1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,320
Welcome guys to episode 169 of Behind the Shield Podcast.

2
00:00:03,320 --> 00:00:04,920
As always, my name's James Geering

3
00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:08,720
and I have an incredibly powerful story for you this week.

4
00:00:08,720 --> 00:00:12,080
My guest, David Hughes, a retired state trooper,

5
00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:16,280
lost his son, Drew Hughes, at the age of 13

6
00:00:16,280 --> 00:00:18,720
after Drew fell off his skateboard

7
00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:22,640
and then suffered a series of horrendous medical decisions,

8
00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:26,720
medical errors that resulted in his life.

9
00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:28,760
You will hear the story I once said in the intro,

10
00:00:28,760 --> 00:00:31,080
but I want to preface by saying

11
00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:33,080
this isn't a breakdown of what went wrong

12
00:00:33,080 --> 00:00:34,640
and a blame storming session.

13
00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:38,680
This is a how can we all learn from this tragic,

14
00:00:38,680 --> 00:00:41,400
tragic story and honor this young man's life

15
00:00:41,400 --> 00:00:44,840
by making sure that we learn and fix the areas

16
00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:46,800
in our lives that are weak

17
00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:49,880
and make sure this doesn't happen again.

18
00:00:49,880 --> 00:00:54,240
There are many incidences of things like this happening

19
00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:57,560
that get swept under the carpet, you know, that kept hidden.

20
00:00:57,560 --> 00:01:01,280
And David was brave enough to tell Drew's story.

21
00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:03,320
This obviously came out in public courts.

22
00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:06,000
This is why we're able to talk about it as well.

23
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:08,160
But again, this isn't to blame the people.

24
00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:09,280
Obviously they were wrong,

25
00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:12,120
but this isn't just pointing our finger session.

26
00:01:12,120 --> 00:01:14,840
This is looking in the mirror at our training,

27
00:01:14,840 --> 00:01:18,040
at ourselves, at our department, at our hospitals

28
00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:20,160
and asking how can we make it better

29
00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:22,480
to stop this happening again.

30
00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:24,400
So as I always say before we start,

31
00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:28,080
please go to your podcast apps and subscribe to the show,

32
00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:29,520
rate the show, leave feedback.

33
00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:31,200
I love hearing your feedback.

34
00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:33,320
But most importantly, take social media,

35
00:01:33,320 --> 00:01:35,040
do something positive with it

36
00:01:35,040 --> 00:01:38,080
and share these incredible episodes, especially this one.

37
00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:41,040
Anyone in the medical field needs to hear this episode.

38
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:44,360
So share it, make sure people listen and help this grow

39
00:01:44,360 --> 00:01:46,360
and honor the people that are telling their stories,

40
00:01:46,360 --> 00:01:48,760
being so courageous and get them to the people

41
00:01:48,760 --> 00:01:50,200
that need to hear it.

42
00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:51,760
So with that being said,

43
00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:55,160
I introduce to you David Hughes, enjoy.

44
00:01:56,160 --> 00:01:57,960
["Skyfall"]

45
00:02:12,760 --> 00:02:16,160
David, I wanna just start by saying thank you so, so much

46
00:02:16,160 --> 00:02:19,320
for agreeing to come on the podcast.

47
00:02:19,320 --> 00:02:23,480
The next hour and a half or so that we talk

48
00:02:23,480 --> 00:02:25,480
is gonna be incredibly powerful.

49
00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:28,480
And this is a conversation that needs to be had,

50
00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:31,360
but the tragedy that happened to your family

51
00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:35,960
is a story that I wanna tell so that we can learn,

52
00:02:35,960 --> 00:02:38,680
learn the lessons from obviously the horrible,

53
00:02:38,680 --> 00:02:39,920
horrible things that happened to you.

54
00:02:39,920 --> 00:02:41,800
So I wanna start just by saying thank you so much

55
00:02:41,800 --> 00:02:42,640
for coming on.

56
00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:46,600
Thank you very much for, thanks for contacting me

57
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:48,000
and caring about Drew's story.

58
00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:50,000
And thank you for having me on.

59
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:52,240
Right, well, so I wanna preface this whole interview

60
00:02:52,240 --> 00:02:55,560
for everyone listening that we're gonna hear obviously

61
00:02:55,560 --> 00:02:56,680
some horrendous mistakes.

62
00:02:56,680 --> 00:02:59,400
And any of us that are in the EMS side or pre-hospital

63
00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:03,400
or emergency medical side are gonna identify

64
00:03:03,400 --> 00:03:05,920
some pretty large errors.

65
00:03:05,920 --> 00:03:08,800
Now I wanna underline that by saying I've only been

66
00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:11,240
in the EMS side for 15 years.

67
00:03:11,240 --> 00:03:14,600
I've only been a licensed paramedic for the last six.

68
00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:18,240
So in this conversation, I am by no means standing

69
00:03:18,240 --> 00:03:19,800
on some pedestal looking down.

70
00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,200
This is to me, the terrifying side of our job,

71
00:03:23,200 --> 00:03:25,680
the fire, the EMS, the police, whatever it is that we do,

72
00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:28,120
is that when we make a mistake, people die.

73
00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:30,440
And that's what drives me to train so hard.

74
00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:33,160
I have this phrase, how would you feel if your family died

75
00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:34,680
because the responder hadn't trained?

76
00:03:34,680 --> 00:03:36,880
And I live by that.

77
00:03:36,880 --> 00:03:40,960
So I want this to be obviously to tell Drew's story

78
00:03:40,960 --> 00:03:44,480
and keep Drew alive in the fact that we're all remembering

79
00:03:44,480 --> 00:03:48,440
what happened to him, but end up with this being,

80
00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:50,800
as I'm sure it will be, a lessons learned,

81
00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:53,880
a kind of intervention if any of us are being complacent

82
00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:56,120
with our training, whether it's individually

83
00:03:56,120 --> 00:03:59,520
or in our department, to try and remind ourselves

84
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:03,000
that if we drop the ball as it were,

85
00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:05,120
that these horrendous effects happen.

86
00:04:07,720 --> 00:04:10,840
So that being said, David, my first question,

87
00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:12,280
because this is kind of pertinent too,

88
00:04:12,280 --> 00:04:14,800
as a tangent to this whole story,

89
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:16,600
where are we finding you right now?

90
00:04:18,680 --> 00:04:21,760
Yeah, emotionally, physically.

91
00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:23,880
This five, I have to be more specific.

92
00:04:23,880 --> 00:04:25,680
So geographically to the house,

93
00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:27,360
where are we finding you right now?

94
00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:28,760
I'm sorry, yeah, I thought that was what you meant,

95
00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:29,760
but I wanna make sure.

96
00:04:30,760 --> 00:04:34,280
No, we live in Carteret County, North Carolina.

97
00:04:35,240 --> 00:04:37,160
At the time we were living in a small town

98
00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:38,640
called Emerald Isle, North Carolina.

99
00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:40,320
It's right on the southern outer banks,

100
00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:42,040
the most southern outer banks of North Carolina.

101
00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:45,280
So if you look at a map of North Carolina,

102
00:04:45,280 --> 00:04:46,960
we kind of stick out, it's like,

103
00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:49,240
our island actually runs east and west.

104
00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:51,640
So when we look at the ocean, we're facing south.

105
00:04:51,640 --> 00:04:54,960
And so as we were talking about before,

106
00:04:54,960 --> 00:04:56,000
we get a few hurricanes.

107
00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:57,000
I think we're second to y'all

108
00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:58,080
in the number of hurricanes we get.

109
00:04:58,080 --> 00:05:00,000
We're recovering from Hurricane Florence right now,

110
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:01,200
as a matter of fact.

111
00:05:01,200 --> 00:05:04,400
We're living in my, we're renting my wife's uncle's house

112
00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:06,640
right now because our house is being remodeled

113
00:05:06,640 --> 00:05:07,880
at the moment.

114
00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:10,440
So anyway, but that's where we are.

115
00:05:10,440 --> 00:05:11,680
All right, yeah, so I wanna put that in.

116
00:05:11,680 --> 00:05:13,040
So not only have you been through this

117
00:05:13,040 --> 00:05:15,840
and you guys had this horrendous hurricane

118
00:05:15,840 --> 00:05:20,480
that took you home and is now being put back together slowly.

119
00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:23,120
Yeah, slowly, kind of metaphorically for everything.

120
00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:25,360
Everything seems to be getting put back together right now.

121
00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:27,920
Yeah, I'm sure, emotionally, like you said at the beginning.

122
00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:30,520
All right, so I normally talk my guests

123
00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:33,200
through their own kind of early life and following through,

124
00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:34,920
but I think what I'd rather do with this

125
00:05:34,920 --> 00:05:36,760
is do the same thing, but with Drew.

126
00:05:36,760 --> 00:05:40,480
So before we start with Drew's early life,

127
00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:41,680
I do wanna touch on one thing.

128
00:05:41,680 --> 00:05:44,920
You were actually a North Carolina state trooper.

129
00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:45,760
Correct.

130
00:05:45,760 --> 00:05:46,580
All right.

131
00:05:46,580 --> 00:05:47,420
From 99 to 98.

132
00:05:47,420 --> 00:05:49,960
Okay, so if you just wanna walk me through your decision

133
00:05:49,960 --> 00:05:53,760
to join law enforcement and then your career,

134
00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:55,320
why you were forced to retire.

135
00:05:56,720 --> 00:06:01,720
Yeah, no, I, it probably sounds very cliche,

136
00:06:01,960 --> 00:06:06,360
but I really, my father, when I was one,

137
00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:07,200
I never knew my father,

138
00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:09,360
but my father was killed in a car wreck.

139
00:06:09,360 --> 00:06:11,640
And when I was a year old, so I never knew him,

140
00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:13,720
but that was kind of one of those things that always,

141
00:06:13,720 --> 00:06:16,440
was in my family or heard about my entire life growing up.

142
00:06:16,440 --> 00:06:19,560
But, and I actually had a few highway patrolmen

143
00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:20,720
in our neighborhood that I knew

144
00:06:20,720 --> 00:06:22,400
and always kind of looked up to.

145
00:06:22,400 --> 00:06:27,400
And I just, the line I say is kind of cliche

146
00:06:28,520 --> 00:06:29,800
was the help people thing.

147
00:06:29,800 --> 00:06:32,640
I think that was my main motivation was,

148
00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:35,840
just I wanted to do something good

149
00:06:35,840 --> 00:06:37,980
and kind of make a difference,

150
00:06:37,980 --> 00:06:40,520
but be able to help people.

151
00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:46,120
And the, so that's why I got into it.

152
00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:49,120
All right, and then you were a trooper for six years,

153
00:06:49,120 --> 00:06:50,040
is that right?

154
00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:52,120
Yeah, I was on the road for almost six years.

155
00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:55,480
And then I had a few incidents that took place

156
00:06:55,480 --> 00:06:59,120
on the patrol and not knowing it at the time,

157
00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:04,120
what it was, I developed some severe panic disorder,

158
00:07:04,120 --> 00:07:09,120
PTSD, anxiety, and I had a lot of physical symptoms.

159
00:07:10,480 --> 00:07:11,440
I was at the doctor a lot

160
00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:12,760
because I had a lot of physical symptoms,

161
00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:14,680
but this was kind of a time period,

162
00:07:14,680 --> 00:07:17,040
I think people were just beginning to learn about

163
00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:21,880
or recognize what some of these jobs do to people.

164
00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:27,160
And so I just, it took me a while,

165
00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:28,680
I remember riding, I was in the back of an ambulance

166
00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:29,880
because I had been working a wreck

167
00:07:29,880 --> 00:07:32,260
and I actually thought I was having a heart attack.

168
00:07:32,260 --> 00:07:34,160
And on the way to the hospital,

169
00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:35,880
one of the paramedics in the back asked me,

170
00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:38,960
or EMTs, but anyway, he asked me,

171
00:07:38,960 --> 00:07:40,400
he said, have you ever had a panic attack before?

172
00:07:40,400 --> 00:07:42,820
My first question was like, what is a panic attack?

173
00:07:42,820 --> 00:07:44,520
Never heard of it in my life.

174
00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:47,760
And so it kind of went from there,

175
00:07:47,760 --> 00:07:50,480
but after a little over a year or whatever,

176
00:07:50,480 --> 00:07:54,760
I ended up having a retired disability due to that.

177
00:07:54,760 --> 00:07:57,360
It was, it got pretty severe for a while.

178
00:07:57,360 --> 00:07:59,360
And I don't wanna get into all the stories

179
00:07:59,360 --> 00:08:01,740
that the things that happened while I was on the road,

180
00:08:01,740 --> 00:08:06,740
but just, it was enough that it really took a toll on me.

181
00:08:07,400 --> 00:08:08,880
Yeah, and it's interesting

182
00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:12,480
because I've seen a lot of special forces guys,

183
00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:14,320
some of the people that I follow,

184
00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:16,260
even some I've had on the show already,

185
00:08:16,260 --> 00:08:18,720
that to this day with all this acknowledgement,

186
00:08:18,720 --> 00:08:21,780
I mean, they have the same thing where,

187
00:08:21,780 --> 00:08:23,840
they're out doing all this motivating,

188
00:08:24,740 --> 00:08:26,480
uplifting stuff on their social media

189
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:28,120
and then their day-to-day life.

190
00:08:28,120 --> 00:08:30,560
And then there'll be a picture of them in the ER.

191
00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:31,840
And they just had an event,

192
00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:33,520
anxiety is a bitch or whatever it was.

193
00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:38,520
So this physical manifestation is very, very real.

194
00:08:38,920 --> 00:08:41,080
And from, there's not a scale.

195
00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:44,800
These are the most elite resilient men on the planet.

196
00:08:44,800 --> 00:08:48,360
Some of them, the seals and Rangers and Marines,

197
00:08:48,360 --> 00:08:51,400
but still suffering years after combat.

198
00:08:51,400 --> 00:08:53,520
So it's a very, very real thing.

199
00:08:53,520 --> 00:08:56,600
Yeah, the mind is powerful.

200
00:08:56,600 --> 00:08:58,720
What your mind can do to your body

201
00:08:58,720 --> 00:09:02,760
is pretty unbelievable until you experience it.

202
00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:07,240
And it's hard for people to wrap their hands around,

203
00:09:07,240 --> 00:09:08,440
wrap their heads around the fact

204
00:09:08,440 --> 00:09:11,120
that their mind is causing a lot of their problems.

205
00:09:11,120 --> 00:09:13,240
And then it's kind of how you deal with it from there.

206
00:09:13,240 --> 00:09:16,440
I haven't, I've actually done really well.

207
00:09:16,440 --> 00:09:20,200
It's been many years and I haven't,

208
00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:21,760
so far as having a panic attack, things like that.

209
00:09:21,760 --> 00:09:23,920
I mean, I'm pretty much in a really good place with that.

210
00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:25,240
Of course, and I'll add,

211
00:09:25,240 --> 00:09:28,960
I kind of say this in a lot of the presentations that I do.

212
00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:30,840
You know, I recognize PTSD.

213
00:09:30,840 --> 00:09:31,680
I know what it is.

214
00:09:31,680 --> 00:09:33,760
I've been there, done that.

215
00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:35,360
I probably will always have some form of it,

216
00:09:35,360 --> 00:09:37,760
but I still have it from,

217
00:09:37,760 --> 00:09:41,360
so I recognize it with Drew's case, what happened to Drew.

218
00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:44,760
I probably will always have a form of PTSD.

219
00:09:44,760 --> 00:09:49,280
You know, it's kind of like I talk about to this day,

220
00:09:49,280 --> 00:09:52,120
really, if I get behind an ambulance,

221
00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:56,040
because in the story, if people read it or heard it,

222
00:09:56,040 --> 00:09:57,200
and if they'll learn seeing, you know,

223
00:09:57,200 --> 00:09:59,400
we were following the ambulance that he was in,

224
00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:03,560
when they were transporting him to a vital.

225
00:10:03,560 --> 00:10:07,240
And now to this day, if I get behind an ambulance,

226
00:10:07,240 --> 00:10:08,960
I see Drew sitting up in the back of that ambulance.

227
00:10:08,960 --> 00:10:10,920
It's one of those things I've got to get around them.

228
00:10:10,920 --> 00:10:14,080
And it's one of those things

229
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:16,160
I'll probably always have to deal with.

230
00:10:16,160 --> 00:10:19,240
And my wife has got things she has to deal with her own way.

