The Complete Patient

There seem to be two complaints in the comments on my previous couple posts. The first has to do with the white-on-black typeface. I hear your pain, and I have changed to this format that features old-fashioned black-on-white. This design was originally my second choice in terms of appearance, but the reading problem has made it number one. Hopefully, it will stick.

The second complaint is more challenging, and that concerns whether I was unfair to the Martin family with respect to their video of Chris on YouTube, and somehow called into question the honesty of the Martins and their lawyer, Bill Marler when I said the editing was “sloppy” in handling the dates. I have gone back and reviewed a number of items and realize now that I was mistaken. The dates on the video are accurate, and I apologize to the Martins and Bill Marler for suggesting otherwise.

But in reviewing all various materials, I have come to realize that the video is perhaps more misleading than I originally thought, beginning with the title, “HUS from raw milk, Chris Martin.”

I was hampered in my review because none of the principals in this situation will speak with me. Mary McGonigle-Martin has, since Marler filed a court suit early this year against Mark McAfee, refused to discuss events publicly, and she did so again in the last few days when I tried to engage her. Her lawyer, Marler, has decided to refrain from saying more since his comments of a few days ago. When I went back to him late yesterday with a request that he follow up on a commitment he made to send me a summary of Chris Martin’s medical records, so I could check the dates, he wrote back, “You can get all if this from Mark. I will let this all play out through the legal system.”

Anyway, Mark has similarly refused to discuss the Martin situation with me, for the same reasons as Mary—there’s a court case pending. That’s common practice in such situations. No one in such cases wants to risk poisoning the juror pool, and in the process offending a judge, by saying something or doing something controversial.

All of which makes the simple act of posting the video August 21 all the more puzzling. But anyway, I decided to begin by going back to the journal Mary originally sent me in early 2007 (previously published in fuller form on this blog), from the days of Chris’ illness in late 2006. And here’s what she stated during the dates in question:

9/16 It was now 2:00 a.m. The ventilator was managing Chris’s every breath…

9/20 Chris would spend nearly five full days on the ventilator… Over these five days we had extensive discussions with (the nephrologist) about our son’s condition upon arrival. He was dismayed to say the least. He told us that all of the respiratory issues our son was experiencing could have been avoided had Chris arrived at Loma Linda on Monday—not Thursday. He could have avoided having to be intibated due to the risk of congestive heart failure…He stated that Chris would have received dialysis immediately…From this point forward, days turned into weeks. Chris was taken off the ventilator after five days. He could not speak, throat swollen, more drugs administered to reduce the swelling. He had to wear a tightly fitted mask (By-Pap) over his mouth and nose, forcing oxygen deep into his lungs, due to a partially collapsed lung. Again, this need not have happened. More unnecessary pain and suffering…”

The next entry isn't until 9/29, when she reports he had a seizure from high blood pressure, and then the next one, 10/1, says, "He was taken off the ventilator at 11:45 p.m."

Three things stand out to me from this:

First, there are questions about whether the need for the respirator was necessitated by the illness or because of previous inappropriate treatment Chris received.

Second, Chris seems to have come off the respirator Sept. 21 (five days after the Sept. 16 entry), but still required a mask. Mary didn’t explain whether he wore the mask full-time or not (and I couldn’t ask her or Marler), but two people who commented on my previous two posts, who say they have medical expertise, seemed to suggest he didn’t need it full time.

According to cp, “The video portrays the progression of Chris Martin regaining the function of his lungs.”

Gwen (Henwhisperer), provides more detail:

“It isn't unusual for such masks to be on only when a patient is sleeping. When he was awake, particularly to eat, he would have had a nasal cannula on for oxygen rather than a bipap or mask; or nothing to assist his breathing at all if his oxygen level held out while he was awake and alert. And he would have been sitting up or moving around. It is entirely possible he could have been talking on his cell phone on the 23rd and 24th, or the same days these last 2 clips were taken. There are no clips on the 21st or 22nd, so it may have even been possible then. There is no NG tube in the last 2 clips, so I am going to assume that the child could have been eating food by then, and so was at times awake and without a mask. Just because he is asleep and breathing noisily doesn't mean he was not awake and breathing quietly at other times of those days, or able to talk on a cell phone.”

Based on those observations, I agree with Henwhisperer’s conclusion:

”If the case is that the clips were merely taken during sleep moments, and the child also had waking moments without masks on those days, the video is misleading, and making the most of dramatizing the case.”

It seems to me that when Mark McAfee visited—whether on Sept. 23, 24, or 25—perhaps Chris wasn’t wearing his mask. Maybe he was speaking on a telephone (cell phone or portable phone). Maybe he was listening to music through a headset.

Third, my particular error in all this was in not re-reviewing the video I acquired many months ago (and looked at then), which is a longer version of the YouTube video. I couldn’t get my VCR to work earlier this week and, because I was in a hurry to get the posting done, decided to use the accounts I had, including Marler’s statement that there may have been some kind of inconsistency in dates.

Today, I went to a neighbor’s house and watched the tape, which is about eight minutes long, and the dates jibe with YouTube. In my tape, you can actually hear Mary and husband Tony speaking gently to Chris at a couple of points while he’s on the ventilator. And there is a segment following the Sept. 24 portion, dated Nov. 2, showing Chris sitting dressed and alert, and getting ready to go home from the hospital, followed by some tape of him arriving home, looking completely normal. Interestingly, this "good news" doesn't appear on the YouTube tape.

As a journalist, though, I definitely shouldn't make errors like that. When I do, I try to own up to them.

Be that as it may, in reviewing all this material, I feel that, given Mary's suggestion that medical errors may have led to Chris going on life supoort, the title on YouTube making a connection with raw milk , is highly questionable. The tape's narration is similarly misleading in suggesting that the raw milk put Chris on life support. And its implication that Chris was continually on a breathing apparatus is similarly misleading.

These problems, combined with the timing of the tape's release, make it today what it has always been--a piece of pure propaganda. The Martins should never have asked for such a personal and emotionally explosive recording be made public in this way, to influence a piece of legislation, and Marler should never have gone along with posting it, accusing the defendant in a pending court case.