a head of emergency medical services, kind of like your sheriff would be. And then you have paramedics, kind of like the deputies stationed throughout the county at different times.
And you just like you have deputies riding around patrol cars, but you've got paramedics, but you hire paramedics.
Now, of course, you can supplement with EMTs as you need them, but you always have a paramedic available wherever.
You have stations throughout the county that can reach you have response times you're trying to meet.
And you get in. I mean, because the way it is now, there's like but they're all they're all trained, you know, the same.
They're all put they get through the same continuing education, the same, you know, refresher courses, skills, whatever they're kept up to date.
They're all on the same page throughout the county.
And then but it comes down to how are you going to fund that? Well, that's you know, that's something the counties need to look at.
But I can guarantee you that if somebody in a position to do anything about it, a commissioner or whatever, if they had an accident or a house and the people that pulled up to help cause them serious injury or someone in their family serious injury or death because they didn't know what they were doing or weren't able to handle the situation, all of a sudden it would become a very important topic.
So it's kind of like because I think it's such an easy fix because like I said, there shouldn't be you know, we've got 16 department different departments at all different levels.
I just I just think that's crazy to me because depending on where you live, like I said, you know, everybody should get the same level of care and everybody should get the same quality of care, not the shouldn't be just well, this is what you're able to fund.
So this is what we're able to give you, you know, type of thing. I don't I don't think you know, nobody disagrees that having.
Having you know, having emergency services be able to come to you in an emergency to transport you. There's plenty of situations, whether it's a heart attack or stroke or whatever, where you need immediate some kind of care being given to you other than you just getting in your personal car and being driven to the, you know, by a family member being driven to the hospital.
Lives can be saved by what's done between point A to point B, you know, and I say that a lot and that's something else, too. I think I think a lot of times paramedics are way in every area is different.
But like I think particularly in our state, I think paramedics are very undervalued, very underappreciated.
I mean, the. It's just it baffles me that these people basically function like, you know, it's kind of like in many cases you function as the respiratory therapist, the doctor, the nurse that you're there.
You're the every you're wearing every hat in the back of that ambulance from point A to point B, especially when you're doing, let's say you're doing a transport between hospitals.
Your chance of transporting a patient, depending on what the situation is, you're basically you've got all the meds on board that you're supposed to be monitoring everything they're sent with.
You're it between here and there. And from an accident scene to the hospital, you're it between there, the scene and the hospital.
I mean, these people have, you know, two year community college program, you know, certificates or whatever, and they're stuck in there and they're acting basically like somebody who's been in college for eight years and residency, everything else.
You know what I'm saying? They've got a lot of responsibility on their head. That's not saying anything.
That's what I'm saying. I'm not belittling anything about their certification, the school amount of schooling or whatever.
I'm just saying that you kind of see the differences is that they're they have a lot of responsibility shoved on to them and a lot of expected out of them.
And then and then when they can't, that's why I just feel like it's like it's so important for that training and the funding to be put into it.
Because like I said, if my son was the right politicians or right celebrities or right whatever's child right now, this would be a national topic.
No doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah, I do. And it's frustrating.
You know, I see stuff on TV all the time. I'm like, really? I mean, I don't mean this bad. I mean, it's just how do they pick up these stories and they don't see this?
You know, it's just it's mind boggling and it's frustrating. But we're getting there slowly. But surely we're getting there.
It's just it takes time. I feel like I feel like we're kind of at a point where at some point it's going to tip and we're going to make some real make a real difference.
I feel like it's kind of reaching. I think we're getting to where people understand what happened with Drew.
What is at stake with it? And I think that it's I think it's gaining a little bit of momentum.
It's just it's really hard. I mean, you know, we're in a small county in North Carolina out on the coast and bad stuff happens everywhere.
So it's like to get the word out there and get people to get involved and get it and get them thinking about it is not the easiest thing to do.
It is slowly but surely. It's amazing where we get messages from all over the country how places find out about Drew's story.
But there are so many people here locally or not 10 miles away that have no clue.
They don't. I don't think I've ever heard of that. Or what happened? You know, I'm like, how do you not know?
Because we've been talking about it for five years and have the foundation for the last three years and really been putting out there.
It's it is what it is. It's part of it. But well, I hope I hope this episode, you know, honors honors Drew.
And obviously, this is a very focused audience. So most of the people listening to this are responders or or, you know,
E.R. personnel, you know, trauma medicine and the military, whatever their role is.
But this is the same exact thing that I talk about with the fireside and the fitness and everything else is like you said,
when we're in the back just wearing your EMS hat hat, we are a jack of all trades.