231
00:10:19,240 --> 00:10:21,880
I mean, men and women definitely handle things differently,

232
00:10:21,880 --> 00:10:23,320
especially like this.

233
00:10:23,320 --> 00:10:28,320
So it's tough, but it's one of those things,

234
00:10:28,520 --> 00:10:30,280
it's a day by day thing, you know.

235
00:10:30,280 --> 00:10:32,560
This is five years later, you know,

236
00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:35,880
going on the sixth year after this happened.

237
00:10:35,880 --> 00:10:39,240
And we've come a long ways, but it's a lot,

238
00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:41,520
it's a lot to do, so.

239
00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:42,640
Yeah, all right.

240
00:10:42,640 --> 00:10:45,400
Well, let's start talking about Drew then.

241
00:10:45,400 --> 00:10:46,840
So we'll start at the very beginning.

242
00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:47,720
When was he born?

243
00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:50,960
September 1st, it was born on our wedding anniversary,

244
00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:54,320
but he was born on September 1st, 1999.

245
00:10:54,320 --> 00:10:57,880
And he was actually born here in Carteret County.

246
00:10:57,880 --> 00:11:00,160
He was used to joke that, you know, we were all transplants,

247
00:11:00,160 --> 00:11:01,920
he was the only Carteret County native.

248
00:11:01,920 --> 00:11:05,920
So, but yeah, he was a beach boy.

249
00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:07,760
Yeah, he looks like a beach boy from the pictures.

250
00:11:07,760 --> 00:11:10,000
And he's got two older brothers?

251
00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:11,120
Yeah, he's got two older brothers.

252
00:11:11,120 --> 00:11:15,080
His oldest brother, Brewer, he's David Hughes Jr.,

253
00:11:15,080 --> 00:11:16,480
but we call him Brewer.

254
00:11:16,480 --> 00:11:18,560
He's an officer in the Marine Corps.

255
00:11:18,560 --> 00:11:21,760
And then my middle son, Zach,

256
00:11:21,760 --> 00:11:25,840
he actually works at Cherry Point.

257
00:11:25,840 --> 00:11:29,560
He's a logistics, he's a Department of Navy, I believe.

258
00:11:29,560 --> 00:11:32,800
But so he's doing really well.

259
00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:35,560
But yeah, he had two older brothers

260
00:11:35,560 --> 00:11:37,840
that he pretty much chased around and tried to keep up with.

261
00:11:37,840 --> 00:11:39,600
They were six years older than him,

262
00:11:39,600 --> 00:11:42,800
so he was pretty much running after them from the day

263
00:11:42,800 --> 00:11:44,800
he was able to walk and know what was going on.

264
00:11:44,800 --> 00:11:47,000
All right, and then speaking of that,

265
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,800
did he have any career aspirations as he got older?

266
00:11:50,800 --> 00:11:52,600
I don't know. He used to joke.

267
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:55,000
I mean, he really used to joke about being a highway patrolman

268
00:11:55,000 --> 00:11:58,200
or a Marine, you know, that's what Brewer was pursuing

269
00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:00,400
at the time Brewer had gone through his first round

270
00:12:00,400 --> 00:12:02,200
of officers candidate school.

271
00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:03,600
And yeah, I'd been a treaper,

272
00:12:03,600 --> 00:12:05,000
but he always kind of joked about that.

273
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:07,600
I don't know, you know, his age, he just kind of was,

274
00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:13,000
he was pretty laid back and just liked to go with anything.

275
00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:16,000
He liked to go with things as they came.

276
00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:17,600
He was just, he was always a happy kid.

277
00:12:17,600 --> 00:12:18,800
I mean, he always happy.

278
00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:22,600
He very rarely, if ever, was upset about anything.

279
00:12:22,600 --> 00:12:25,200
You know, he's kind of, you know, with the two older brothers,

280
00:12:25,200 --> 00:12:27,400
I think he learned from watching the two older brothers

281
00:12:27,400 --> 00:12:29,400
what to do and what not to do.

282
00:12:29,400 --> 00:12:31,800
And around the house, they'd stay out of trouble.

283
00:12:31,800 --> 00:12:35,200
And he just kind of, he was just real laid back, easy going.

284
00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:39,400
He was kind of the balance in our household

285
00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:42,800
that kind of evened everything out a lot of the time.

286
00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:47,200
But no, he's, he did say he didn't want to go to NC State

287
00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:48,200
and play football.

288
00:12:48,200 --> 00:12:49,200
I don't know if he would have ever done it.

289
00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:52,600
He was fast as blue blazes, but he loved playing football.

290
00:12:52,600 --> 00:12:55,600
But, you know, I don't know if that would have ever happened.

291
00:12:55,600 --> 00:12:56,400
We'll see.

292
00:12:56,400 --> 00:12:58,400
You never know the what ifs will get you

293
00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:00,800
because, you know, what would he be doing right now

294
00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:03,200
if he was still here with his personality

295
00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:06,000
and, you know, the way people liked him, you never know.

296
00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:07,600
That's kind of one of the things that, you know,

297
00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:11,000
losing that is as hard as just about anything.

298
00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:14,200
Yeah, exactly. That's the hardest thing from, as you know,

299
00:13:14,200 --> 00:13:17,000
being a state trooper, the hardest thing is a responder.

300
00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:19,600
You know, when you see someone as elderly that passes away,

301
00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:20,800
you know, I mean, obviously it's sad,

302
00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:23,800
but it's not anywhere near as sad as when you see someone

303
00:13:23,800 --> 00:13:26,400
that's just beginning their life and you know the potential

304
00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:29,200
of what they could have done and snatched away from them.

305
00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:30,400
Yeah, yeah.

306
00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:34,000
Yeah, I know my grandmother, who I was very, very close with,

307
00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:35,600
just passed away in the last few months.

308
00:13:35,600 --> 00:13:37,000
She was 95.

309
00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:41,200
And, you know, Drew's death has made me look at things a lot differently.

310
00:13:41,200 --> 00:13:44,400
I think her death would have probably upset me a lot more

311
00:13:44,400 --> 00:13:47,000
if Drew hadn't passed away before her.

312
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,800
But, you know, the first thing I thought of was, you know, she's happy.

313
00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:55,000
She lived a really long life, a great life with, you know, a great family.

314
00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,200
It's been experienced a lot.

315
00:13:57,200 --> 00:14:00,000
And I don't think, I don't think hardly a tear came out of my eye

316
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:02,400
the entire time. I was more happy for her than anything.

317
00:14:02,400 --> 00:14:05,200
One of my first thoughts was, well, now she's with Drew.

318
00:14:05,200 --> 00:14:08,200
You know, that's kind of where we go with it instead of, you know,

319
00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:10,200
because it was just backwards.

320
00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:12,600
Everything that happened with Drew shouldn't have happened.

321
00:14:12,600 --> 00:14:16,000
It was backwards from what, you know, normally it's the parents

322
00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:18,000
go before the kids type of thing.

323
00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:21,000
And this, it was, especially the way it happened,

324
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:23,600
it was tough to wrap our heads around.

325
00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:26,200
Yeah, yeah. Now, what about sports?

326
00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:28,600
What kind of, you mentioned that Drew liked football.

327
00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:30,400
Obviously, we're going to talk about skateboarding.

328
00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:32,600
Are there other things that he'd love to play as well?

329
00:14:32,600 --> 00:14:36,800
Yeah, it's kind of funny, skateboarding was just a mode of transportation for him.

330
00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:38,200
I mean, he liked doing it.

331
00:14:38,200 --> 00:14:39,600
That's kind of how he got around the neighborhood.

332
00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:43,000
But he, you know, he loved track.

333
00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:46,600
He was really good in track. He was very fast, like I said.

334
00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:49,000
He liked baseball. He wasn't crazy about it.

335
00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:51,400
He loved football. He just loved competing and he loved running.

336
00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:55,000
Anything where he was running, he loved it.

337
00:14:55,000 --> 00:14:57,400
I was just starting to talk to him about getting into lacrosse

338
00:14:57,400 --> 00:14:59,200
because it was just becoming a thing.

339
00:14:59,200 --> 00:15:02,600
It was just kind of coming in when he passed away.

340
00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:04,600
But I think he would have really enjoyed that.

341
00:15:04,600 --> 00:15:08,000
But anything where he was running, he loved to compete. He loved to race.

342
00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:11,400
So I think anything where, you know, he was kind of showing how fast he was

343
00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:14,000
and his speed and things like that, it was what he liked to do.

344
00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:17,000
So, but that was his big thing.

345
00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:19,000
Skateboarding, surfing, you know, he lived at the beach.

346
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:24,000
So those were kind of things that just you did down here, everybody did.

347
00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:27,000
But it was really, that was just his mode of transportation around the neighborhood.

348
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:30,200
You go to a friend's house or something like that.

349
00:15:30,200 --> 00:15:33,800
Yeah, but really kind of stung, I guess you could say,

350
00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:38,200
is when I first discovered you and your story and, you know, drew and I saw the pictures.

351
00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:41,600
I've got a little 11-year-old boy who's got the long straight hair.

352
00:15:41,600 --> 00:15:45,200
You know, he would have it even longer if I didn't force him to cut it once in a while.

353
00:15:45,200 --> 00:15:49,200
But it just reminds me a lot of my little boy who does exactly the same thing.

354
00:15:49,200 --> 00:15:51,400
Just, you know, you describe my son to a tee as well.

355
00:15:51,400 --> 00:15:56,200
So, and I'm sure it's, you know, the same with a lot of mothers and fathers out there.

356
00:15:56,200 --> 00:16:02,400
So why don't we fast forward then to June 28th, 2013.

357
00:16:02,400 --> 00:16:05,000
And, you know, let's begin the journey.

358
00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:11,200
So if you want to just start by saying, you know, what drew was doing that day and how this was initiated.

359
00:16:11,200 --> 00:16:14,200
Yeah, I mean, really the, you know, I was at work that day.

360
00:16:14,200 --> 00:16:17,400
So I worked at a local hospital.

361
00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:18,800
I was a systems analyst.

362
00:16:18,800 --> 00:16:21,600
I worked in the IT department, information services.

363
00:16:21,600 --> 00:16:25,600
And so something had happened that day.

364
00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:27,000
And we were having to stay a little bit late.

365
00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:31,000
So a lot of the computers were kicked off the domain to make a long story really short.

366
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,600
But so I was having to spend, you know, the evening there.

367
00:16:34,600 --> 00:16:41,000
And I was, my wife had been communicating with me because we were supposed to eat dinner with some friends or whatever,

368
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:42,200
hang out with some friends of ours.

369
00:16:42,200 --> 00:16:46,400
And she was calling me about dinner, what we were going to do and what everybody was doing.

370
00:16:46,400 --> 00:16:54,600
And Drew had a friend over, Bradley, who was, it was still probably one of his best friends.

371
00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:59,000
And they, you know, he was spending the night.

372
00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:02,000
And so they were just all in the house kind of goofing off.

373
00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:08,000
And my wife and my middle son, Zach, you know, he was in college at the time, was home.

374
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:09,800
He was, he had just gotten off.

375
00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:13,800
He had delivered pizzas around the island and just to make money in the summertime.

376
00:17:13,800 --> 00:17:15,400
So home from college.

377
00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:19,200
And my oldest son, Brewer, was at OCS.

378
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:21,800
He was finishing his last session of OCS in Quantico.

379
00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:27,800
So they, anyway, so yeah, that was kind of what was going on at the house.

380
00:17:27,800 --> 00:17:29,600
He was just, you know, playing with his friends.

381
00:17:29,600 --> 00:17:36,000
And when they had gone out, they ate dinner really quickly and had gone out.

382
00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:39,000
And literally, my wife said it probably wasn't five minutes or so.

383
00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:41,400
It didn't seem like, I'm sure it was a little bit longer.

384
00:17:41,400 --> 00:17:47,800
But from where he had the accident to our house was literally maybe a block and a half or so.

385
00:17:47,800 --> 00:17:52,600
And they had gone out skateboarding.

386
00:17:52,600 --> 00:17:56,000
His friend didn't have a skateboard.

387
00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:58,800
So he let him use his and he had got on his brother's skateboard.

388
00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:04,600
And the trucks, the wheels on it were a little bit looser because the older one used to kind of like to do

389
00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:06,200
faff on it and do some tricks or whatever.

390
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,600
And they were a little bit looser and he wasn't used to it.

391
00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:14,000
But he was coming down a hill and all his friends said, you know, one of the things was, you know,

392
00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:16,400
last things he said was, I'll see you on the flip side.

393
00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:18,000
And that was kind of his last thing.

394
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:20,200
And when he got to the bottom, he got speed wobbles.

395
00:18:20,200 --> 00:18:24,200
You know, the board, I guess you kind of can imagine the board started going back and forth real fast.

396
00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:26,400
And he tried to run off into the grass.

397
00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:34,400
But the yard that he was going to try to run off onto, which a lot of houses in the neighborhood do it,

398
00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:39,400
they have kind of big rocks set up around the corner so people won't drive on the grass when they're making

399
00:18:39,400 --> 00:18:40,800
turns or whatnot.

400
00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:44,000
And there was also a pole and some other bushes right there.

401
00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:47,800
So he couldn't really run off into it, but he the board came out from under him.

402
00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:49,200
He fell backwards and hit his head.

403
00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:56,600
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

404
00:18:56,600 --> 00:19:03,200
that from my middle son's eye that Drew had been in an accident and he had a concussion.

405
00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:05,400
And we were familiar with it.

406
00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:07,800
We'd been done the routine with the two older brothers.

407
00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:11,000
You know, Brewer played football all through high school.

408
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:15,000
Brewer had a couple concussions during his high school football career.

409
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:18,400
Zach had had concussions before playing different sports.

410
00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,600
And so we kind of knew the drill.

411
00:19:20,600 --> 00:19:25,200
You know, the drill was just get him, you know, go ahead and bring him to the hospital.

412
00:19:25,200 --> 00:19:28,600
He's going to need to get a CT scan done just to be safe.

413
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:35,200
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.

414
00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:38,600
And you want to get the best care and you want to make sure everything's taken care of,

415
00:19:38,600 --> 00:19:41,240
you know, the

416
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:46,400
And they did tell me whenever I was talking to Zach, he said he had some blood in his right ear,

417
00:19:46,400 --> 00:19:51,400
which with my prior history, that was kind of a little red flag that shot up, you know,

418
00:19:51,400 --> 00:19:55,200
because you don't know where the blood is coming from, of course.

419
00:19:55,200 --> 00:20:03,200
But so I immediately said, look, bring him in, you know, he was and I'll meet you all in the emergency room.

420
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:05,400
And my wife was talking to him, to Drew.

421
00:20:05,400 --> 00:20:09,400
That was one thing, Drew never lost consciousness.

422
00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:15,400
Drew, when Kimley got there, he was progressively getting more alert,

423
00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:17,600
but he kept trying to get up. And that was his thing.

424
00:20:17,600 --> 00:20:20,200
He just kept saying, look, I want to go to the house and lay down.

425
00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:22,400
And my wife was like, no, they had already called 911.

426
00:20:22,400 --> 00:20:28,000
So he had a group of friends because, you know, all 13 year old boys got pretty excited pretty quickly.

427
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:32,200
And they had already dialed 911. And he was trying to get up.

428
00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:34,800
So my wife kept having to tell him to stay down and just relax or whatever.

429
00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:38,000
And she would talk to him and she asked him questions like, you know,

430
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:41,200
where do you go to school? You know, where do your brothers go to school?

431
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:43,400
And, you know, how old are your brothers? How old are you?

432
00:20:43,400 --> 00:20:46,800
And just things like that. He answered everything correctly.

433
00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:55,200
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.

434
00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:57,600
And the more I talked to her, the better I felt.

435
00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:04,600
But I still knew that I wanted him to get evaluated by people that weren't available at our hospital.

436
00:21:04,600 --> 00:21:08,800
And so my idea was and they hadn't even arrived yet.

437
00:21:08,800 --> 00:21:13,600
I was in the AED when the ambulance was just getting to the scene where Drew was.

438
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:17,600
And I walked in the AED and I said, look, I said, my son Drew is on his way here.

439
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,200
He's been in a skateboard accident. He's got a head injury.

440
00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:27,000
And I said, I want him transferred as soon as you can make arrangements for him that to be done.

441
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:32,400
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.

