Manuel Perez

My dad walked into the hospital with a fever. That’s it. Previous to this fever, he was strong, athletic and independent. He sat in the hospital for almost a month going through an array of tests trying to find the infection. Nothing, they said he was in perfect health. He was then transferred to a bigger hospital where he began to deteriorate.

First his lungs filled with fluid, he was completely bedridden. The next night he went into respiratory failure. The doctor performed a bedside bronchoscopy, sending him into septic shock. The bronch was performed at 1:30pm, he was septic on a ventilator at 3pm. He never came back to us. His lungs failed, then his kidneys, then his liver, then, finally, his heart.

The death certificate says due to pneumonia. (Sepsis and Pneumonia) We were never told he had this. I can not begin to describe the sense of loss we feel. We have no answers, no closure. A man who exercised daily, who was told his body was in perfect health and they could not find the reason for the fever: is now gone. We are completely blindsided.

Source: Sam, daughter