Dear Congresswoman Carson,

I lost my mother in 1995 after she was in a coma for seven weeks induced by poor medical care.    She was in a local hospital and suffered a myocardial infarction in her hospital bed.  She presented symptoms and perhaps her life may have been spared had the hospital personnel or physician simply put her on a heart monitor.  Despite her and my pleadings for nearly twenty four hours before she arrested, nothing was done to treat her symptoms.  She was hospitalized for pneumonia.  When  my mother had the MI, she was resuscitated, and was in a coma for nearly seven weeks before she died.  My mother was a firm believer in life support.  When she arrested,  a nurse attempted to convince me to turn off the ventilator, but, basing my beliefs on what my mother would have wanted, I refused.  In Colorado, the law requires the next of kin to be given medical power of attorney regarding the unconscious person.
That nurse's opinion regarding what I "should do" and the opinions of about 50% of the other nurses who badgered me daily was to "allow my mother to die".  My mother's primary care physician agreed with them and he too constantly badgered me allow my mother to die.  He would discuss her "vegetative state" in the room in her presence, he would talk about ending her life in front of her,  when I would ask him not to, he would tell me she couldn't hear anyway and it didn't matter because she was a vegetable, and couldn't understand.  Tears were seen in her eyes during some of these bedside debates.  I had to go to the hospital administration on three occasions and ask that these issues not be mentioned in her presence.
Approximately seventeen days after the MI, my mother was weaned off of the ventilator.  She did not use a ventilator at all for nearly a month, until the day before she died.  When she began breathing on her own, instead of encouraging me, the physician and the nurses began to badger me to remove other life supports from my mother and "allow her to die".  These life supports were food and fluids only.    There were several occasions when nurses who did not agree with ending my mother's life pointed out to me that the physician did or did not do appropriate things to keep my mother alive as I requested.  I had been talking to the Coma Recovery Center in New York and following their advice, my actions to do so were perceived by the primary physician as  eccentric.  Any signs of improvement were ignored by the primary physician and he refused to do further testing for improvement, even though later tests done on my mother's brain did show improvement.  A nurse entered a conversation in her notes that I had with two doctors, she quoted me as saying "Daughter states that she will not turn off anything, if God wants mother to die she will die, no matter what."  These doctors were attempting to convince me to end my mother's life.  My mother died on the 59^th day of her Medicare Coverage, she was in an HMO that would have been responsible for  all of the hospital bills had she lived another day.  I was encouraged to apply for Medicaid for her, but I did not think she would wish to be on public assistance.  A week before she died,  our family had made a decision to take her back east to a Coma Recovery Hospital, at this point she was  stable enough for the local hospital to release her to a nursing home, yet, I was still "advised" to end her life.
Several other families, whose loved ones were in similar situations, having entered the hospital for something else, and suffering an MI as in patients, also ended up in comas in the ICU Unit.  In seven weeks, I got to know most of these families.  All of them were advised "allow their loved ones to die", eighty per cent did as they were told, despite the guilt they felt for the loved one, knowing of the wishes.  One woman was removed from a ventilator, she did not die, so they then removed the feeding tubes and fluids.  She lived for thirty six hours after the removal of the feeding tube and fluids, her children agonized  because they felt that their mother was suffering, the hospital personnel assured them that her expressions meant nothing and that she was not in any pain.  This woman originally survived an MI, recovered nicely in ICU and was moved to telemetry, where she aspirated and was found unconscious, then returned to the ICU Unit.  I witnessed another doctor tell a family of another woman who aspirated on the floor this,  "Your mother is old and it is time for her to die, turn off that damn machine so we can all go home"  One daughter fought with the doctor, the other siblings apologized to the doctor and they turned off the ventilator.  Another woman, whose 42 year old husband was in a coma, refused to do as the doctor recommended, she was told he had 0 chance of recovery, and it was time for him to die.  He came out of his coma, recovered  and lived two more years.  Another family ignored the opinions of doom and their loved one recovered and is still alive to date and doing well.  The only other survivors I know of were taken out of that hospital.  All of the others are dead.
I filed complaints with the medical and nursing boards.  The medical board dismissed my compliant.  The nursing board took action on two of the three nurses I filed complaints on.  I recently got copies of two letters of admonition regarding the nursing care my mother received.  Several local nurses assisted me in preparing the complaints, the nursing board dismissed the original complaints at a luncheon meeting.  I spoke with the board administrator and she indicated that if one of the nurses who helped me with the complaints would simply write her a letter, she would see what she could do to reopen the complaints process.  I asked the nurses to do this, they all refused, saying that they couldn't , they could lost their jobs if they got involved.  I just didn't get it.  Finally one day several of the nurses sat me down and gave me a three hour lesson in peer review and the code of silence.  So, I found two out of state nurses to review the records, one was on the Board of the Calif. Nurses Assoc. And the other an administrative nurse back east.  I did not know either of them, but they were both  sympathetic to the cause and reviewed the records for free.  Paying for the review would have hurt the credibility.  Both nurse's letters' said precisely what the local nurses told me to include in the original complaints.  The administrator did keep her word, an investigation was opened, based on the two out of state letters, not my original complaints, even though they said the same thing.  The investigation warranted the letters of admonition.  These letters never would have been issued based on a consumer complaint alone.  The medical board told me that they would look at the physician complaints again if I did the same thing and had a physician review the records.  Unfortunately, I could not find one who would do it for free.  Peer review should be reporting these things to the regulatory agencies.  They are not.  The Board's act on nearly 100% of all peer review complaints filed.  Sadly, the Board's dismiss the majority of all consumer complaints, without checking their validity.  Perhaps the regulatory agencies believe that peer review is effective, it is not.
If you have any questions or if any of my mother's medical records could assist you , please call me at 719-564-0280.  Again, thank you for your respect for human life and God Bless you.

Sincerely,