442
00:21:32,400 --> 00:21:35,600
They've got great pediatric neurologist, things like that.

443
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:40,200
And my thinking was to, you know, if there was anything, I wanted him where they could handle it too.

444
00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:45,400
And also, you know, August, you know, he was getting ready to be a freshman in high school.

445
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:49,200
So August would be he would be starting football.

446
00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:52,200
You know, I knew that might not be happening, but you never know.

447
00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:54,600
So he was very active.

448
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:59,200
I think as we kind of gone over, he didn't sit still very often at all.

449
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:02,800
Anybody with boys, sons kind of knows what I'm talking about.

450
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:07,400
They're a little bit different and the things they like to do and move around.

451
00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:11,600
He wasn't he wasn't one to sit and play video games very long.

452
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:14,600
He was balanced, something like that.

453
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:22,600
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

454
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:27,200
so he could get back to doing what he'd like to do.

455
00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:29,200
And so and that started the process.

456
00:22:29,200 --> 00:22:31,800
They picked him up there and started bringing him in.

457
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:39,200
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.

458
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:41,500
You know, he's talking to me.

459
00:22:41,500 --> 00:22:51,400
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

460
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:53,000
if he wanted her to sing to him.

461
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:54,200
And he said, yes.

462
00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:59,600
I said, well, he must have had a head injury because terrible voice.

463
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:05,200
And so she sang the doxology out with him, you know, to him to go into the hospital.

464
00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:09,800
That was the last time she talked to Drew was in the back of the ambulance on the way.

465
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:15,200
And then they arrived at the D.D. and I was already standing in the D.D.

466
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:22,700
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.

467
00:23:22,700 --> 00:23:24,500
But wasn't anything personal.

468
00:23:24,500 --> 00:23:28,200
It was just I knew what the, you know, the capabilities were there.

469
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:29,700
I knew what I wanted for him.

470
00:23:29,700 --> 00:23:37,200
So the you know, that was the thing I just really wanted my idea.

471
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:43,900
Ideally, I would have loved it if if he would have arrived there, transferred to an ambulance and gone about it.

472
00:23:43,900 --> 00:23:48,000
You know, I him he was there for right at two hours a little more.

473
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:53,100
And that was too late. That was to me. That was two hours. It was getting wasted in my head.

474
00:23:53,100 --> 00:23:56,300
You know, that's what I was thinking. I was the whole time. I was like, you know, what's the deal with transport?

475
00:23:56,300 --> 00:24:00,300
What's the deal with transport? They would.

476
00:24:00,300 --> 00:24:04,800
Vida used to have a critical care transport truck stationed in Carter County.

477
00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:06,800
And that wasn't they weren't stationed here anymore.

478
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:10,300
I heard they might be stationed in an adjacent county in Oslo County.

479
00:24:10,300 --> 00:24:13,000
But I don't know if that was ever looked into or not.

480
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:17,300
I think the first thing they went to was the helicopter.

481
00:24:17,300 --> 00:24:24,100
And the helicopter from that would not fly because we had a lot of storms coming through.

482
00:24:24,100 --> 00:24:26,600
And so they wouldn't fly that night.

483
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:35,300
So they had checked with Pedro, which is a Marine Corps rescue helicopter that was stationed in Cherry Point.

484
00:24:35,300 --> 00:24:38,700
And they were willing to fly, but they would only fly them to Wilmington.

485
00:24:38,700 --> 00:24:41,500
They wouldn't go back to the West.

486
00:24:41,500 --> 00:24:44,300
And, you know, I always hate that, too.

487
00:24:44,300 --> 00:24:46,700
It's kind of the stories that I hear. I'll get a little bit sidetracked.

488
00:24:46,700 --> 00:24:49,400
So you have to direct me back on the path you want me to.

489
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,300
But there's kind of it's kind of interesting things.

490
00:24:51,300 --> 00:24:58,600
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.

491
00:24:58,600 --> 00:24:59,600
People in the medical field.

492
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:06,500
And one was a physician that was normally worked at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune.

493
00:25:06,500 --> 00:25:11,000
And he was actually working with he was a friend of our family and he was actually working on Pedro that night.

494
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:14,900
So he would have been on the helicopter with Pedro if they had picked him up.

495
00:25:14,900 --> 00:25:16,900
And this guy is outstanding.

496
00:25:16,900 --> 00:25:23,500
And I'm thinking about all these things that if they had happened differently, probably would have been different for Drew.

497
00:25:23,500 --> 00:25:29,500
But Wilmington would not accept him because he was not for he was he was 13.

498
00:25:29,500 --> 00:25:34,500
So he was considered pediatric. He wasn't 14 yet as far as by their scales.

499
00:25:34,500 --> 00:25:36,200
So they wouldn't accept him.

500
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:39,200
And so they started having to make arrangements to get him about it.

501
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:40,900
And so.

502
00:25:40,900 --> 00:25:42,900
All right. Well, let me stop you for a second.

503
00:25:42,900 --> 00:25:48,900
So two questions firstly from him lying on the side of the road after literally just falling off a skateboard.

504
00:25:48,900 --> 00:25:53,800
Was that a fire rescue EMS company that got him to the ER?

505
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:55,600
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

506
00:25:55,600 --> 00:26:06,900
The Amarillo ambulance came and picked him up and from the scene and transported him to to the local hospital.

507
00:26:06,900 --> 00:26:13,400
OK. So at that point, they they treat him as a suspected head injury but didn't do any aggressive interventions.

508
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:15,300
Just got him to the ER.

509
00:26:15,300 --> 00:26:21,700
Yeah. And he was you know, it was you know, he was he was doing really much better.

510
00:26:21,700 --> 00:26:31,300
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.

511
00:26:31,300 --> 00:26:44,900
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.

512
00:26:44,900 --> 00:26:46,400
Depending on the type of injuries they put him in.

513
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:52,600
But that was one of the things was the the one they had him on was wasn't exactly the right size for him.

514
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:59,000
But if what they had and it was pressing right on his head where his injury was.

515
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:03,300
So he was in a lot of pain all the time because they had that brace on him all the time.

516
00:27:03,300 --> 00:27:15,400
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?

517
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,500
Because kind of to jump forward a little bit.

518
00:27:17,500 --> 00:27:26,400
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.

519
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:34,000
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.

520
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,600
But they, you know, they were great.

521
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:44,100
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.

522
00:27:44,100 --> 00:27:47,400
But there were no there was nothing, you know, that happened in the back of that that small.

523
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,700
It was about a 15, 20 minute ride at most.

524
00:27:50,700 --> 00:27:54,300
There was nothing that. You know, happened negatively there.

525
00:27:54,300 --> 00:27:56,900
Yeah, well, and that's you had a good point as well.

526
00:27:56,900 --> 00:28:00,100
They're not even so much the collar, but definitely the backboard.

527
00:28:00,100 --> 00:28:07,900
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.

528
00:28:07,900 --> 00:28:15,700
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.

529
00:28:15,700 --> 00:28:17,500
Most of the time they do more harm than good.

530
00:28:17,500 --> 00:28:24,600
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.

531
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:34,900
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.

532
00:28:34,900 --> 00:28:38,600
And then obviously the the collars are effective if they fit right.

533
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:47,900
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.

534
00:28:47,900 --> 00:28:52,900
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,

535
00:28:52,900 --> 00:28:58,400
even though there's actually not any science behind us having to do them in the first place.

536
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:02,500
Yeah, I think depending on the injury, that's one of those things in how the injury occurred.

537
00:29:02,500 --> 00:29:09,700
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.

538
00:29:09,700 --> 00:29:14,100
It was just one of those things that to, you know, make you think about was that collar.

539
00:29:14,100 --> 00:29:19,400
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.

540
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:29,100
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.

541
00:29:29,100 --> 00:29:33,400
So that was another thing as well. So, but yeah, I know.

542
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:43,500
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.

543
00:29:43,500 --> 00:29:49,300
And and, you know, one of the first things that they did was check the check the blood in his ear, you know,

544
00:29:49,300 --> 00:29:53,400
and there was no cerebral spinal fluid or anything like that in there.

545
00:29:53,400 --> 00:30:00,400
Everything looked good and and on that front or whatever.

546
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:09,400
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.

547
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:13,300
And from that, pretty much from that point on, I was with him the entire time in the AD.

548
00:30:13,300 --> 00:30:18,900
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,

549
00:30:18,900 --> 00:30:24,600
is that when, you know, when he came in, he was pretty agitated whenever he, you know,

550
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:34,800
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.

551
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:36,700
He was scared. And that's kind of one of those points.

552
00:30:36,700 --> 00:30:44,200
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.

553
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:49,900
And, you know, he liked having one of us with him. And I remember they were, he was pretty agitated.

554
00:30:49,900 --> 00:30:53,600
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.

555
00:30:53,600 --> 00:31:00,700
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,

556
00:31:00,700 --> 00:31:05,700
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.

557
00:31:05,700 --> 00:31:13,500
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.

558
00:31:13,500 --> 00:31:22,400
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

559
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:28,900
after treating Drew that night that he was more comfortable with patients at bedside, with parents at bedside.

560
00:31:28,900 --> 00:31:36,400
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,

561
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:41,700
everything else should have been communicated down through, you know, when you're dealing with a kid,

562
00:31:41,700 --> 00:31:49,300
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.

563
00:31:49,300 --> 00:31:58,100
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.

564
00:31:58,100 --> 00:32:07,200
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.

565
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:16,900
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.

566
00:32:16,900 --> 00:32:21,000
You can get a lot of information just by their facial expressions.

567
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:29,500
And so, you know, it's having us around, I think, was very important, I think, for the trip, I think, for the transport.

568
00:32:29,500 --> 00:32:33,700
I think, you know, that's one of the things I really wanted to be back there.

569
00:32:33,700 --> 00:32:41,900
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.

570
00:32:41,900 --> 00:32:46,800
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.

571
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:58,100
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.

572
00:32:58,100 --> 00:33:07,700
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.

573
00:33:07,700 --> 00:33:15,000
You know, I knew a lot of people there from working there. The lady that was running there was actually performing the CT.

574
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:21,200
We got along pretty well. But I remember, you know, of course, the first thing they do is get a head CT.

575
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:27,400
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.

576
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:32,700
And and I remember I remember she completed that she's watching the images that come through.

577
00:33:32,700 --> 00:33:39,300
And I know they're not allowed to interpret, you know, anything they see.

578
00:33:39,300 --> 00:33:44,900
But when you do hundreds or thousands of them, you kind of know what you're looking at after a period of time.

579
00:33:44,900 --> 00:33:51,100
But I just remember her smiling and kind of give me a thumbs up from behind the glass.

580
00:33:51,100 --> 00:33:58,900
And, you know, I knew from talking to Drew while we were in the day that he was OK.

581
00:33:58,900 --> 00:34:11,100
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.

582
00:34:11,100 --> 00:34:19,700
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,

583
00:34:19,700 --> 00:34:21,900
and we start I was like to my wife, I was like, what's wrong with him?

584
00:34:21,900 --> 00:34:27,500
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.

585
00:34:27,500 --> 00:34:28,900
He forgot the first half of the game.

586
00:34:28,900 --> 00:34:32,900
I mean, I could go into a lot of things. It was he had he's to this day.

587
00:34:32,900 --> 00:34:36,300
He has no recollection of the first half of that football game, you know, things like that.

588
00:34:36,300 --> 00:34:44,700
And he he was scared me worse because he progressively seemed to be getting worse instead of like with Drew getting better.

589
00:34:44,700 --> 00:34:50,100
Of course, everything turned out fine with Brewer, just like everything looked like it was fine with Drew.

590
00:34:50,100 --> 00:34:57,900
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.

591
00:34:57,900 --> 00:35:02,700
I've been around. I've seen him. I've dealt with people in car accidents and, you know, things like that.

592
00:35:02,700 --> 00:35:05,700
Of course, there can be something going on that you don't know about.

593
00:35:05,700 --> 00:35:11,500
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.

594
00:35:11,500 --> 00:35:19,500
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.

595
00:35:19,500 --> 00:35:24,500
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.

596
00:35:24,500 --> 00:35:30,100
And I honestly believe that with all of my heart, I believe that he was fine. I thought he was going to be OK.

597
00:35:30,100 --> 00:35:34,600
I knew we would have to get through getting him checked out, treated, whatever needed to be done.

598
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:39,400
And then and then, you know, that would be what we'd have to deal with.

599
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,900
We'd work on it from there. But there was nothing. I wasn't scared.

600
00:35:42,900 --> 00:35:47,900
You know, initially, my initial phone call is apparent. You're scared, you know, because you think of everything.

601
00:35:47,900 --> 00:35:51,400
But at that point in time, I was feeling really good.

602
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:55,800
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.

603
00:35:55,800 --> 00:36:04,000
I'm with you. And it was kind of that time when the the lady kind of hollered out behind the glass.

604
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:07,800
She said, we need to do a CT scan of his lower spine. Can you take off his shorts?

605
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:13,300
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.

606
00:36:13,300 --> 00:36:17,200
So that would be that would be what we call AOTimes for if you responded like that.

607
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:20,600
He's pretty with it. Yeah, he was. And that's kind of and I say that.

608
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:29,600
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.

609
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:32,000
He knew what was going on and he was hearing pretty well.

610
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,800
And of course, everybody behind the glass kind of cracked up.

611
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:39,300
And of course, everything came back OK. And and.

612
00:36:39,300 --> 00:36:44,600
So when we went to and I can, you know, I can talk about the CT report real quick, real briefly.

613
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:52,200
But, you know, basically everything, if you're reading the report, is normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, right?

614
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,300
They did see the blood in his ear, you know, the fluid in his ear.

615
00:36:55,300 --> 00:36:59,300
But, you know, I can kind of read this. You know, there was no fracture identified.

616
00:36:59,300 --> 00:37:03,200
So on their CT scan, they did not see a fracture of any kind.

617
00:37:03,200 --> 00:37:05,600
But they said there was a small amount of gas.

618
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:10,200
I'm reading this to you so I don't get it wrong because I wouldn't try to remember this anyway.

619
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:14,200
There was a small amount of gas seen within the right temporal mandibular joint,

620
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:22,000
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.

621
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:25,800
And mastoid air cell suggesting that there is an occult fracture through this region.

622
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:33,200
So based on that, though they couldn't see one, they were assuming that he probably had a basal or skull fracture.

623
00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:37,100
And they were treating him as that. So, you know, that was reasonable.

624
00:37:37,100 --> 00:37:40,700
I'm not, you know, I'm not, I can understand that even though they didn't see one.

625
00:37:40,700 --> 00:37:43,200
I can understand that, you know, going with that.

626
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:52,600
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.

627
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:57,200
But so there but there was no blood within within the actual cranium itself.

628
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:08,700
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,

629
00:38:08,700 --> 00:38:21,300
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.

630
00:38:21,300 --> 00:38:21,900
Right.

631
00:38:21,900 --> 00:38:30,900
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.

632
00:38:30,900 --> 00:38:40,200
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.

633
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:45,000
We didn't know exactly what happened, but we knew something went wrong and something happened, but we didn't know what.

634
00:38:45,000 --> 00:39:00,000
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.

635
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,600
And so word was really, really traveled quickly.

636
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:14,600
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.

637
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:20,600
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.

638
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:24,800
I'm like, well, yeah, sort of.

639
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:38,100
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.

640
00:39:38,100 --> 00:39:42,500
If they go through their entire life and you don't go to the emergency room, you are a lucky individual.

641
00:39:42,500 --> 00:39:44,700
You know, that's you know, I'm being serious about that.

642
00:39:44,700 --> 00:39:50,100
I mean, just the way ours were ours were climbers, runners, wrestlers, rough housers.

643
00:39:50,100 --> 00:39:54,800
I mean, you know, everything little boys, a lot of them, most of them are at least mine were.

644
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,400
And I think most people can relate to that because they understand it.

645
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:08,300
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.

646
00:40:08,300 --> 00:40:09,600
And then I'll direct him.

647
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:18,000
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.

648
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:19,100
And then people will come back.

649
00:40:19,100 --> 00:40:20,000
Oh, my gosh.

650
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:27,000
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.

651
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:33,000
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.

652
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,300
The majority of the time, they don't like to look at it.

653
00:40:35,300 --> 00:40:36,300
They don't like to deal with it.

654
00:40:36,300 --> 00:40:43,100
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.

