Dan Greulich
In 2012 my husband Dan underwent his second liver/kidney transplant. The organs were transplanted successfully and he was on his way to recovery. However, while in the hospital, he acquired several infections that could not be controlled by antibiotics. These infections and the drugs used to treat them created severe complications to the newly transplanted organs, as well as to his other major organs, and he required additional surgeries. (Sepsis and Impaired Immune System)
The powerful antibiotics caused complete hearing loss and excruciating, deep bone pain. Dan courageously fought these infections for several months, only to have a new complication or medical error occur and cause another infection. Unable to determine the source of infection, at one point, all of Dan’s central lines were pulled and replaced, placing him at risk for something called “septic shower.” He went in and out of septic shock. I was told he was in warm septic shock and that he was in cold septic shock.
Seven months into his hospitalization, he went into septic shock again. The pain was agonizing. He was suffering immeasurably and was not going to survive. He asked that we withhold treatment. With his son Tim and I at his bedside, the machines were turned off and he slipped away in minutes.
Dan’s body was fighting one infection or another for the entire seven months he was in the hospital. The doctor cited the cause of death on Dan’s death certificate as “heart arrhythmia.” Even when the autopsy report confirmed the cause of death to be septic shock, the doctor refused to change it. Hospitals frequently show an incorrect cause of death in order to obscure their infection figures. Thus, the hospital acquired infections that caused Dan’s sepsis, and ultimately his death, may not even have been included in the infection count for the hospital that gave him the infections.
Source: by Rae Greulich (Dan's wife)
