\n<\/p>\n
Just a little more than 24 hours had passed when Mrs. Parker realized that word about her husband\u2019s condition had gotten out. She received a text from someone she and Anthony barely knew, a middle manager in Phoebe\u2019s human resources department. But somehow the woman had heard he was in critical condition and messaged to say that she was praying for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does she know?\u201d Mrs. Parker wondered. \u201cHad news about Anthony gotten out?<\/p>\n
If that wasn\u2019t intrusive enough, the woman stopped by the room. You don\u2019t want to move him to Emory or somewhere? she whispered. Shouldn\u2019t you get him out of here?<\/p>\n
It seemed an inappropriate question on so many levels, not the least of which was how little they knew each other. Still, Mrs. Parker was polite. \u201cWe\u2019re good,\u201d she responded. \u201cI appreciate your concern, but we\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other people might not have a high opinion of Phoebe, but Mrs. Parker did. She was confident its staff was going to save Anthony. She compared it in her mind to when President Donald Trump came down with COVID-19 and had to be rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. That was an all-hands-on-deck emergency, and the staff at Phoebe, whose senior executives milled in and out of Anthony\u2019s room, had made it clear that this was an all-hands-on-deck emergency, too.<\/p>\n
Andrea, the Parkers\u2019 middle child, who was 43 and served as a commander in the Coast Guard, had arrived from suburban Washington, D.C., late the previous evening. So had Richard, a UPS long-haul driver, based in Atlanta, who was 39 and the youngest sibling. None of them doubted that their father was in good hands. They supported their mother, and their mother was going to stick with Phoebe.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Anthony had always done when others raised questions about the hospital. When doctors shared concerns about staffing issues that were leading to poor patient outcomes, Anthony questioned the propriety of their actions, not Phoebe\u2019s. When friends complained about loved ones dying in Phoebe\u2019s care, he didn\u2019t use his position on the board to press the hospital for an inquiry. He would say he was confident Phoebe had acted appropriately. When he asked Phoebe to invest in Albany Tech\u2019s nursing program and instead it gave money to the predominantly white community college, he stewed privately, but he didn\u2019t raise a ruckus. \u201cThey just don\u2019t know they need us yet,\u201d he\u2019d say to his staff. \u201cWe\u2019ll be here when they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs. Parker\u2019s loyalties also ran deep. When the spouse of a co-worker had nearly died from an infection she\u2019d gotten after a hysterectomy at Phoebe, she asked Mrs. Parker to help get a letter to CEO Joel Wernick. Mrs. Parker didn\u2019t do it. Who knew whether Phoebe was responsible? she reasoned. It didn\u2019t feel like something she should take to Anthony, much less for Anthony to take to Wernick.<\/p>\n
Yes, there was the time years earlier when he was being treated for lymphoma and had been admitted for what was supposed to be a laparoscopic biopsy of a spot that had been detected on one of his lungs. The doctor emerged from the biopsy saying he\u2019d ended up performing major surgery. \u201cDid he just tell me he opened Anthony\u2019s chest?\u201d she said to herself, feeling a lot like she would when Dr. Jos\u00e9 Ernesto Betancourt told her that her husband had gone into cardiac arrest. The surgeon back then explained that he\u2019d changed plans because he\u2019d had a hard time reaching the section of the lung that he\u2019d wanted to check for cancer and that fortunately he\u2019d found no signs of disease. But afterward, Dr. Parker\u2019s radiation oncologist complained that the biopsy hadn\u2019t been necessary.<\/p>\n
Why hadn\u2019t her husband\u2019s doctors communicated with one another? Mrs. Parker wondered. A lawsuit certainly crossed her mind but not her husband\u2019s. He would have never considered such a thing. Not when it came to Phoebe. He\u2019d have a longer recovery, but he\u2019d be fine. His thinking was, \u201cLet\u2019s move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was praying that her husband would be fine this time, too, that his faith in Phoebe would be vindicated. On Sunday, three days after the ablation, it seemed that might be the case. The cooling period had ended. Dr. Parker\u2019s body was being returned to normal temperature. His three children were in his room, singing along with a recording of the South Carolina State fight song \u2014 \u201cGet up for the Bulldogs. Everybody, get up!\u201d\u00a0\u2014 hoping their father could hear them, when suddenly he opened his eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
May 27-29, 2022 Just a little more than 24 hours had passed when Mrs. Parker realized that word about her husband\u2019s condition had gotten out. She received a text from someone she and Anthony barely knew, a middle manager in Phoebe\u2019s human resources department. But somehow the woman had heard he was in critical condition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[6379,3878,443,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-36476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-grades","9":"tag-outcomes","10":"tag-poor","11":"tag-propublica"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}