655
00:40:43,100 --> 00:40:48,200
But so especially the moms, if they look at that story and they read it, they get it really quickly.

656
00:40:48,200 --> 00:41:01,900
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.

657
00:41:01,900 --> 00:41:07,500
And then you find them and it's like, you know, you're half mad at them, half relieved to see them.

658
00:41:07,500 --> 00:41:11,700
You know, imagine being in our shoes where you don't ever wake up from that.

659
00:41:11,700 --> 00:41:12,800
You know, it happened.

660
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,200
And you know, you're that feeling.

661
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:22,600
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.

662
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:24,600
They can divert their brain to something else.

663
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:28,100
We're stuck with it because that happened to our son.

664
00:41:28,100 --> 00:41:30,200
And there's nothing we can do about it.

665
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:32,900
You know, it's and so people read the story and it hits them.

666
00:41:32,900 --> 00:41:34,900
But then it's kind of like, I don't like thinking about this.

667
00:41:34,900 --> 00:41:37,400
I don't like talking about this because it hurts.

668
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:46,300
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.

669
00:41:46,300 --> 00:41:53,400
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.

670
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:55,000
I know where I'm going.

671
00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:00,100
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.

672
00:42:00,100 --> 00:42:05,300
You know, you know, they is I know the numbers and you've probably seen them too.

673
00:42:05,300 --> 00:42:08,600
The studies that show it may be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

674
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:14,800
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.

675
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:27,300
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.

676
00:42:27,300 --> 00:42:40,000
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.

677
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:43,600
What happened to Drew was not common, but it's not uncommon.

678
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:45,100
That's kind of the way it was worded to me.

679
00:42:45,100 --> 00:42:53,800
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,

680
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:58,500
we get messages about a lot of them because people know what we do with the foundation and they send them to us.

681
00:42:58,500 --> 00:43:04,100
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.

682
00:43:04,100 --> 00:43:12,800
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.

683
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:14,900
One is Securitism Medical.

684
00:43:14,900 --> 00:43:18,700
This is Dr. Arthur Canawas.

685
00:43:18,700 --> 00:43:19,700
He contacted me one day.

686
00:43:19,700 --> 00:43:23,400
He read Drew's story or he looked over to watch the videos and stuff like that.

687
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:25,100
He just contacted me and said, I can't stand it.

688
00:43:25,100 --> 00:43:28,200
I said, you know, we've got to be helped some way how this got involved.

689
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:36,800
And, you know, they just because it happens too often and, you know, the numbers are just with unplanned extubation and intubation errors,

690
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:41,900
you know, maybe as high as 33,000 deaths a year just on that, the complications.

691
00:43:41,900 --> 00:43:48,100
And that's in hospital ICUs across the country that they can document, that they can kind of keep track of.

692
00:43:48,100 --> 00:43:57,000
So then I go like to EMS, how many times in the field is someone intubated and maybe the tube dislodges or, you know,

693
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:02,700
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

694
00:44:02,700 --> 00:44:05,800
or not be getting enough oxygen for several minutes, whatever.

695
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:11,000
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.

696
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:15,600
So, hey, you know, I had the two been wrong for 10 minutes.

697
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:17,200
You know, how many people are going to do that?

698
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:24,300
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,

699
00:44:24,300 --> 00:44:28,700
cover their rear end and you don't know what took place.

700
00:44:28,700 --> 00:44:38,000
So and there's no way of knowing because, you know, so it's one of those things where the training and the

701
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,300
there's got to be some way of improving lots of things.

702
00:44:41,300 --> 00:44:44,200
And that's kind of one of our things as we work on.

703
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:51,600
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.

704
00:44:51,600 --> 00:45:00,100
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

705
00:45:00,100 --> 00:45:04,700
and the patient there, the medic beats themselves up, but they forget that they found that, you know,

706
00:45:04,700 --> 00:45:09,300
whatever it was through all these, you know, high level imaging devices that they have in a hospital.

707
00:45:09,300 --> 00:45:14,800
There's no way you could have known pre-hospital that it was a triple A or whatever ended up happening later.

708
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:21,500
However, therefore, we have the option, obviously, to err on the side of caution and, you know, blood and blood and

709
00:45:21,500 --> 00:45:28,000
drusio definitely would have have made me want to probably go to a trauma center personally, just just so that,

710
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:31,800
like you said, you end up in the facility that is most appropriate.

711
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:36,100
But again, for me, where I work, that's not a huge drive from from my last department.

712
00:45:36,100 --> 00:45:39,300
It was probably 30 minute drive to be uber safe.

713
00:45:39,300 --> 00:45:47,500
But what you do have to fall back on is his level of consciousness and all the other areas that weren't present.

714
00:45:47,500 --> 00:45:52,100
So then now we've gone into the ED, they've done all their their assessments.

715
00:45:52,100 --> 00:46:00,500
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.

716
00:46:00,500 --> 00:46:10,200
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.

717
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:16,400
It's not not, you know, giving terrible vital signs or any of the areas that we would look for.

718
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:26,000
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.

719
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:32,500
And then the physician's impression, she gave him a GCS of 13.

720
00:46:32,500 --> 00:46:40,000
So, you know, perfect scores 15. So it at most and pretty much, I think this is pretty much nationwide.

721
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:43,800
Where you start looking at intubating a patient is when their GCS is an 8.

722
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:47,000
Right. I mean, that's pretty much what I've read as a standard.

723
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:48,800
I kind of try to keep up with as much as I can.

724
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:55,300
Things change all the time. But but, you know, the one of the reasons,

725
00:46:55,300 --> 00:46:58,200
you know, he was given, you know, he was the GCS of 13.

726
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:04,800
You know, the why he was gigged the two points for for that were his answers to some of the physician's questions,

727
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:09,200
because she would ask him questions and his response was I want to get home.

728
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:16,100
OK, so we can make that all day long, but still, a 13 was probably reasonable given,

729
00:47:16,100 --> 00:47:23,100
you know, everything that took place and what was going on, you know, and and, you know, I wouldn't fault anybody for that.

730
00:47:23,100 --> 00:47:28,600
I think that that I think that reason is kind of goofy just because like I'll say it a hundred times.

731
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:33,200
He was a 13 year old kid. He's got he's got enough adrenaline running through him,

732
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:36,300
you know, probably to charge a couple of car batteries.

733
00:47:36,300 --> 00:47:41,700
I mean, it's just he's, you know, and he's and then, you know, later on, of course, he starts crashing.

734
00:47:41,700 --> 00:47:46,500
He's pretty exhausted. You know, he was he was tired.

735
00:47:46,500 --> 00:47:51,600
I know it comes it comes out at times. And I like to mention this because well,

736
00:47:51,600 --> 00:48:00,900
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

737
00:48:00,900 --> 00:48:04,500
and what basically what had happened was the crew that normally works in the hospital,

738
00:48:04,500 --> 00:48:09,800
that's the EMS paramedics who work on site that would normally do transports, things like that.

739
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:14,900
They had just they had transported a patient to about it that earlier that evening.

740
00:48:14,900 --> 00:48:19,100
So they weren't in the building. And because of the problems we're getting,

741
00:48:19,100 --> 00:48:25,200
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.

742
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:28,300
Critical care transport truck that they had stationed nearby. I don't know if it was available.

743
00:48:28,300 --> 00:48:32,300
I don't know if it was even looked into. I don't know.

744
00:48:32,300 --> 00:48:39,900
But they basically decided to assemble a crew that, you know, to take to start the trip.

745
00:48:39,900 --> 00:48:45,000
And the plan was was to meet the ambulance coming back from Greenville, switch crews with that.

746
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,900
So the crew that was working that night could complete the trip.

747
00:48:47,900 --> 00:48:54,000
And then, you know, that was basically their plan. So I don't know who came up with this plan.

748
00:48:54,000 --> 00:49:00,100
The and then of course, then it was who they assigned to the to the truck.

749
00:49:00,100 --> 00:49:04,600
There were two county paramedics who just happened to be in the ED that night.

750
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:11,300
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.

751
00:49:11,300 --> 00:49:14,700
So then they had needed to get it.

752
00:49:14,700 --> 00:49:19,300
They want this is when it was mentioned to me about intubating Drew for the trip.

753
00:49:19,300 --> 00:49:23,700
And, you know, my first reaction was why?

754
00:49:23,700 --> 00:49:25,800
You know, why why do you intubate a patient?

755
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:30,300
You know, because he just he didn't seem like there was anything wrong.

756
00:49:30,300 --> 00:49:31,900
You know, he was breathing on his own things like that.

757
00:49:31,900 --> 00:49:34,300
So my initial gut reaction was even though I didn't know much.

758
00:49:34,300 --> 00:49:37,900
And that's that's one of the things that, you know, they still kind of buzz me.

759
00:49:37,900 --> 00:49:42,600
I didn't know much about intubating a patient as far as I knew what it was for.

760
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:45,100
I knew why I was done, but I didn't know.

761
00:49:45,100 --> 00:49:49,800
I had no idea that intubating a patient was as delicate a procedure as it was.

762
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:53,600
I didn't know that as soon as you intubated a patient, it became a critical care transport.

763
00:49:53,600 --> 00:50:03,200
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,

764
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:06,500
you know, things like after the fact, like getting pneumonia or whatever.

765
00:50:06,500 --> 00:50:07,500
Those, you know, things like that.

766
00:50:07,500 --> 00:50:08,800
Those are little things compared to.

767
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:14,600
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.

768
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:24,300
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.

769
00:50:24,300 --> 00:50:31,200
And then especially in truce case, if they're not sedated enough, which, you know, we'll kind of get.

770
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:36,200
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.

771
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:43,000
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.

772
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:45,400
So they wanted to sedate him so that he would sleep for the trip.

773
00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:50,000
And they wanted to to intimate him to predict his airway in case anything happened.

774
00:50:50,000 --> 00:51:00,300
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.

775
00:51:00,300 --> 00:51:06,800
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.

776
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:18,300
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.

777
00:51:18,300 --> 00:51:24,700
Now, why could you not ride? Why could a parent not ride in the back with a child on the transport?

778
00:51:24,700 --> 00:51:30,900
They when the earlier trip that the paramedics had taken, they used the larger truck that they have.

779
00:51:30,900 --> 00:51:34,600
So all the remaining ambulances they had were smaller trucks.

780
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:38,300
And you really couldn't have more than three people in the back. Now, we could have maybe ridden in the front.

781
00:51:38,300 --> 00:51:50,900
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.

782
00:51:50,900 --> 00:51:58,700
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.

783
00:51:58,700 --> 00:52:04,700
But this was after they'd already observed that he was a lot less anxious when the parents were next to him.

784
00:52:04,700 --> 00:52:07,700
So that to me would have been a deciding factor.

785
00:52:07,700 --> 00:52:10,700
I mean, you can't just magically make a different vehicle come.

786
00:52:10,700 --> 00:52:16,900
But there's been many calls where we've configured a way to enable someone to be in the back.

787
00:52:16,900 --> 00:52:24,700
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.

788
00:52:24,700 --> 00:52:25,900
I know you're there. Yeah.

789
00:52:25,900 --> 00:52:33,400
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.

790
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:41,900
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.

791
00:52:41,900 --> 00:52:53,100
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.

792
00:52:53,100 --> 00:52:56,900
They weren't dealing with Drew's treatment in the ad at all.

793
00:52:56,900 --> 00:53:01,700
You know, so they didn't know what his deal was, why he was there, why he was being transported.

794
00:53:01,700 --> 00:53:05,900
And I requested him to be transported before he even got to the hospital.

795
00:53:05,900 --> 00:53:12,900
So there was a lot of communication that wasn't relayed along the pathway to where they were going.

796
00:53:12,900 --> 00:53:26,900
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.

797
00:53:26,900 --> 00:53:29,900
He needed to relax. He needed to calm down. Whatever. He would sleep. He'd be good.

798
00:53:29,900 --> 00:53:35,100
We'd follow up there and we'd be there when he woke up and he's good.

799
00:53:35,100 --> 00:53:41,600
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.

800
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:54,600
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.

801
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:59,100
They're doing the right thing. And it was best. You can't, you know, you can question everything.

802
00:53:59,100 --> 00:54:04,000
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.

803
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:09,900
So I agreed to them intubating him. And so they intubated him in the ED.

804
00:54:09,900 --> 00:54:15,900
And I remember going out and they closed the curtains and they sedated him and got him intubated.

805
00:54:15,900 --> 00:54:25,400
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.

806
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:36,800
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.

807
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:45,500
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.

808
00:54:45,500 --> 00:54:48,600
You know, I walk out of the room to let him intubate him. I was like, I love you, Drew.

809
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:59,800
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.

810
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:07,300
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.

811
00:55:07,300 --> 00:55:10,800
It's just it looks so much more serious. I think that's when it kind of hits you.

812
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:13,600
This is more serious than what you thought it was.

813
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:21,100
And so I was standing next to his bed and it hadn't been it literally had not been two, maybe three minutes.

814
00:55:21,100 --> 00:55:24,000
And I was standing right there kind of with my hand on his arm.

815
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:26,400
They were trying to get everything ready to transport him.

816
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:33,500
And he woke up, sat straight up on the bed right beside me and started pulling out the tube.

817
00:55:33,500 --> 00:55:42,800
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.

818
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:47,400
And so that freaked me out a little bit. I will I will say that that freaked me out a little bit.

819
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:53,800
And because I was like, you know, I don't want this happening to him on the trip.

820
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:57,300
And so just to just interject, who was doing the intubation?

821
00:55:57,300 --> 00:56:00,200
Is this a respiratory therapist in the ER?

822
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:05,300
There was a respiratory therapist there that was in the ED who did the initial intubation.

823
00:56:05,300 --> 00:56:13,700
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.

824
00:56:13,700 --> 00:56:22,200
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?

825
00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:25,000
She was like, no, they don't they won't let me go.

826
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:31,600
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.

827
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:34,200
She was the charge RT, so they wanted her to stay.

828
00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:41,000
So they got another RT that was there who had not even worked with Drew the entire evening to make the trip.

829
00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:48,100
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.

830
00:56:48,100 --> 00:56:53,600
You know, the nurse that ended up making the trip was in the ED when all this was going on.

831
00:56:53,600 --> 00:57:03,400
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.

832
00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:06,400
I think it was a lot of things that just didn't get translated.

833
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:09,600
And then, like I said, then it was who got assigned to the crew.

834
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:14,600
Because like I said, I did not know that transport and intubated patient was a critical care transport.

835
00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:17,000
So then it's like, well, was it a critical care transport team?

836
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:18,000
I get asked that all the time.

837
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:21,200
I'm like, well, not really.

838
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:23,000
Yeah, but then initially it wasn't.

839
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:23,600
That's the thing.

840
00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:29,400
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.

841
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:31,200
But they turned it into.

842
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:36,400
And again, I'm not I'm not trying to stand from from a high place, but from a medic's perspective.

843
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:42,200
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.

844
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:53,600
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.

845
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:56,600
Well, and I and I don't disagree with you there.

846
00:57:56,600 --> 00:58:02,400
But that's kind of but it's one of those things that where you I kind of somewhat understand the logic, even though.

847
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:06,800
And like I said there at the time, you know, I didn't disagree with it.

848
00:58:06,800 --> 00:58:09,600
But knowing what I know now, you know, like I said, I have issues with it.

849
00:58:09,600 --> 00:58:15,600
Like I said, I think if it had been explained to me what intubating a patient meant, it would have never happened.

850
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:22,000
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.

851
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:24,800
And I know it would have been a no.

852
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:28,100
But, you know, but you know, one of the statement, one of the kind of one of the statements that kind of sums up.

853
00:58:28,100 --> 00:58:33,600
And this is one of those things where it wasn't, you know, even the crew that was put on the truck withdrew.

854
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:37,800
It was like how those people were picked and who picked them and who made these decisions and things like that.

855
00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:50,200
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.

856
00:58:50,200 --> 00:59:01,200
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.

857
00:59:01,200 --> 00:59:04,800
And they were talking with the physician about it.

858
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:15,200
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.

859
00:59:15,200 --> 00:59:18,500
And I say this in every presentation I do.

860
00:59:18,500 --> 00:59:27,000
If if you're in a transport where the crew has to be thrown together, don't leave the building.

861
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:29,400
Don't you know, I mean, you don't know.

862
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:31,300
Like I said, I'm learning all this after the fact.

863
00:59:31,300 --> 00:59:35,500
But it's like, you know, people come up to me all the time and they're like, do you really understand?

