A veteran died in Houston on Sunday because coronavirus patients fill up intensive care beds, and he couldn’t get one in time to save his life.
According to CBS News, Daniel Wilkinson, 46, who served two deployments in Afghanistan, died of treatable gallstone pancreatitis after waiting seven hours for an ICU bed.
Wilkinson suddenly felt very sick on Saturday and his mother, Michelle Puget, rushed him to the local emergency room in Bellville, Texas. He was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis and would need an ICU bed and a procedure to resolve the blockage.
“The doctor was trying to find him an ICU bed,” Puget said. “He said ‘we have been refused so far.’ He said ‘we have called Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Colorado.’”
The family eventually learned that a Houston VA hospital will be able to treat him but by then it was too late, his organs were already shutting down, according to KPRC.
Wilkinson died within 24 hours after he walked into the emergency room.
“I think the doctors did everything they could once they got him,” said Puget. “But…it had been [seven] hours. And it’s something that needed to be taken care of right away.”
“He loved his country,” Puget, told “CBS This Morning”. “He served two deployments in Afghanistan, came home with a Purple Heart, and it was a gallstone that took him out.”
Wilkinson’s story comes amid reports that COVID patients are overwhelming Texas hospitals because of the latest surge in cases.
“There are many patients that are not doing well,” Dr. Shawn Nishi, an associate professor of critical care medicine at UTMB told ABC News. “It’s very chaotic, because these patients are very unpredictable. At one moment they look great and the next moment, they’re dying. … It is a ‘hair on fire’ time in the ICUs.”
