Bullhead City, AZChristmas is a sad time of year for Mary but last Christmas was worse--her husband went into renal failure and passed away December 17, 2007. Mary believes heparin was a contributing factor, or possibly the cause if she could prove heparin contamination.
"About a year ago my husband, Ronal, started dialysis," says Mary. "He went 3 times a week and was given heparin every time. At the beginning of dialysis, they inserted tubes in his chest and after a year the site had to be changed. The procedure was simple and required day surgery to change the site to his arm. Ronal had heart problems, he wasn't in the best of shape, but he walked into the hospital that day under his own steam, he was fine. But during surgery Ronal developed a bloody nose so they kept him in overnight.
From the medical reports I have, they gave him 10,000 ml of heparin (I am looking at the hospital order as we speak) and he went into renal failure. I don't know what happened except that we lost him at that point—he didn't know any of us, he wasn't there anymore.
I got a call at 4.45 am from the nurse; she said his temperature was elevated slightly. I was getting ready for work and asked her if anything was going on. 'No,' she said, 'the doctor thinks it is just an infection.' Seven minutes later she phoned again and said they were coding him. When we got there just minutes later (we live close to the hospital) Ronal was dead. He was definitely not ready to die. That was December 15th, 2007 and it is a terrible time right now.
They just said his heart gave up. I have reams of medical papers here because I went to administration and asked for everything. I had my doubts right away; looking at the records, he was given so much heparin that I believe it was a contributing factor to his death.
One lawyer asked what monetary value I wanted from this lawsuit. I told him that I don't care about any financial gain--I just want to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else.
I saw ads about tainted heparin on TV and I thought about all the times he was given it—he was given heparin injections for over a year and I think it is very likely he was given some of the contaminated heparin that might have caused the infection, because he was on dialysis at the same time as the heparin recall.
I asked the hospital for an autopsy; they told me to ask the coroner. The coroner said I had to pay $2,500 which I didn't have. So now I will never know if he had tainted heparin. It is so frustrating for me; I just don't want another family to go through what we had to—it just isn't right.
I'm not looking forward to Christmas but I have grandchildren so we will be celebrating to some extent and I know that is what my husband would have wanted. The kids are 12 and 6; they don't need to remember Christmas as a sad time; I just hope heparin doesn't cause another family to grieve."