864
00:59:35,500 --> 00:59:39,200
You know, the more I go is the more I understand what took place.

865
00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:44,400
But but, you know, throwing together is not a term you like to hear when you're dealing with this.

866
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:52,400
You know, so anything was was like I said, the RRT and people they had not worked with with Drew.

867
00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:56,000
So we're just kind of like that's you kind of trust.

868
00:59:56,000 --> 01:00:02,100
And, you know, they're in that job because they took they, you know, they did all the training.

869
01:00:02,100 --> 01:00:04,800
They are supposed to know what they're doing.

870
01:00:04,800 --> 01:00:10,100
And and at the time until after the fact, you don't know all the risk and things associated with it.

871
01:00:10,100 --> 01:00:16,500
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.

872
01:00:16,500 --> 01:00:19,300
So that was the first time he sat up.

873
01:00:19,300 --> 01:00:23,000
And he was just just on was it out of van and propofol at that point?

874
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:26,300
It wasn't on any. So no paralytics at all at that point.

875
01:00:26,300 --> 01:00:28,400
No paralytics at all.

876
01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:29,800
It was just the out of van and propofol.

877
01:00:29,800 --> 01:00:39,800
And he was he they had him on five micrograms at 1.9 milliliter an hour to maintain sedation or propofol.

878
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:49,600
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.

879
01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:59,400
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.

880
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:01,400
And that's kind of something I'll get into in a second.

881
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:09,100
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.

882
01:01:09,100 --> 01:01:11,400
I mean, you know, this is as far as what took place.

883
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:15,000
But I think it was based on his size more than his age.

884
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:24,600
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.

885
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:30,500
And metabolism there, you know, their bodies, his body is working quickly.

886
01:01:30,500 --> 01:01:36,300
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,

887
01:01:36,300 --> 01:01:45,200
you know, one of the things that was brought up after the fact too was that they said that his that he was declining,

888
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:47,100
that his status, status was getting worse.

889
01:01:47,100 --> 01:01:51,100
And it was kind of like, well, how, you know, how do you get that?

890
01:01:51,100 --> 01:01:59,200
And they were like, well, his last Glasgow Coma Scale assessment was done at twenty to twenty,

891
01:01:59,200 --> 01:02:09,400
you know, just before them doing the transport and they gave him an eight on that Glasgow Coma Scale check.

892
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:16,000
And the thing about it was is that he was intubated about 10 minutes before that.

893
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:21,600
So they were doing a GCS assessment on a person that had a tube in their throat that was sedated.

894
01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:24,300
So I don't know how exactly you do a GCS like that.

895
01:02:24,300 --> 01:02:29,800
But in any event, that one is pretty much irrelevant to me because I know how he was right before he was intubated.

896
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:31,200
And I know what he was after the fact.

897
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:36,900
So the but that's that's I like I always I give I give everybody the facts.

898
01:02:36,900 --> 01:02:39,700
I go through the medical records. I go through the timeline of events.

899
01:02:39,700 --> 01:02:44,500
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.

900
01:02:44,500 --> 01:02:47,700
But once you put it on, you know, you kind of put all the pieces together.

901
01:02:47,700 --> 01:02:54,600
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.

902
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:58,000
You know, usually one piece blocks a hole.

903
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:03,100
So there's no something stops the chain of events from a disastrous outcome.

904
01:03:03,100 --> 01:03:11,600
And in Drew's case, every layer of cheese that was laid on there, every hole lined up, you know, negatively for Drew.

905
01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:21,200
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.

906
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:25,600
And we were we were going to follow him in our car.

907
01:03:25,600 --> 01:03:31,000
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.

908
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:33,000
I was like, look, kiss him in Greenville.

909
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:38,300
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.

910
01:03:38,300 --> 01:03:42,400
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.

911
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:45,100
He's I said, I said, Kimberly is good.

912
01:03:45,100 --> 01:03:49,600
And I've always felt bad about it because.

913
01:03:49,600 --> 01:03:56,600
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,

914
01:03:56,600 --> 01:03:58,400
she knew I took care of what needed to be taken care of.

915
01:03:58,400 --> 01:04:05,400
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.

916
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:09,900
But when it was something serious, they came to me because they knew I would handle whatever needed to be handled.

917
01:04:09,900 --> 01:04:14,100
And I'm pretty good in crisis situations.

918
01:04:14,100 --> 01:04:19,100
Sometimes it's like a lot of people is after the fact that it kind of hits you like a ton of bricks.

919
01:04:19,100 --> 01:04:21,800
But during I'm very good, I can think quick and I know what I'm doing.

920
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:23,500
And I've always had kind of that.

921
01:04:23,500 --> 01:04:34,200
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.

922
01:04:34,200 --> 01:04:38,600
So she just looked at me, said, OK, let's go, you know, let's get in the car.

923
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:49,300
So we got in the car and the ambulance started the trip and we were maybe and being very serious about this,

924
01:04:49,300 --> 01:04:56,300
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.

925
01:04:56,300 --> 01:05:01,900
So, you know, at that point, I don't know if they weren't communicating.

926
01:05:01,900 --> 01:05:03,500
I don't know what the deal was.

927
01:05:03,500 --> 01:05:11,200
I don't know if I was in the ED and the ambulance told me we're five minutes out or so.

928
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:13,100
Just wait. Yeah, I probably would have waited.

929
01:05:13,100 --> 01:05:21,700
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.

930
01:05:21,700 --> 01:05:29,700
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.

931
01:05:29,700 --> 01:05:36,100
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,

932
01:05:36,100 --> 01:05:37,300
I was like, God, that was quick.

933
01:05:37,300 --> 01:05:43,500
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.

934
01:05:43,500 --> 01:05:47,000
And, you know, you're you know, just think about it.

935
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:50,100
You know what being in the back of an ambulance is like, you know, there's bright lights.

936
01:05:50,100 --> 01:05:51,900
It's in summertime. The fans are going.

937
01:05:51,900 --> 01:05:53,200
So it's keep it cool about there.

938
01:05:53,200 --> 01:05:54,500
I mean, it's loud. It's noisy.

939
01:05:54,500 --> 01:05:56,500
Doors opening and shutting.

940
01:05:56,500 --> 01:06:07,100
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.

941
01:06:07,100 --> 01:06:11,400
And and there was not one word spoken between the two.

942
01:06:11,400 --> 01:06:14,400
And I think you might have seen that in the in the deposition.

943
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:16,100
They didn't they didn't communicate at all.

944
01:06:16,100 --> 01:06:21,100
Yeah, they said a one minute turnaround time, which was questionable in itself, I think.

945
01:06:21,100 --> 01:06:25,000
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.

946
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:27,200
It was basically taking notes.

947
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:31,400
She documented the entire trip.

948
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:33,100
You know, I had a couple of questions about that later on.

949
01:06:33,100 --> 01:06:39,200
But but still, you know, she she kind of updated, you know, what was going on.

950
01:06:39,200 --> 01:06:45,000
So when they got on the truck, you know, they the nurse told the paramedic when she got on the truck,

951
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:48,500
she said he was highly reactive to stimuli that he reacted to everything.

952
01:06:48,500 --> 01:06:50,700
And I'm reading this straight from the deposition.

953
01:06:50,700 --> 01:06:51,800
Loud noises, lights.

954
01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:55,600
He reacted to any type of stimuli, he would get a response from it.

955
01:06:55,600 --> 01:07:01,500
So when you're when you're saying that about a person who's supposed to be sedated to be in a.

956
01:07:01,500 --> 01:07:03,700
You know, they're he's reacting to everything.

957
01:07:03,700 --> 01:07:09,500
Had they increased the dose of the adavanopropofol after the first event?

958
01:07:09,500 --> 01:07:14,200
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.

959
01:07:14,200 --> 01:07:15,600
I don't know if he was on less than that before.

960
01:07:15,600 --> 01:07:18,000
I don't know what I don't know how that was done.

961
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:21,600
I really don't. But right now he was being ventilated properly.

962
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:23,600
So the tube was in place at this point.

963
01:07:23,600 --> 01:07:25,000
Yeah, the tube was in play.

964
01:07:25,000 --> 01:07:26,100
They you know, nothing had changed.

965
01:07:26,100 --> 01:07:31,400
He had been asleep from the ED to that few miles out of town.

966
01:07:31,400 --> 01:07:35,600
And so then the.

967
01:07:35,600 --> 01:07:39,700
And then, you know, they switch crews and all that takes place.

968
01:07:39,700 --> 01:07:46,700
And then we started back up again and it wasn't maybe a couple of miles when,

969
01:07:46,700 --> 01:07:50,100
you know, my wife said, Drew just sat up.

970
01:07:50,100 --> 01:07:56,200
And then I could see him, you know, through the back windows of the ambulance that Drew had sat up.

971
01:07:56,200 --> 01:08:01,300
And we made it a few more miles to the next town.

972
01:08:01,300 --> 01:08:07,300
And that's when they pulled over on the side of the road and the driver got out.

973
01:08:07,300 --> 01:08:09,200
He'd gotten back with the people in the back.

974
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:11,600
So now there were four of them in the back with Drew.

975
01:08:11,600 --> 01:08:18,500
So we knew he had woken up again and which that was a that was the second time he had woken up.

976
01:08:18,500 --> 01:08:23,500
And so, you know, for whatever reason, I don't know.

977
01:08:23,500 --> 01:08:27,700
I mean, you know, that's one of those things I look back on like, why?

978
01:08:27,700 --> 01:08:31,000
I didn't feel like I needed to get out and go up there.

979
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:34,700
But I guess I guess it might have been part of me from being a high-level whatever.

980
01:08:34,700 --> 01:08:36,100
I just kind of want to stay out of the way.

981
01:08:36,100 --> 01:08:37,000
I didn't want to get in their way.

982
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:38,000
I want to let them do their thing.

983
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:43,600
You know, it's kind of one of those things where, you know, they're the they're trained to handle this stuff.

984
01:08:43,600 --> 01:08:45,900
That's what you're thinking.

985
01:08:45,900 --> 01:08:51,200
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.

986
01:08:51,200 --> 01:08:52,200
You know, that was kind of me.

987
01:08:52,200 --> 01:08:53,200
But I knew he was OK.

988
01:08:53,200 --> 01:08:56,700
That was that was kind of the pervasive thing in my head was Drew's fine.

989
01:08:56,700 --> 01:08:58,800
You know, there's nothing wrong with him.

990
01:08:58,800 --> 01:09:01,500
That's going to be life-threatening or whatever.

991
01:09:01,500 --> 01:09:06,900
There wasn't anything physically to him result from the injury or blah, blah, blah.

992
01:09:06,900 --> 01:09:09,100
And he'd already woken up once in the ED and they'd gotten it corrected.

993
01:09:09,100 --> 01:09:13,200
So I was like, well, so but the thing was, it was taking a really long time.

994
01:09:13,200 --> 01:09:18,900
So we were sitting behind him for a little while and finally.

995
01:09:18,900 --> 01:09:26,100
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.

996
01:09:26,100 --> 01:09:35,300
You know, but had I had any idea that I'd open the doors at that point right then, Drew was not doing well.

997
01:09:35,300 --> 01:09:45,200
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?

998
01:09:45,200 --> 01:09:50,400
We had a discussion to either increase the drugs he had or use Vekranium to keep him completely down.

999
01:09:50,400 --> 01:09:53,400
OK, and the drugs that he was almost out of and a purple fall.

1000
01:09:53,400 --> 01:09:56,400
So you could increase those or give Vekranium, which is a parallel.

1001
01:09:56,400 --> 01:10:01,000
Right. So, you know, the thing was, is he did like he did in the day.

1002
01:10:01,000 --> 01:10:07,200
He went from basically being semi asleep, sedated to, you know, he got an adrenaline rush.

1003
01:10:07,200 --> 01:10:10,400
And this is kind of what you know, you think about it.

1004
01:10:10,400 --> 01:10:15,400
You got a kid who's very athletic, who's very active, who's very strong.

1005
01:10:15,400 --> 01:10:27,000
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.

1006
01:10:27,000 --> 01:10:31,800
Then he wakes up in the back of an ambulance, so he doesn't know where he is.

1007
01:10:31,800 --> 01:10:36,000
He doesn't know any of the people who are with him because he hasn't seen them before.

1008
01:10:36,000 --> 01:10:37,200
And I'm not there.

1009
01:10:37,200 --> 01:10:38,600
And there's a tube in his throat.

1010
01:10:38,600 --> 01:10:39,500
And there's a tube in his throat.

1011
01:10:39,500 --> 01:10:44,100
So the first thing he does is what a lot of people do is get that fight or flight.

1012
01:10:44,100 --> 01:10:47,900
And some people, you know, flight, some people fight.

1013
01:10:47,900 --> 01:10:51,100
He fight, he fight, he fight, he fight it.

1014
01:10:51,100 --> 01:10:52,900
That's good grammar.

1015
01:10:52,900 --> 01:10:54,600
He fought. You know, that was his thing.

1016
01:10:54,600 --> 01:11:00,600
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.

1017
01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:06,400
And he tried to bite the hand of the respiratory therapist when she was trying to keep him from pulling the tube out.

1018
01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:10,300
And you know, he may have actually bit her a little bit.

1019
01:11:10,300 --> 01:11:18,100
And then the pair was at that time that the paramedic went for the vacuronium.

1020
01:11:18,100 --> 01:11:24,100
You know, I've got a lot of this is this is not necessarily this is not anything about the paramedic.

1021
01:11:24,100 --> 01:11:27,600
This is more to do with this is one of those.

1022
01:11:27,600 --> 01:11:34,900
This is the thing I have an issue with is the skills that in the in the drugs that paramedics have access to.

1023
01:11:34,900 --> 01:11:46,200
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.

1024
01:11:46,200 --> 01:11:53,500
There's got to be a method of of them demonstrating that they have the skills, the training, the ability that, you know,

1025
01:11:53,500 --> 01:12:00,500
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,

1026
01:12:00,500 --> 01:12:05,700
every time you got a different Microsoft certification or whatever you did, whenever you could demonstrate that you could perform a certain skill,

1027
01:12:05,700 --> 01:12:07,100
you got to get a little bit more responsibility.

1028
01:12:07,100 --> 01:12:14,900
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.

1029
01:12:14,900 --> 01:12:19,100
Well, you know, or anything, when I was a highway patrolman, they weren't going to let you walk up there.

1030
01:12:19,100 --> 01:12:24,700
You know, our training was pretty rigorous and, you know, you went through heated driving classes and firearms training and,

1031
01:12:24,700 --> 01:12:32,200
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.

1032
01:12:32,200 --> 01:12:39,500
So I started to want, you know, that's my thing is just because, you know, just because it's there, you know,

1033
01:12:39,500 --> 01:12:44,800
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.

1034
01:12:44,800 --> 01:12:52,100
But I think there has to be another way of deciding who can do certain things.

1035
01:12:52,100 --> 01:13:03,300
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.

1036
01:13:03,300 --> 01:13:09,700
But it was pulled pretty quickly and he was given 10 milligrams of the aquarium pretty quickly.

1037
01:13:09,700 --> 01:13:19,300
So he's pretty much awake. And the thing about it is, and this is in the medical records,

1038
01:13:19,300 --> 01:13:23,800
that the profile was stopped at 2315 after giving VecuRonium.

1039
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:29,300
So there was no sedation going into his body when that VecuRonium was administered.

1040
01:13:29,300 --> 01:13:38,700
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.

1041
01:13:38,700 --> 01:13:46,300
And he was paralyzed. That had to be terrifying for a 13 year old kid.

1042
01:13:46,300 --> 01:13:50,600
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.

1043
01:13:50,600 --> 01:13:53,900
I can talk about it, but I don't think about it. You know what I'm saying?

1044
01:13:53,900 --> 01:14:05,100
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,

1045
01:14:05,100 --> 01:14:10,000
or one of his parents. But, you know, I kind of be the person and stuff like this.

1046
01:14:10,000 --> 01:14:21,700
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.

1047
01:14:21,700 --> 01:14:29,000
And they were bagging him. They didn't have a TV at that time.

1048
01:14:29,000 --> 01:14:38,400
They were using a bag valve mask to ventilate him. And during that time period, there's no indication of his having any problems.

1049
01:14:38,400 --> 01:14:48,900
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.

1050
01:14:48,900 --> 01:14:57,900
So they had him. They were bagging him for about four to five minutes with his O2 sat staying up, him being OK.

