Evelyn Andrist and Cali Andrist

My mother raised 4 kids on her own, 2 of which were handicapped. In 2003 she went into a big name hospital (the same one where John Ritter died) for elective surgery, and died there from sepsis. We watched her writhe in pain from her organs shutting down…it was horrific. One of my sisters was there, she’s mentally retarded, with the mentality of a 4-year-old. She watched as our mother slipped away from us. When my mother finally passed, I became my sister’s full-time care giver.

Flash forward to last week. My sister had a stomach ache all day…I thought she had stomach flu or something. But later that night she was worse so I took her to the ER (in the same hospital where our mother had died). We were in the ER for 12 hours and all they did was one CT scan. They diagnosed her with blockage of the bowel and admitted her to the hospital. During this time, they gave her no pain medication, no antibiotics. By 10:00 the next morning, there still was no pain medication (she was suffering pain not only from the blockage, but she also has scoliosis and her back was killing her from laying there so long), but they finally gave her an antibiotic and a pain med called “dilaudid.” Within 20 seconds, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she had passed out. They sent her down for a second CT Scan (with dye). When she came back, she was dead.

They kept calling her a “DNR,” even though she wasn’t. I don’t know for sure what happened, but a lot of cover-up was happening around me. Ten days later, the doctor still had not signed the death certificate. I ended up having a private autopsy done and the preliminary results showed a strangulated bowel full of bacteria that had become septic. They told me that had they done emergency surgery right away, my sister would still be alive today. They told me that my sister had to have been in horrendous pain from the sepsis and the bowel obstruction.

I’m now pursuing a lawsuit, but I have now lost 2 of my loved ones from (at least in part) to sepsis.

EVERYONE needs to be very careful when they are in a hospital. I recommend having a cell phone with you the whole time where you can take photographs and take notes about what and when things happened, or didn’t happen. The more I read the timeline I created of my sister’s death, the more I’m horrified by what went on in that hospital. She never even had a sip of water or an ice chip brought to her.

Source: By Eric Andrist (Evelyn's son and Cali's brother)