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Monday, September 26, 2011

Family sues after asthmatic boy sent to 3 hospitals in 11 hours - Chicago Sun-Times

Family sues after asthmatic boy sent to 3 hospitals in 11 hours - Chicago Sun-Times

I just have to say this is utterly unacceptable. Sent to three hospitals and no one could help this child and he ultimately dies trying to get to the third hospital!

Seven-year-old Aaron Pointer spoke his last words from the back of an ambulance.

“I . . . am . . . tired . . . of . . . breathing,” the asthmatic boy gasped, taking breaths between each word, according to a nurse’s report.

From the front seat of the ambulance, worried mother Sharese Pointer waited and waited, hoping at any minute they’d arrive at the hospital.

It would be the third hospital in 11 hours that her son was taken to after he suffered an asthma attack at home early in the morning of Sept. 13, 2010.

Aaron was moved out of the first two hospitals after his family was told he needed facilities better equipped to deal with his condition.

The minutes ticked on as the ambulance fought through rush-hour, 4 p.m. traffic and construction.

Sharese Pointer kept looking back at her son and then at the road construction ahead of her, wondering when they’d get to the hospital.

It was only later that she learned something that stunned her: The hospital where they were headed was 45 minutes away.

By the time they reached St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, after the roughly 30-mile drive, her son’s brain was “starved for oxygen,” according to a lawsuit the family has filed. Aaron later died.

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