1051
01:14:57,900 --> 01:15:13,500
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.

1052
01:15:13,500 --> 01:15:24,600
His O2 sats were 86 percent. And they said they suctioned the ETT for possible obstruction, though reported zero difficulty bagging.

1053
01:15:24,600 --> 01:15:34,300
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.

1054
01:15:34,300 --> 01:15:41,600
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.

1055
01:15:41,600 --> 01:15:48,800
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.

1056
01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:53,800
And, you know, as soon as I say that his sats were 86 percent, the hands start flying up.

1057
01:15:53,800 --> 01:16:07,000
Excuse me. And so at 2323, two minutes after that, his O2 sats were 40 percent, continuing suction, heart rates in the 40s.

1058
01:16:07,000 --> 01:16:12,500
And then his heart rates in the 30s, there's no palpable pulse. And then they start CPR, blah, blah, blah.

1059
01:16:12,500 --> 01:16:20,300
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.

1060
01:16:20,300 --> 01:16:24,600
And they said they basically that the tube was in the right place.

1061
01:16:24,600 --> 01:16:27,500
Well, this is all going on the back of the ambulance while we're sitting behind them.

1062
01:16:27,500 --> 01:16:35,400
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.

1063
01:16:35,400 --> 01:16:42,800
And we started following them again and we were right behind them when they really floored it.

1064
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:46,900
And we were going over 100 miles an hour and I was I was right with them.

1065
01:16:46,900 --> 01:16:57,000
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.

1066
01:16:57,000 --> 01:17:01,100
There's not a lot around us. And I got stopped by a highway patrolman.

1067
01:17:01,100 --> 01:17:11,600
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.

1068
01:17:11,600 --> 01:17:19,800
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.

1069
01:17:19,800 --> 01:17:24,600
You know, Andrew was no, I think the I think the decision, you know, the fate was already there.

1070
01:17:24,600 --> 01:17:31,200
I mean, Drew, at that point, I don't think I think it was on the wall was going to happen.

1071
01:17:31,200 --> 01:17:36,200
You know, we didn't know it, but I think that, you know, it was there.

1072
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:47,600
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.

1073
01:17:47,600 --> 01:17:51,100
And I think that would have been not good.

1074
01:17:51,100 --> 01:17:56,700
So we it was literally 30 seconds.

1075
01:17:56,700 --> 01:18:01,200
And I told the trooper what was going on. I told him, you know, what was happening and where we're going and everything.

1076
01:18:01,200 --> 01:18:04,800
And he was like, please slow down, drive careful. I don't want anything to happen to you.

1077
01:18:04,800 --> 01:18:11,000
So we left and we didn't know that the hospital that the ambulance had diverted to the next closest hospital.

1078
01:18:11,000 --> 01:18:14,900
And the so we went on to Greenville.

1079
01:18:14,900 --> 01:18:25,300
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.

1080
01:18:25,300 --> 01:18:28,400
And, you know, they had a crew people, they had people waiting on them when they got there.

1081
01:18:28,400 --> 01:18:34,600
And they did. And they they recognized pretty quickly, you know, the two.

1082
01:18:34,600 --> 01:18:41,500
But they they immediately re intubated Drew.

1083
01:18:41,500 --> 01:18:48,000
And that was about 25 or so to 30 minutes when they arrived there.

1084
01:18:48,000 --> 01:18:51,900
Drew had at that point gone without oxygen for about 30 minutes.

1085
01:18:51,900 --> 01:19:03,400
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.

1086
01:19:03,400 --> 01:19:08,200
And as soon as they got him going again, as I to sat shot back up to right at 100 percent.

1087
01:19:08,200 --> 01:19:13,800
And they immediately drew the blood to check his blood gas levels.

1088
01:19:13,800 --> 01:19:21,500
And he had a pH of six point eight and a blood gas CO2 level of eighty eight point seven.

1089
01:19:21,500 --> 01:19:28,400
So I think everybody knows what I'm talking about, knows those numbers, knows exactly what I'm saying right there.

1090
01:19:28,400 --> 01:19:32,700
You don't get a blood gas CO2 level of eighty eight point seven.

1091
01:19:32,700 --> 01:19:38,400
That's that's a that's pretty long duration of not having adequate oxygen going into you.

1092
01:19:38,400 --> 01:19:42,400
He was I think at that point, basically drew with brain dead.

1093
01:19:42,400 --> 01:19:46,400
We went on to Greenville and we were in the day.

1094
01:19:46,400 --> 01:19:47,700
Drew, it took a while for them to get there.

1095
01:19:47,700 --> 01:19:56,400
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.

1096
01:19:56,400 --> 01:19:59,500
That drew and pulled the tube out again.

1097
01:19:59,500 --> 01:20:02,400
And at this point, I was kind of like, gosh, that would have been the third time.

1098
01:20:02,400 --> 01:20:07,000
But it was actually, you know, just anyway.

1099
01:20:07,000 --> 01:20:10,400
So I bet that they were back in route and drew was OK.

1100
01:20:10,400 --> 01:20:13,100
That was the last thing I heard from the ambulance that drew was on.

1101
01:20:13,100 --> 01:20:21,000
So we get there and that's when the trauma physician and neurosurgeon come in, comes in right behind him.

1102
01:20:21,000 --> 01:20:25,300
We're in a little room. And that's when he tells us that Drew has no brain activity.

1103
01:20:25,300 --> 01:20:31,400
And it's basically from that point on, it was just our new world, our new reality.

1104
01:20:31,400 --> 01:20:40,800
It was just dealing with everything that was happening that, you know, three hours before, two hours before, whatever.

1105
01:20:40,800 --> 01:20:43,900
Our son was one thing and now he's brain dead.

1106
01:20:43,900 --> 01:20:53,300
You know, and you're kind of having to process this, you know, because Drew.

1107
01:20:53,300 --> 01:20:59,100
It's not a. It was pretty instantaneously.

1108
01:20:59,100 --> 01:21:02,500
Every alarm bell went off inside my head that could possibly go off.

1109
01:21:02,500 --> 01:21:04,900
It was just finding out why, why.

1110
01:21:04,900 --> 01:21:09,600
But, you know, then right then, you know, it's like, get us to Drew, let us see our son.

1111
01:21:09,600 --> 01:21:14,600
And, you know. So we can be with him.

1112
01:21:14,600 --> 01:21:19,600
The rest of it could wait. And so we basically, you know, we spent the next several hours.

1113
01:21:19,600 --> 01:21:21,800
You know, it was less than a 24 hour period. I mean, that's the thing about it.

1114
01:21:21,800 --> 01:21:30,400
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.

1115
01:21:30,400 --> 01:21:35,500
We had to get to the Red Cross and get Brewer back so he could be with his brother.

1116
01:21:35,500 --> 01:21:45,200
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.

1117
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:52,400
And then, you know, then the anger started kind of setting in a little bit.

1118
01:21:52,400 --> 01:21:56,500
I just remember, I do remember and a lot of people, you know, ask me about this later on.

1119
01:21:56,500 --> 01:22:00,500
You know, do I ever think about donating, you know, like being an organ donor, things like that.

1120
01:22:00,500 --> 01:22:05,500
And I can tell you in all honesty, after the night that we had, I wanted him home.

1121
01:22:05,500 --> 01:22:08,700
I didn't want anybody else to touch him. That was my feeling. I was that.

1122
01:22:08,700 --> 01:22:12,800
I was so angry at that point. I was like, nobody else is touching my son.

1123
01:22:12,800 --> 01:22:20,200
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.

1124
01:22:20,200 --> 01:22:31,800
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.

1125
01:22:31,800 --> 01:22:35,700
So it was 21 hours just about exactly after this is all started.

1126
01:22:35,700 --> 01:22:43,200
You think about you talk about your life changing. There is a is there's no way to describe it and no way.

1127
01:22:43,200 --> 01:22:47,400
There are the only people other people who will understand that are people who lost children, you know,

1128
01:22:47,400 --> 01:22:52,000
and then you got to look at the circumstances that we lost him in and the way we lost him.

1129
01:22:52,000 --> 01:22:56,100
And you're just kind of like that's that's a little bit harder to deal with.

1130
01:22:56,100 --> 01:23:03,900
So then it was just a matter of coming back here and dealing with the aftermath of everything that took place.

1131
01:23:03,900 --> 01:23:11,700
And, you know, you're talking about literally thousands of people.

1132
01:23:11,700 --> 01:23:14,700
His memorial service we had there was so many of the kids.

1133
01:23:14,700 --> 01:23:17,700
That was my main concern was the kids.

1134
01:23:17,700 --> 01:23:22,000
Yeah, the people who were there for the moral services are often waiting in different parts of the building.

1135
01:23:22,000 --> 01:23:24,300
I want all the kids that can get in the sanctuary to get in there.

1136
01:23:24,300 --> 01:23:26,800
I want all the kids in there.

1137
01:23:26,800 --> 01:23:32,400
They were his friends. And then, you know, it was just having to deal with that.

1138
01:23:32,400 --> 01:23:38,400
And then the thing about it was, you know, we knew at his memorial service,

1139
01:23:38,400 --> 01:23:42,200
basically the gist of what happened on the back of the ambulance.

1140
01:23:42,200 --> 01:23:46,000
And we were just having to, you know, go with it as it was.

1141
01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:51,100
And then, you know, eventually when we when it all came out,

1142
01:23:51,100 --> 01:23:53,700
we, you know, when we released everything that happened to drill an ambulance,

1143
01:23:53,700 --> 01:23:57,000
it was kind of like, you know, thinking all those kids, they were like eight going into ninth grade.

1144
01:23:57,000 --> 01:24:02,300
That's a pretty transformative, transformative period for these people, for these kids.

1145
01:24:02,300 --> 01:24:05,800
Starting high school and everything else, those ages, their hormones are crazy.

1146
01:24:05,800 --> 01:24:11,400
They're going, you know, there are all kinds of changes going on and friendships and everything.

1147
01:24:11,400 --> 01:24:13,700
And they're having to deal with this.

1148
01:24:13,700 --> 01:24:21,100
And then we basically, you know, smack them upside the head with this is what happened on the back of the ambulance.

1149
01:24:21,100 --> 01:24:24,200
And it's tough. It's still tough.

1150
01:24:24,200 --> 01:24:30,100
I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot a lot of kids that it really affected.

1151
01:24:30,100 --> 01:24:34,800
His Instagram page, like I said, he had just really kind of started.

1152
01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:39,100
There's one picture on there on his Instagram that people still post on, you know,

1153
01:24:39,100 --> 01:24:42,200
every now and then you'll see a friend comment on or whatever.

1154
01:24:42,200 --> 01:24:47,200
You know, we do we do have there's there are, you know, after this many years with our foundation and everything,

1155
01:24:47,200 --> 01:24:58,300
there are still people that don't like us that post veiled kind of hateful stuff or or kind of,

1156
01:24:58,300 --> 01:25:04,700
you know, try to jab us a little bit with things, you know, you know, the the whole

1157
01:25:04,700 --> 01:25:06,900
if he had been wearing a helmet, it wouldn't happen type of thing.

1158
01:25:06,900 --> 01:25:11,900
Well, technically, maybe. But like I've said before, I said he might not have had the accident

1159
01:25:11,900 --> 01:25:14,300
or he might not have been injured during the accident, whatever.

1160
01:25:14,300 --> 01:25:20,100
You don't know. Like I said, my oldest son had a worse concussion than Drew did playing football with full gear.

1161
01:25:20,100 --> 01:25:24,200
So, you know, I don't know. He still might have had a concussion, still might have done the exact same thing.

1162
01:25:24,200 --> 01:25:31,000
I don't know. You know, but that's kind of like I can I can debate people about that all the time.

1163
01:25:31,000 --> 01:25:37,900
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.

1164
01:25:37,900 --> 01:25:42,600
It wasn't what, you know, I won't go down that road with it because that's another topic in itself.

1165
01:25:42,600 --> 01:25:45,600
But I have a lot of topics with the foundation.

1166
01:25:45,600 --> 01:25:52,400
We've kind of run into so many things when we're especially in the medical field that we deal with a lot.

1167
01:25:52,400 --> 01:25:58,400
It's like every time you go down one little path, it opens up 50 other paths that you see all these things.

1168
01:25:58,400 --> 01:26:03,200
I just personally there are so many things that I feel like need to be addressed and can be.

1169
01:26:03,200 --> 01:26:11,600
I think there's so many things I think can be so easily improved that aren't just because of politics and ego and.

1170
01:26:11,600 --> 01:26:17,400
And. Ego is probably the biggest one, but.

1171
01:26:17,400 --> 01:26:22,800
There are there's there's lots of things I feel like there are simple fixes to it's just a matter of.

1172
01:26:22,800 --> 01:26:26,100
People putting aside their personal.

1173
01:26:26,100 --> 01:26:32,500
Whatever they get out of it, you know, and feelings aside and doing the right thing.

1174
01:26:32,500 --> 01:26:35,600
There's there's some changes I feel like need to be made, but I'm not going to get too much into it.

1175
01:26:35,600 --> 01:26:42,500
So right this minute. But yeah, so here we are.

1176
01:26:42,500 --> 01:26:48,700
A few years later with the foundation and we're we're trying to, you know.

1177
01:26:48,700 --> 01:26:58,500
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.

1178
01:26:58,500 --> 01:27:01,400
And kind of look at pictures of Drew, learn about Drew.

1179
01:27:01,400 --> 01:27:06,200
That's one of the things I do in my presentations is, you know, I try to get you to know who Drew is.

1180
01:27:06,200 --> 01:27:12,400
And because you being in the medical field and the first responder and everything that you're doing.

1181
01:27:12,400 --> 01:27:14,900
Y'all read about stuff and hear about stuff all the time.

1182
01:27:14,900 --> 01:27:20,300
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.

1183
01:27:20,300 --> 01:27:26,600
You can't get away from it, but it's just there's no personal attachment to it.

1184
01:27:26,600 --> 01:27:30,400
You can kind of brush it off and move on because it isn't sad.

1185
01:27:30,400 --> 01:27:39,900
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.

1186
01:27:39,900 --> 01:27:43,100
Because, you know, you're not going to make a change.

1187
01:27:43,100 --> 01:27:47,000
Otherwise, you've really got to give somebody that incentive that push.

1188
01:27:47,000 --> 01:27:57,200
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.

1189
01:27:57,200 --> 01:28:03,000
You know, it's like the best thing to ever happen to Drew would have for him to never been intubated, re intubated.

1190
01:28:03,000 --> 01:28:07,100
You know, if they just bagged him for how, you know, I know that's difficult to think about.

1191
01:28:07,100 --> 01:28:10,600
What it was is, you know, this is kind of really important topic.

1192
01:28:10,600 --> 01:28:20,700
But you probably know this, but, you know, when you use a paralytic, you are required to use continuous waveform capnography.

1193
01:28:20,700 --> 01:28:26,500
Doesn't matter what the situation is, if you use a paralytic, you use continuous waveform capnography.

1194
01:28:26,500 --> 01:28:30,100
It's not a suggestion.

1195
01:28:30,100 --> 01:28:31,900
It's not a guideline.

1196
01:28:31,900 --> 01:28:33,600
It's a you do this.

1197
01:28:33,600 --> 01:28:39,600
Even without a paralytic, just an intubated patient, the capnography is a lifesaver.

1198
01:28:39,600 --> 01:28:43,400
And the ones that go into the monitors now are incredible.

1199
01:28:43,400 --> 01:28:49,400
And the moment that you get any change in that CO2 monitoring, it lets you know.

1200
01:28:49,400 --> 01:28:57,300
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.

1201
01:28:57,300 --> 01:29:00,800
If you're getting good compliance before, chances are you're going to be at oxygen.

1202
01:29:00,800 --> 01:29:01,900
I've done that many times.

1203
01:29:01,900 --> 01:29:09,900
I'm, to not be too dark and moody, I'm the kind of medic that gets the people that don't make it.

1204
01:29:09,900 --> 01:29:11,100
That seems to be my thing.

1205
01:29:11,100 --> 01:29:13,800
And I've never had a cardiac arrest that I've brought back.

1206
01:29:13,800 --> 01:29:17,300
I've had, you know, precodes, but I'm just, that's been my medic route.

1207
01:29:17,300 --> 01:29:31,300
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.

1208
01:29:31,300 --> 01:29:34,800
Very, very poor health at the beginning.

