Apathy abounds
I want to see the video of Edith Isabel Rodriguez dying. I need to see the distress and suffering of her last 45 minutes of life.It’s not that I’m sadistic or ghoulish. But I have to see the security-camera video of Miss Rodriguez to fully believe what her family, officials and all the news outlets are saying about how she died.
I have to see the video before I can be convinced that Rodriguez, a 43-year-old mother of three, actually died after spending 45 minutes vomiting blood in a Los Angeles emergency room with no one coming to her aid. Maybe then I can begin to comprehend a stunning level of callousness that’s all the more unbelievable and infuriating because it happened in the one place that was most obligated and best equipped to help her: a hospital.
I don’t need to see the tape. I have no doubt that the hospital ignored her and that pleas to 911 went unheeded. I watched my husband many years ago sit in an emergency room with chest pains for 12 hours before anyone thought him important enough to check on. This is the system we have set up and we have to step up and fix it. Edith Rodriguez is not the first person to die of neglect in a hospital or because a 911 operator chose not to do anything and she won’t be the last as long as the systems are as they are.
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Filed under: apathy