Now add on the firefighter skills if you happen to be a fire medic.
You know, we are responsible for so much. And this is just this obviously is a conversation fundamentally
about training and the horrendous things that can happen if we don't.
And I don't I don't know how you can listen to Drew's story and not immediately press stop at the end of it
and then go grab a fricking textbook or something and start working on that one thing that's been worrying you that you haven't done for a while.
But we are we are responsible for our own skills.
But then, you know, to be completely fair, these men and women, a lot of times are paying for their own training, you know,
because they're the ones that take the job seriously and we need to look at the employer.
And certainly if you're a chief, listen to this or or even higher than that.
If you do not create this environment for these men and women to be able to train you, you know,
you again are part of this this this epidemic that's happening at the moment with complacency and reduction in levels of training.
You know, you got to hold people accountable and make it be known people will be held accountable if they do something bad, you know, poorly, whatever,
and really praise those that do.
I mean, it's you know, if people don't think there's going to be any consequences to what happens, you're not going to really change anything.
That's another thing I've kind of you know, I just I really feel like, you know, that's something else.
Being a North Carolina Highway Patrolman, I honestly feel like it's one of the best law enforcement agencies in the country.
I really expected different outcomes once this got to kind of the state level.
I really did. I really expected things to be handled a little bit differently than they were because I know that in the job I was in,
if this just put it in, you know, I wouldn't have been in this situation, but any situation where something happened badly that affected a family or resulted in the death of somebody and I did something wrong,
there would have been no question about what would have happened to me or what would have been done.
And it really, really surprised me when it did get to a state level, the lack of response, I guess.
You know, like I kind of said earlier, I just really feel like people just, I would expect that people would have really jumped on it and done everything they could to make sure that never happened again.
But like I said, I understand everybody's scared to death of a lawsuit and everybody's scared to death of doing something that's going to negatively affect their image or whatever when it comes to health care because that's,
so many people don't, it's not a good thing when things don't look good for health care in general.
But it looks so much better when people hear the story and they see the positive things they're doing to create changes and it makes them feel that much better.
And the people, the providers, that they're doing this because they know these people care and they know that they're taking care of what needs to be taken care of.
They know that when you get care, you're going to get the best because they're only going to accept the best and they're only going to stand for the best and they're going to hold their people to those standards.
And then, you know, I don't know, I'm getting on the safe box. I'm a little bit loopy because I've been talking a lot for the last couple hours, but because there's a lot that rattles around in my head.
I got a lot of opinions. A lot of them not real popular with a lot of people and some of them people are like, you know, they're all on board with and they kind of really understand what I'm saying.
And I hope everything I've said comes across the way I intended it because I so value what everybody in this profession or in these professions do.
I know how tough it is. I know how stressful it is. I know what you got to deal with.
And that's one thing I would say to is really prepare and learn how to practice dealing with a stressful situation so that when you get in it, you don't develop tunnel vision, you know, or, you know, like if you.
It's one of the things I do. You know, sometimes I would just have to take a step back from a scene and kind of focus on something else. Meditate for 10 seconds kind of thing.
It was like a real brief thing, but like take some deep stomach breaths, you know, in the nose out of your mouth type of thing.
Just kind of clear your head. Think about what's going on.
And then I would jump back into what I was doing. And, you know, like in Drew's case, they could have all taken 10 seconds, 15 seconds.
They could have taken 30 seconds step back and said, OK, what's going on? Not done anything.
Just said, let's think about this, you know, 30 seconds wouldn't have killed Drew. 30 minutes definitely did.
Yeah. And that phrase you fall to the level of training. You don't you don't rise to the level of expectation.
It's so true. If you haven't trained, you're going to get that tunnel vision.
If you if you constantly training and, you know, using those skills and and putting yourself through a crucible.
And I mean, there's not putting myself on a pedestal right now, but I take airway classes.
I go outside and do other things that I'm, you know, I'm worried about looking stupid in front of people because even this protocol class coming up,
it's been six months since I was working at my last apartment. So I'm, you know, making sure I'm trying to get all this information back in my head,
because now I'm coming in as a 15 year fireman and I know there's going to be some things I'm going to trip up in.
And that's I think that's one of the issues as well is that you have to you got to be brave to train.
You got to put, you know, be expected to fail. But that's the only way that you can constantly be be honing your skills.
But the problem is a lot of people are scared of looking silly. So therefore they don't train.
They don't put themselves out of their comfort zone. And then it's all well and good. They run their day to day BS calls.