1209
01:29:34,800 --> 01:29:42,600
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.

1210
01:29:42,600 --> 01:29:48,800
And the other thing that blew me away about this whole thing is we have that middle step, which is the King tube.

1211
01:29:48,800 --> 01:29:56,300
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.

1212
01:29:56,300 --> 01:30:01,900
And so not using capnography, not trying a King tube or not just going to bagging the patient.

1213
01:30:01,900 --> 01:30:11,100
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.

1214
01:30:11,100 --> 01:30:16,400
One of the biggest questions I ask when I'm in the back is we've done X, Y and Z.

1215
01:30:16,400 --> 01:30:17,800
What are we missing?

1216
01:30:17,800 --> 01:30:19,800
Because, like you said, that's the ego now.

1217
01:30:19,800 --> 01:30:20,900
I'm tapping out.

1218
01:30:20,900 --> 01:30:24,900
I'm, you know, I'm not seeing what's, you know, what we're not doing.

1219
01:30:24,900 --> 01:30:27,100
Is it us or is it just this person circling the train?

1220
01:30:27,100 --> 01:30:28,500
There's nothing we can do.

1221
01:30:28,500 --> 01:30:34,600
But having, like you said, lowering the ego and asking your EMT, you're a medic and, you know, ask your EMT.

1222
01:30:34,600 --> 01:30:36,500
Are they seeing something with fresh eyes at you or not?

1223
01:30:36,500 --> 01:30:43,400
But those things specifically, that's a very, you know, specific thing is drummed into you.

1224
01:30:43,400 --> 01:30:52,200
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,

1225
01:30:52,200 --> 01:30:55,400
doing a trach, cutting a hole in the airway to get that way.

1226
01:30:55,400 --> 01:31:02,400
We have all these areas of doing it, but if we cannot get oxygen to the patient's blood, then everything else is futile.

1227
01:31:02,400 --> 01:31:04,400
Everything else. Yeah, it's irrelevant.

1228
01:31:04,400 --> 01:31:06,500
Yeah, and that's what I talk about a lot.

1229
01:31:06,500 --> 01:31:15,600
I'm like, and so this is a skill that, you know, paramedics have that you've got to be proficient.

1230
01:31:15,600 --> 01:31:16,400
You've got to be good.

1231
01:31:16,400 --> 01:31:23,900
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.

1232
01:31:23,900 --> 01:31:29,100
It's like, you know, raise your hands if you haven't intubated a patient in the last year or whatever.

1233
01:31:29,100 --> 01:31:36,100
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.

1234
01:31:36,100 --> 01:31:37,100
I always have a problem with a mannequin.

1235
01:31:37,100 --> 01:31:42,900
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,

1236
01:31:42,900 --> 01:31:46,400
no matter how they're intubated, no matter what the circumstances, nothing, everything.

1237
01:31:46,400 --> 01:31:50,900
If they have a tube in their trachea, they should be on waveform capnography.

1238
01:31:50,900 --> 01:31:54,900
That's my feeling because it's just not that, you know, people say, well, that's just not realistic.

1239
01:31:54,900 --> 01:31:58,400
Well, why is that not realistic?

1240
01:31:58,400 --> 01:32:01,900
I don't understand. I know that's been the protocol where I've worked for the last 15 years.

1241
01:32:01,900 --> 01:32:08,900
I mean, it's the only, the gold standard of making sure that tube is in the right place.

1242
01:32:08,900 --> 01:32:16,900
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,

1243
01:32:16,900 --> 01:32:20,400
I'm like, yeah, that gives you a snapshot of that exact moment.

1244
01:32:20,400 --> 01:32:23,900
But five minutes from now, what if something changes?

1245
01:32:23,900 --> 01:32:25,900
You know, you checked it then and everything was good.

1246
01:32:25,900 --> 01:32:30,400
Well, then five minutes later, if something's not good, you don't know it because you don't have it continuous.

1247
01:32:30,400 --> 01:32:31,900
You know what I'm saying?

1248
01:32:31,900 --> 01:32:35,400
There's lots of different things out there, but it's just a matter of, you know,

1249
01:32:35,400 --> 01:32:50,900
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

1250
01:32:50,900 --> 01:32:59,400
when it was asked about, you know, the discussion on RSI, what was done with you or whatever, and

1251
01:32:59,400 --> 01:33:07,900
the vacurolum was brought up again, the vac was given for continuation of sedation and to paralyze him to keep him down.

1252
01:33:07,900 --> 01:33:17,900
You may remember that from what that sentence right there tells me a lot because vacurolum is not a sedative.

1253
01:33:17,900 --> 01:33:25,400
No, no. And like you were saying, if he was pulling the tube and the only thing that you did was add a paralytic,

1254
01:33:25,400 --> 01:33:32,400
then you already know his mentation. You already know that he's somewhat alert and then you just paralyze him without addressing that.

1255
01:33:32,400 --> 01:33:35,900
You know, like you said, you don't want to relive. You don't want to think.

1256
01:33:35,900 --> 01:33:39,900
I mean, it just makes me nauseous now thinking about if that was my son as well.

1257
01:33:39,900 --> 01:33:47,400
It was it was it was to control Drew. It was it was it was used as a chemical restraint versus being emergency,

1258
01:33:47,400 --> 01:33:49,900
emergently necessary to maintain his airway.

1259
01:33:49,900 --> 01:33:55,900
Yeah, but a chemical restraint should be a sedative, not a paralytic in all the protocols I've ever worked for.

1260
01:33:55,900 --> 01:33:59,400
Oh, yeah. And I agree. That's what I'm saying. I completely agree.

1261
01:33:59,400 --> 01:34:08,400
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.

1262
01:34:08,400 --> 01:34:14,900
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.

1263
01:34:14,900 --> 01:34:18,900
I think that's how you say it. There are drugs that reverse the effects of a paralytic.

1264
01:34:18,900 --> 01:34:24,900
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?

1265
01:34:24,900 --> 01:34:29,900
Is there something about the reversal agent that's more dangerous than the paralytic itself?

1266
01:34:29,900 --> 01:34:35,900
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.

1267
01:34:35,900 --> 01:34:38,900
Or people have been talking about the use of ketamine.

1268
01:34:38,900 --> 01:34:42,900
You know, there's that seems to be a big topic nowadays because ketamine is so effective.

1269
01:34:42,900 --> 01:34:45,900
But I think there is a very good tool to have.

1270
01:34:45,900 --> 01:34:50,900
I think people, you know, there are people are worried about addiction or overuse or abuse of it or blah, blah, blah, blah.

1271
01:34:50,900 --> 01:34:55,900
I hear all these things and I'm like, but if done correctly, is it better?

1272
01:34:55,900 --> 01:34:58,900
Does it help? Does it work? You know, what is there?

1273
01:34:58,900 --> 01:35:01,900
So many things I'm just sitting there just all the time.

1274
01:35:01,900 --> 01:35:04,900
I see these topics and I'm just like, this isn't real complicated to me.

1275
01:35:04,900 --> 01:35:07,900
It is really not really all it becomes.

1276
01:35:07,900 --> 01:35:14,900
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.

1277
01:35:14,900 --> 01:35:17,900
It's just it's ridiculous.

1278
01:35:17,900 --> 01:35:22,900
And you get so frustrated because it's like it could be changed.

1279
01:35:22,900 --> 01:35:28,900
You know, really quickly, you know, you know, that's the thing is it just there's so many things you could look at.

1280
01:35:28,900 --> 01:35:37,900
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.

1281
01:35:37,900 --> 01:35:42,900
Of course, like you mentioned to earlier, I actually asked, you know, asked somebody with the nursing board.

1282
01:35:42,900 --> 01:35:48,900
I was like, because the nurse did a pretty good job for the most part of taking notes and everything.

1283
01:35:48,900 --> 01:35:51,900
But I asked, I was like, at what point does this is my exact question.

1284
01:35:51,900 --> 01:35:55,900
I said, at what point did she quit being a secretary and start being a nurse?

1285
01:35:55,900 --> 01:36:04,900
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.

1286
01:36:04,900 --> 01:36:10,900
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.

1287
01:36:10,900 --> 01:36:13,900
Well, there were physical alarm bells going off. The monitor would have been screaming out there.

1288
01:36:13,900 --> 01:36:18,900
Well, there were, but you know what I mean? It's not even like you need to be, you know, shaken into it.

1289
01:36:18,900 --> 01:36:23,900
Well, y'all the thing is they became so and I understand, you know, I understand.

1290
01:36:23,900 --> 01:36:32,900
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.

1291
01:36:32,900 --> 01:36:42,900
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.

1292
01:36:42,900 --> 01:36:49,900
I'm like, why? Because it seems like that was everything from the point on when his heart rate started dropping.

1293
01:36:49,900 --> 01:36:53,900
Everything was to get his heart going. It was not. Why is his heart stopping?

1294
01:36:53,900 --> 01:37:00,900
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.

1295
01:37:00,900 --> 01:37:11,900
And that's things that you know, you can't use, you know, the which, you know, which didn't seem to be there.

1296
01:37:11,900 --> 01:37:18,900
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.

1297
01:37:18,900 --> 01:37:23,900
Well, you hit on a point. I just want to interject for a second, because it's so pertinent.

1298
01:37:23,900 --> 01:37:29,900
You said when when you stop being a secretary and start being a nurse or a medic, here's the sad fact.

1299
01:37:29,900 --> 01:37:40,900
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.

1300
01:37:40,900 --> 01:37:47,900
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.

1301
01:37:47,900 --> 01:37:53,900
So absolutely loved it. But there was this one day where this guy came in.

1302
01:37:53,900 --> 01:38:06,900
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.

1303
01:38:06,900 --> 01:38:18,900
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.

1304
01:38:18,900 --> 01:38:24,900
But let's be honest, it's your skills and your knowledge and your understanding of the protocol that's important.

1305
01:38:24,900 --> 01:38:40,900
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.

1306
01:38:40,900 --> 01:38:58,900
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.

1307
01:38:58,900 --> 01:39:05,900
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.

1308
01:39:05,900 --> 01:39:13,900
Now, I have to say, my last apartment, I take my hat off to them. Our training captain actually organized a cadaver lab.

1309
01:39:13,900 --> 01:39:18,900
And less than a year ago, we got to intubate all these different shapes and sizes.

1310
01:39:18,900 --> 01:39:23,900
And but that's the kind of thing that people have to understand is the same with the fire training.

1311
01:39:23,900 --> 01:39:37,900
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.

1312
01:39:37,900 --> 01:39:45,900
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.

1313
01:39:45,900 --> 01:39:55,900
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.

1314
01:39:55,900 --> 01:40:06,900
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.

1315
01:40:06,900 --> 01:40:14,900
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.

1316
01:40:14,900 --> 01:40:20,900
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.

1317
01:40:20,900 --> 01:40:29,900
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.

1318
01:40:29,900 --> 01:40:43,900
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.

1319
01:40:43,900 --> 01:40:49,900
I mean, or depending on the injury or whatever's happened to them. Physiologically, people are different than mannequins, period.

1320
01:40:49,900 --> 01:41:01,900
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.

1321
01:41:01,900 --> 01:41:04,900
Yeah. And the decision to intubate as well.

1322
01:41:04,900 --> 01:41:16,900
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.

1323
01:41:16,900 --> 01:41:32,900
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.

1324
01:41:32,900 --> 01:41:41,900
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?

1325
01:41:41,900 --> 01:41:55,900
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.

1326
01:41:55,900 --> 01:42:11,900
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.

1327
01:42:11,900 --> 01:42:28,900
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.

1328
01:42:28,900 --> 01:42:46,900
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.

1329
01:42:46,900 --> 01:43:00,900
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.

1330
01:43:00,900 --> 01:43:17,900
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.

1331
01:43:17,900 --> 01:43:37,900
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.

1332
01:43:37,900 --> 01:44:02,900
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.

1333
01:44:02,900 --> 01:44:21,900
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.

1334
01:44:21,900 --> 01:44:50,900
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.

1335
01:44:50,900 --> 01:44:53,900
They were worried about you hurting someone else's feelings.

1336
01:44:53,900 --> 01:45:13,900
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.

1337
01:45:13,900 --> 01:45:36,900
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.

1338
01:45:36,900 --> 01:45:54,900
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.

1339
01:45:54,900 --> 01:46:18,900
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.

1340
01:46:18,900 --> 01:46:37,900
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.

1341
01:46:37,900 --> 01:46:53,900
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.

1342
01:46:53,900 --> 01:47:09,900
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.

1343
01:47:09,900 --> 01:47:34,900
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.

1344
01:47:34,900 --> 01:47:48,900
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.

1345
01:47:48,900 --> 01:48:01,900
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.

1346
01:48:01,900 --> 01:48:18,900
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.

1347
01:48:18,900 --> 01:48:40,900
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.

1348
01:48:40,900 --> 01:48:57,900
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.

1349
01:48:57,900 --> 01:49:13,900
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.

1350
01:49:13,900 --> 01:49:28,900
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.

1351
01:49:28,900 --> 01:49:43,900
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.

1352
01:49:43,900 --> 01:49:56,900
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.

1353
01:49:56,900 --> 01:50:12,900
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.

1354
01:50:12,900 --> 01:50:26,900
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.

1355
01:50:26,900 --> 01:50:35,900
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.

1356
01:50:35,900 --> 01:50:44,900
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.

1357
01:50:44,900 --> 01:50:50,900
The medic that I was under made the decision to RSI.

1358
01:50:50,900 --> 01:51:01,900
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.

1359
01:51:01,900 --> 01:51:10,900
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.

1360
01:51:10,900 --> 01:51:14,900
I will never forget this. There was a physician who came in.

1361
01:51:14,900 --> 01:51:19,900
I mean, it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd had entrance music. This guy was so up his own ass.

1362
01:51:19,900 --> 01:51:32,900
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.

1363
01:51:32,900 --> 01:51:40,900
And every gadget that they had from the bougie to the video device that you're talking about finally got it.

1364
01:51:40,900 --> 01:51:48,900
But the trauma and the time that this lady was not being oxygenated and she was being bagged efficiently in between each one.

1365
01:51:48,900 --> 01:52:03,900
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.

1366
01:52:03,900 --> 01:52:11,900
The ones that treat homeless people different than if it was a celebrity that they know. All these different things.

1367
01:52:11,900 --> 01:52:21,900
And it all boils down to ownership of the position. And it is. It's this police, fire, EMS, military, medicine.

1368
01:52:21,900 --> 01:52:33,900
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.

1369
01:52:33,900 --> 01:52:48,900
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.

1370
01:52:48,900 --> 01:52:55,900
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.

1371
01:52:55,900 --> 01:53:04,900
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.

1372
01:53:04,900 --> 01:53:15,900
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.

1373
01:53:15,900 --> 01:53:41,900
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.

1374
01:53:41,900 --> 01:54:03,900
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.

1375
01:54:03,900 --> 01:54:15,900
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?

1376
01:54:15,900 --> 01:54:24,900
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.

1377
01:54:24,900 --> 01:54:35,900
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.

1378
01:54:35,900 --> 01:54:43,900
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.

1379
01:54:43,900 --> 01:54:56,900
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.

1380
01:54:56,900 --> 01:55:16,900
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?

1381
01:55:16,900 --> 01:55:32,900
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.

1382
01:55:32,900 --> 01:55:52,900
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.

1383
01:55:52,900 --> 01:56:11,900
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.

1384
01:56:11,900 --> 01:56:30,900
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.

1385
01:56:30,900 --> 01:56:47,900
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.

1386
01:56:47,900 --> 01:57:16,900
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.

1387
01:57:16,900 --> 01:57:37,900
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.

1388
01:57:37,900 --> 01:57:47,900
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.

1389
01:57:47,900 --> 01:58:01,900
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.

1390
01:58:01,900 --> 01:58:15,900
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.

1391
01:58:15,900 --> 01:58:27,900
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.

1392
01:58:27,900 --> 01:58:35,900
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.

1393
01:58:35,900 --> 01:58:48,900
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.

1394
01:58:48,900 --> 01:58:54,900
They don't want it to change. And it's like, I don't know. Yeah, it's difficult.

1395
01:58:54,900 --> 01:58:59,900
Well, and I see that I've worked for four departments. I'm just about to start with my fifth now.

1396
01:58:59,900 --> 01:59:08,900
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.

1397
01:59:08,900 --> 01:59:22,900
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.

