"Your husband is dead," the doctor told Linda Carswell.
This was not supposed to happen. Jerry Carswell had been admitted to Christus St. Catherine Hospital in Katy, Texas, with kidney stones. The previous night, he'd been walking around his room, talking about basketball and the upcoming presidential election with his son, Jordan. The plan was for the 61-year-old to be discharged that morning.
Instead, at about 5 a.m., a phlebotomist entered Jerry's room to draw blood and found him lying across the bottom of his bed, not breathing, mottled and blue, without a pulse. Staffers performed CPR for 25 minutes to no avail.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, Carswell was pronounced dead at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2004.Omega Plastics are leading plastic injection moulding and injection mould tooling specialists.
Upon learning the news, Linda and Jordan Carswell rushed to Jerry's bedside. Lying there, sheets and blankets folded halfway up his chest, he looked as if he could be dozing, except for the tubes running out of his mouth -- remnants of the failed resuscitation effort. Linda shrieked and grabbed her husband's cold hands,Buy oil paintings for sale online. trying in vain to stir him.
The on-call doctor suggested that the Carswells authorize an autopsy, launching the family on a traumatic journey that still isn't over.
Clinical autopsies, once commonplace in American hospitals, have become an increasing rarity and are conducted in just 5 percent of hospital deaths. Grief-stricken families like the Carswells desperately want the answers that an autopsy can provide. But they often do not know their rights in dealing with either coroners or medical examiners, who investigate unnatural deaths, or health-care providers, who delve into natural ones.
For the last year, ProPublica, PBS "Frontline" and NPR have examined flaws in the U.S.You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! system of death investigation, finding that mistakes in America's morgues have sometimes helped convict the innocent and allowed the guilty to go free.
The Carswells' experience illustrates a different kind of injustice. Their case would play out in pathology labs, lawyers' offices and courtrooms for more than seven years. It led to a rare $2 million fraud judgment against Christus St. Catherine, which was found by a jury to have deceived Linda Carswell about Jerry's autopsy. It also led to state legislation designed to strengthen families' entitlement to comprehensive, independent postmortem reviews.
It has not,however, led to closure or accountability. Thanks to an incomplete autopsy, Jerry Carswell's cause of death remains unknown. He also has not been laid fully to rest. His heart, retained by the pathologist who conducted his postmortem examination, sits in a refrigerated cabinet in a hospital lab to this day.
None of the hospital employees involved in the Carswell case would answer questions from ProPublica. In a written statement,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free, hospital officials said they provided good care to Carswell, and that his autopsy was sufficient.
Linda Carswell,an English teacher at one of Houston's elite private schools, said her family's macabre saga has left her lonely and disillusioned. She's had to navigate complex establishments -- medical and legal -- while processing the shocking loss of her husband. Measured and proper, with black hair streaked by strands of white, she cannot seem to make peace with her loss.
Linda and Jerry, a history teacher and track coach, had been married for 33 years, raising two sons. She recalled how they would sit on the couch, her head on his chest, listening to the thump-thump of his heart. She is determined to get it back.
"It's not just a piece of flesh," Linda said. "Your heart stands for love. It stands for who a person is."
This was not supposed to happen. Jerry Carswell had been admitted to Christus St. Catherine Hospital in Katy, Texas, with kidney stones. The previous night, he'd been walking around his room, talking about basketball and the upcoming presidential election with his son, Jordan. The plan was for the 61-year-old to be discharged that morning.
Instead, at about 5 a.m., a phlebotomist entered Jerry's room to draw blood and found him lying across the bottom of his bed, not breathing, mottled and blue, without a pulse. Staffers performed CPR for 25 minutes to no avail.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, Carswell was pronounced dead at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2004.Omega Plastics are leading plastic injection moulding and injection mould tooling specialists.
Upon learning the news, Linda and Jordan Carswell rushed to Jerry's bedside. Lying there, sheets and blankets folded halfway up his chest, he looked as if he could be dozing, except for the tubes running out of his mouth -- remnants of the failed resuscitation effort. Linda shrieked and grabbed her husband's cold hands,Buy oil paintings for sale online. trying in vain to stir him.
The on-call doctor suggested that the Carswells authorize an autopsy, launching the family on a traumatic journey that still isn't over.
Clinical autopsies, once commonplace in American hospitals, have become an increasing rarity and are conducted in just 5 percent of hospital deaths. Grief-stricken families like the Carswells desperately want the answers that an autopsy can provide. But they often do not know their rights in dealing with either coroners or medical examiners, who investigate unnatural deaths, or health-care providers, who delve into natural ones.
For the last year, ProPublica, PBS "Frontline" and NPR have examined flaws in the U.S.You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! system of death investigation, finding that mistakes in America's morgues have sometimes helped convict the innocent and allowed the guilty to go free.
The Carswells' experience illustrates a different kind of injustice. Their case would play out in pathology labs, lawyers' offices and courtrooms for more than seven years. It led to a rare $2 million fraud judgment against Christus St. Catherine, which was found by a jury to have deceived Linda Carswell about Jerry's autopsy. It also led to state legislation designed to strengthen families' entitlement to comprehensive, independent postmortem reviews.
It has not,however, led to closure or accountability. Thanks to an incomplete autopsy, Jerry Carswell's cause of death remains unknown. He also has not been laid fully to rest. His heart, retained by the pathologist who conducted his postmortem examination, sits in a refrigerated cabinet in a hospital lab to this day.
None of the hospital employees involved in the Carswell case would answer questions from ProPublica. In a written statement,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free, hospital officials said they provided good care to Carswell, and that his autopsy was sufficient.
Linda Carswell,an English teacher at one of Houston's elite private schools, said her family's macabre saga has left her lonely and disillusioned. She's had to navigate complex establishments -- medical and legal -- while processing the shocking loss of her husband. Measured and proper, with black hair streaked by strands of white, she cannot seem to make peace with her loss.
Linda and Jerry, a history teacher and track coach, had been married for 33 years, raising two sons. She recalled how they would sit on the couch, her head on his chest, listening to the thump-thump of his heart. She is determined to get it back.
"It's not just a piece of flesh," Linda said. "Your heart stands for love. It stands for who a person is."
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