Everything's fine. And then something happens, some catastrophic event. And then it's too late. You can't take back time then.
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you, you know, talking to me and listening to me and and talk.
Like I said, I talk a lot. I've got a lot of thoughts and some of it might have seemed a little bit jumbled.
It is tough, like I say, there's there's so many things. Health is so complex, complicated and complex.
I mean, it really is. I was thinking trying to say both words at the same time.
But health care is, you know, of all the professions I've, you know, in fields that I've worked with dealt with,
that's probably one of the most jumbled, convoluted bunch of mess I've ever seen in my entire life,
because there's just so much that there's so many layers. I mean, talk about an onion, buddy. It really is.
I mean, there are so many layers to it that that you have to get through to get to get make any changes and make a difference.
And it's and it's tough. It really, really is.
But it starts with us and everyone listening, whatever level, whatever agency they work for, whatever profession they're in.
It takes us getting up in the morning and saying, I'm going to be better today,
whether it's managing a company that's in health care or whether it's being an EMT.
You know, we all, you know, have the I'm blanking on the word now, but we're all we're all expected to perform at the highest level.
And I think you're saying to have, for example, an agency that only has EMTs when there's a paramedic certification available,
why would you not be the best version of EMS that you possibly could?
So, but with that being said, I know we've gone well on two hours now.
So I want to I want to let you go. But before we do, firstly, thank you so much.
I mean, you know, obviously, your your story is heart wrenching and it's it should be the fear of every single one listening.
I know it is daily. I get the imposter syndrome.
They call it where, you know, you're like, am I going to be able to handle this?
Am I a good enough medic? Am I a good enough firefighter?
But I think that's a healthy thing because you always then push to be better and better and better.
But I it's kind of what was when I was even when I was a trooper, you know, when people used to say it all the time.
They said if you're not a little bit scared, you shouldn't be in this job.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
It really it really it really says a lot of the people who go into it completely confident.
That's that's a dangerous thing. You should always have that.
It gives you that little bit of an edge. You're always never hesitate to question yourself and question others and never have a problem being questioned.
If you see something that doesn't make sense, say something, speak up, because I can promise you right now that and that's kind of the other thing.
When you treat a patient, you're not just treating that patient because what happens to that patient affects hundreds, if not thousands of people.
And you have no idea what you're doing when you do it.
You know what I'm saying? You think it's that one person, but Drew was not just the one person.
What happened after his death affected so many people.
And, you know, so you that's that's something not adding more pressure like you need it.
But you're not you're not just treating that patient when you're treating them.
You know, there's a lot of people depending on you.
You know, and it's a.
It is what it is. So when we say do it for Drew, I mean, please, you know, whoever listens to this, go out and check out do it for Drew dot org.
Please go to the website. Just read the story.
Look at some of the pictures of Drew. There's plenty of videos on the site that you can learn a little bit about Drew.
And you can see some of his family members and friends talking about him and and understand why we're doing what we're doing.
And we're not by no means are we ever.
You know, hit me any particular field or any particular particular people is just is just we're trying to get the message out because it's all preventable.
And that's the big thing. You know, it's like if someone told you today that they had a 100 percent cure for cancer, how could you know that they could or they could, you know, it would be jumped on in a second.
Well, this is there's a 100 percent cure for a lot of these deaths.
I mean, it's preventable because it's human errors. It's human. It's it can be corrected.
Don't break what's not, you know, don't fix what's not broken.
You know, you've heard that phrase before plenty of time, plenty of times.
You know, it's a. Anyway, thank you for everything.
Well, no, no problem. I mean, like I said, thank you.
The thanks doesn't go to me at all. So to have the courage to to tell Drew's story, all the pain you guys have been through.
And now you're sitting in the blimmin, you know, another house because your damn house was destroyed as well.
You know, you've been through the wringer, but I just wanted to to help tell your story.
And most importantly, add another. You talk about the onion.
I'm doing the reverse. I'm building an onion.
Each of these layers is pushing people towards ownership, their profession,
but also the profession that we're in, making them understand that some of the ways we're doing things,
you know, whether it's lack of training, lack of equipment, overworking of the people that it's great in a perfect storm
for accidental officer involved shootings or or medical malpractice, because, you know, on that side, you know, we're not training.
We're exhausted. So it's not picking on the members of the profession.
It's picking on all of us. Every single one of us needs to own our position,
whether we are the person with the hands on the patient or the ones at the top, you know,
securing budgets to make us the most effective responders we can be. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you taking the time. I know it's been a little longer than 90 minutes,
but I think it was needed to tell the story properly. All right.
I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.