1398
01:59:22,900 --> 01:59:28,900
But that means funding to that means, you know, staffing your department properly, funding the training.

1399
01:59:28,900 --> 01:59:46,900
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.

1400
01:59:46,900 --> 01:59:56,900
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.

1401
01:59:56,900 --> 02:00:04,900
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.

1402
02:00:04,900 --> 02:00:06,900
It becomes an issue. Yeah. Yeah. But it shouldn't.

1403
02:00:06,900 --> 02:00:16,900
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.

1404
02:00:16,900 --> 02:00:22,900
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.

1405
02:00:22,900 --> 02:00:27,900
And the people that we serve need to understand that, too, and not fight every time.

1406
02:00:27,900 --> 02:00:38,900
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.

1407
02:00:38,900 --> 02:00:47,900
But especially for some reason, at the moment, our current climate that helping other people's philosophy doesn't seem to to be popular.

1408
02:00:47,900 --> 02:00:50,900
It's the kind of I got mine, screw everyone else that seems to be good.

1409
02:00:50,900 --> 02:01:00,900
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.

1410
02:01:00,900 --> 02:01:05,900
We're thinking about the other people, even if you're fine. Yeah.

1411
02:01:05,900 --> 02:01:10,900
Yeah, it's a yeah. I said there's there are so many.

1412
02:01:10,900 --> 02:01:21,900
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?

1413
02:01:21,900 --> 02:01:25,900
This is just kind of like a basic one thing I was thinking of one day.

1414
02:01:25,900 --> 02:01:40,900
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.

1415
02:01:40,900 --> 02:01:45,900
And you just like you have deputies riding around patrol cars, but you've got paramedics, but you hire paramedics.

1416
02:01:45,900 --> 02:01:51,900
Now, of course, you can supplement with EMTs as you need them, but you always have a paramedic available wherever.

1417
02:01:51,900 --> 02:01:55,900
You have stations throughout the county that can reach you have response times you're trying to meet.

1418
02:01:55,900 --> 02:02:02,900
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.

1419
02:02:02,900 --> 02:02:09,900
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.

1420
02:02:09,900 --> 02:02:12,900
They're all on the same page throughout the county.

1421
02:02:12,900 --> 02:02:17,900
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.

1422
02:02:17,900 --> 02:02:40,900
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.

1423
02:02:40,900 --> 02:02:49,900
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.

1424
02:02:49,900 --> 02:03:03,900
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.

1425
02:03:03,900 --> 02:03:09,900
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.

1426
02:03:09,900 --> 02:03:28,900
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.

1427
02:03:28,900 --> 02:03:40,900
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.

1428
02:03:40,900 --> 02:03:47,900
But like I think particularly in our state, I think paramedics are very undervalued, very underappreciated.

1429
02:03:47,900 --> 02:04:01,900
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.

1430
02:04:01,900 --> 02:04:08,900
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.

1431
02:04:08,900 --> 02:04:17,900
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.

1432
02:04:17,900 --> 02:04:26,900
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.

1433
02:04:26,900 --> 02:04:39,900
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.

1434
02:04:39,900 --> 02:04:43,900
You know what I'm saying? They've got a lot of responsibility on their head. That's not saying anything.

1435
02:04:43,900 --> 02:04:48,900
That's what I'm saying. I'm not belittling anything about their certification, the school amount of schooling or whatever.

1436
02:04:48,900 --> 02:04:57,900
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.

1437
02:04:57,900 --> 02:05:07,900
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.

1438
02:05:07,900 --> 02:05:19,900
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.

1439
02:05:19,900 --> 02:05:25,900
No doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah, I do. And it's frustrating.

1440
02:05:25,900 --> 02:05:34,900
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?

1441
02:05:34,900 --> 02:05:41,900
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.

1442
02:05:41,900 --> 02:05:52,900
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.

1443
02:05:52,900 --> 02:05:58,900
I feel like it's kind of reaching. I think we're getting to where people understand what happened with Drew.

1444
02:05:58,900 --> 02:06:05,900
What is at stake with it? And I think that it's I think it's gaining a little bit of momentum.

1445
02:06:05,900 --> 02:06:12,900
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.

1446
02:06:12,900 --> 02:06:21,900
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.

1447
02:06:21,900 --> 02:06:28,900
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.

1448
02:06:28,900 --> 02:06:36,900
But there are so many people here locally or not 10 miles away that have no clue.

1449
02:06:36,900 --> 02:06:42,900
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?

1450
02:06:42,900 --> 02:06:51,900
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.

1451
02:06:51,900 --> 02:06:59,900
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.

1452
02:06:59,900 --> 02:07:07,900
And obviously, this is a very focused audience. So most of the people listening to this are responders or or, you know,

1453
02:07:07,900 --> 02:07:12,900
E.R. personnel, you know, trauma medicine and the military, whatever their role is.

1454
02:07:12,900 --> 02:07:19,900
But this is the same exact thing that I talk about with the fireside and the fitness and everything else is like you said,

1455
02:07:19,900 --> 02:07:24,900
when we're in the back just wearing your EMS hat hat, we are a jack of all trades.

1456
02:07:24,900 --> 02:07:28,900
Now add on the firefighter skills if you happen to be a fire medic.

1457
02:07:28,900 --> 02:07:35,900
You know, we are responsible for so much. And this is just this obviously is a conversation fundamentally

1458
02:07:35,900 --> 02:07:39,900
about training and the horrendous things that can happen if we don't.

1459
02:07:39,900 --> 02:07:45,900
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

1460
02:07:45,900 --> 02:07:53,900
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.

1461
02:07:53,900 --> 02:07:56,900
But we are we are responsible for our own skills.

1462
02:07:56,900 --> 02:08:03,900
But then, you know, to be completely fair, these men and women, a lot of times are paying for their own training, you know,

1463
02:08:03,900 --> 02:08:07,900
because they're the ones that take the job seriously and we need to look at the employer.

1464
02:08:07,900 --> 02:08:11,900
And certainly if you're a chief, listen to this or or even higher than that.

1465
02:08:11,900 --> 02:08:17,900
If you do not create this environment for these men and women to be able to train you, you know,

1466
02:08:17,900 --> 02:08:26,900
you again are part of this this this epidemic that's happening at the moment with complacency and reduction in levels of training.

1467
02:08:26,900 --> 02:08:38,900
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,

1468
02:08:38,900 --> 02:08:41,900
and really praise those that do.

1469
02:08:41,900 --> 02:08:48,900
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.

1470
02:08:48,900 --> 02:08:54,900
That's another thing I've kind of you know, I just I really feel like, you know, that's something else.

1471
02:08:54,900 --> 02:09:00,900
Being a North Carolina Highway Patrolman, I honestly feel like it's one of the best law enforcement agencies in the country.

1472
02:09:00,900 --> 02:09:09,900
I really expected different outcomes once this got to kind of the state level.

1473
02:09:09,900 --> 02:09:17,900
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,

1474
02:09:17,900 --> 02:09:30,900
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,

1475
02:09:30,900 --> 02:09:37,900
there would have been no question about what would have happened to me or what would have been done.

1476
02:09:37,900 --> 02:09:47,900
And it really, really surprised me when it did get to a state level, the lack of response, I guess.

1477
02:09:47,900 --> 02:09:58,900
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.

1478
02:09:58,900 --> 02:10:13,900
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,

1479
02:10:13,900 --> 02:10:19,900
so many people don't, it's not a good thing when things don't look good for health care in general.

1480
02:10:19,900 --> 02:10:28,900
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.

1481
02:10:28,900 --> 02:10:35,900
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.

1482
02:10:35,900 --> 02:10:45,900
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.

1483
02:10:45,900 --> 02:10:55,900
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.

1484
02:10:55,900 --> 02:11:05,900
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.

1485
02:11:05,900 --> 02:11:14,900
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.

1486
02:11:14,900 --> 02:11:19,900
I know how tough it is. I know how stressful it is. I know what you got to deal with.

1487
02:11:19,900 --> 02:11:37,900
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.

1488
02:11:37,900 --> 02:11:45,900
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.

1489
02:11:45,900 --> 02:11:54,900
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.

1490
02:11:54,900 --> 02:11:57,900
Just kind of clear your head. Think about what's going on.

1491
02:11:57,900 --> 02:12:07,900
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.

1492
02:12:07,900 --> 02:12:12,900
They could have taken 30 seconds step back and said, OK, what's going on? Not done anything.

1493
02:12:12,900 --> 02:12:19,900
Just said, let's think about this, you know, 30 seconds wouldn't have killed Drew. 30 minutes definitely did.

1494
02:12:19,900 --> 02:12:26,900
Yeah. And that phrase you fall to the level of training. You don't you don't rise to the level of expectation.

1495
02:12:26,900 --> 02:12:30,900
It's so true. If you haven't trained, you're going to get that tunnel vision.

1496
02:12:30,900 --> 02:12:37,900
If you if you constantly training and, you know, using those skills and and putting yourself through a crucible.

1497
02:12:37,900 --> 02:12:42,900
And I mean, there's not putting myself on a pedestal right now, but I take airway classes.

1498
02:12:42,900 --> 02:12:49,900
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,

1499
02:12:49,900 --> 02:12:58,900
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,

1500
02:12:58,900 --> 02:13:02,900
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.

1501
02:13:02,900 --> 02:13:08,900
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.

1502
02:13:08,900 --> 02:13:16,900
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.

1503
02:13:16,900 --> 02:13:20,900
But the problem is a lot of people are scared of looking silly. So therefore they don't train.

1504
02:13:20,900 --> 02:13:27,900
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.

1505
02:13:27,900 --> 02:13:33,900
Everything's fine. And then something happens, some catastrophic event. And then it's too late. You can't take back time then.

1506
02:13:33,900 --> 02:13:41,900
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you, you know, talking to me and listening to me and and talk.

1507
02:13:41,900 --> 02:13:47,900
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.

1508
02:13:47,900 --> 02:13:54,900
It is tough, like I say, there's there's so many things. Health is so complex, complicated and complex.

1509
02:13:54,900 --> 02:13:57,900
I mean, it really is. I was thinking trying to say both words at the same time.

1510
02:13:57,900 --> 02:14:06,900
But health care is, you know, of all the professions I've, you know, in fields that I've worked with dealt with,

1511
02:14:06,900 --> 02:14:13,900
that's probably one of the most jumbled, convoluted bunch of mess I've ever seen in my entire life,

1512
02:14:13,900 --> 02:14:21,900
because there's just so much that there's so many layers. I mean, talk about an onion, buddy. It really is.

1513
02:14:21,900 --> 02:14:27,900
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.

1514
02:14:27,900 --> 02:14:31,900
And it's and it's tough. It really, really is.

1515
02:14:31,900 --> 02:14:37,900
But it starts with us and everyone listening, whatever level, whatever agency they work for, whatever profession they're in.

1516
02:14:37,900 --> 02:14:41,900
It takes us getting up in the morning and saying, I'm going to be better today,

1517
02:14:41,900 --> 02:14:46,900
whether it's managing a company that's in health care or whether it's being an EMT.

1518
02:14:46,900 --> 02:14:58,900
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.

1519
02:14:58,900 --> 02:15:05,900
And I think you're saying to have, for example, an agency that only has EMTs when there's a paramedic certification available,

1520
02:15:05,900 --> 02:15:09,900
why would you not be the best version of EMS that you possibly could?

1521
02:15:09,900 --> 02:15:14,900
So, but with that being said, I know we've gone well on two hours now.

1522
02:15:14,900 --> 02:15:18,900
So I want to I want to let you go. But before we do, firstly, thank you so much.

1523
02:15:18,900 --> 02:15:25,900
I mean, you know, obviously, your your story is heart wrenching and it's it should be the fear of every single one listening.

1524
02:15:25,900 --> 02:15:28,900
I know it is daily. I get the imposter syndrome.

1525
02:15:28,900 --> 02:15:32,900
They call it where, you know, you're like, am I going to be able to handle this?

1526
02:15:32,900 --> 02:15:35,900
Am I a good enough medic? Am I a good enough firefighter?

1527
02:15:35,900 --> 02:15:40,900
But I think that's a healthy thing because you always then push to be better and better and better.

1528
02:15:40,900 --> 02:15:47,900
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.

1529
02:15:47,900 --> 02:15:50,900
They said if you're not a little bit scared, you shouldn't be in this job.

1530
02:15:50,900 --> 02:15:52,900
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

1531
02:15:52,900 --> 02:15:57,900
It really it really it really says a lot of the people who go into it completely confident.

1532
02:15:57,900 --> 02:16:00,900
That's that's a dangerous thing. You should always have that.

1533
02:16:00,900 --> 02:16:09,900
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.

1534
02:16:09,900 --> 02:16:18,900
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.

1535
02:16:18,900 --> 02:16:27,900
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.

1536
02:16:27,900 --> 02:16:30,900
And you have no idea what you're doing when you do it.

1537
02:16:30,900 --> 02:16:35,900
You know what I'm saying? You think it's that one person, but Drew was not just the one person.

1538
02:16:35,900 --> 02:16:39,900
What happened after his death affected so many people.

1539
02:16:39,900 --> 02:16:45,900
And, you know, so you that's that's something not adding more pressure like you need it.

1540
02:16:45,900 --> 02:16:48,900
But you're not you're not just treating that patient when you're treating them.

1541
02:16:48,900 --> 02:16:51,900
You know, there's a lot of people depending on you.

1542
02:16:51,900 --> 02:16:54,900
You know, and it's a.

1543
02:16:54,900 --> 02:17:03,900
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.

1544
02:17:03,900 --> 02:17:05,900
Please go to the website. Just read the story.

1545
02:17:05,900 --> 02:17:11,900
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.

1546
02:17:11,900 --> 02:17:18,900
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.

1547
02:17:18,900 --> 02:17:24,900
And we're not by no means are we ever.

1548
02:17:24,900 --> 02:17:35,900
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.

1549
02:17:35,900 --> 02:17:45,900
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.

1550
02:17:45,900 --> 02:17:49,900
Well, this is there's a 100 percent cure for a lot of these deaths.

1551
02:17:49,900 --> 02:17:55,900
I mean, it's preventable because it's human errors. It's human. It's it can be corrected.

1552
02:17:55,900 --> 02:17:58,900
Don't break what's not, you know, don't fix what's not broken.

1553
02:17:58,900 --> 02:18:03,900
You know, you've heard that phrase before plenty of time, plenty of times.

1554
02:18:03,900 --> 02:18:09,900
You know, it's a. Anyway, thank you for everything.

1555
02:18:09,900 --> 02:18:11,900
Well, no, no problem. I mean, like I said, thank you.

1556
02:18:11,900 --> 02:18:18,900
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.

1557
02:18:18,900 --> 02:18:24,900
And now you're sitting in the blimmin, you know, another house because your damn house was destroyed as well.

1558
02:18:24,900 --> 02:18:30,900
You know, you've been through the wringer, but I just wanted to to help tell your story.

1559
02:18:30,900 --> 02:18:33,900
And most importantly, add another. You talk about the onion.

1560
02:18:33,900 --> 02:18:35,900
I'm doing the reverse. I'm building an onion.

1561
02:18:35,900 --> 02:18:39,900
Each of these layers is pushing people towards ownership, their profession,

1562
02:18:39,900 --> 02:18:46,900
but also the profession that we're in, making them understand that some of the ways we're doing things,

1563
02:18:46,900 --> 02:18:53,900
you know, whether it's lack of training, lack of equipment, overworking of the people that it's great in a perfect storm

1564
02:18:53,900 --> 02:19:03,900
for accidental officer involved shootings or or medical malpractice, because, you know, on that side, you know, we're not training.

1565
02:19:03,900 --> 02:19:07,900
We're exhausted. So it's not picking on the members of the profession.

1566
02:19:07,900 --> 02:19:11,900
It's picking on all of us. Every single one of us needs to own our position,

1567
02:19:11,900 --> 02:19:16,900
whether we are the person with the hands on the patient or the ones at the top, you know,

1568
02:19:16,900 --> 02:19:21,900
securing budgets to make us the most effective responders we can be. Thank you so much.

1569
02:19:21,900 --> 02:19:25,900
I really appreciate you taking the time. I know it's been a little longer than 90 minutes,

1570
02:19:25,900 --> 02:19:30,900
but I think it was needed to tell the story properly. All right.

1571
02:19:30,900 --> 02:19:51,900
I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.