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Sept. 30, 2023 - Blood Money
47:59
Blood Money episode 70 - Not Letting the Tyrants have your loved ones Die Alone
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Not letting the tyrants have your loved ones die alone.
Alright, we're on the next episode of Blood Money, and today I have a very special guest, Steve Reiter.
How are you doing, Steve? Vem, thank you.
I'm doing really well. It's a beautiful day here in Colorado, and finally, I think there's no snow on the ground now, finally.
Awesome, awesome. It's really unusual for Colorado.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that sounds great.
Now, I was looking at your bio here, reading about this Never Alone project.
And I got to say, it's like really powerful.
Like you're telling me it's this idea of people not dying alone.
Tell us about your journey of how you got to starting this organization.
I never would have chosen this.
I never would have, if not for the fact that it just happened to me.
So my wife dealt with health issues nearly our entire marriage.
Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and then in 2014 she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.
And for any viewers, any listeners that aren't familiar with what pH is, basically your heart is pushing blood down into your lungs to get oxygenated, but your lungs aren't accepting the amount of blood the heart's trying to push in, and so that back pressure causes the right side of your heart to enlarge and eventually fail congestively.
And so she had a massive lupus flare up in 2013 into 2014.
And once that was finally rectified, her heart went from perfect in March of 2014 to significantly enlarged and failing congestively in November of 2014.
So in six months, it changed like that.
When COVID happened, we knew it could be something really serious because she had autoimmune issues and a lung disease.
And so we knew COVID could be something really serious.
We locked down hard.
And the very weekend that the NCAA canceled their tournament and the NBA paused their seats and Elizabeth thought she had COVID. So Monday she got tested.
When the state finally came back with that test, it was a negative.
But because I had started exhibiting symptoms, the doctor still thought it could be COVID, thought it was a false negative.
And so over the course of the next seven weeks, her doctor would only treat her virtually.
Then any listener and any viewer that's watching this knows that you can't diagnose pneumonia, lung infection, or pneumonia, or something that's developing into sepsis over virtual visits.
You can't. And so on April 29th, 2020, she woke up at three in the morning, not even able to keep a sip of Gatorade down.
And we knew at that point she needed to go to the hospital.
And so she went to the hospital.
And because she got tested for COVID again, it was negative.
Because I got tested for COVID and the next day it came back negative, I thought, sweet, I'm negative, she's negative, I'm friends.
I know all of her doctors really well.
We've got a great relationship.
We know a bunch of these nurses.
We've got a great relationship.
They'll get me in. Because after all, she had a Hickman line that was going into her chest pumping in meds 24-7.
And I had done such a good job of changing that bandaging around the Hickman line.
Most pH patients, pulmonary hypertension patients, they get one infection every year.
This was only your second infection in five and a half years.
And so I'm like, it's not a problem.
The answer was no. Every single time.
I kept working my way up through the ranks and eventually they just wouldn't take my calls and the answer was always no.
And I said I will pay out of pocket for my own full suit.
I will pay hospital markup rates.
I will abide by whatever rules, restrictions.
Just please let me in because in 2014 when she went in with the pulmonary hypertension, the enlarged heart that was failing congestively, The doctors told me, Steve, this is an end-of-life kind of situation.
And I saw the power of being in there 24-7.
I'd be in there two or three days.
Her mom would be in there one or two.
And we'd do this rotation, and we'd bring in the boys, and we'd pray over her, speak words of life over her, cast a vision for our future, and the doctors were blown away at how she rebounded coming out of that.
Wow. I knew. When she went in with the COVID, not with COVID, when she went in during COVID with the pneumonia, She was weak, but she's dealt with pneumonia in the past.
She's numerous hospital stays.
She dealt with pneumonia in the past.
And I knew it was just a matter of me just encouraging her, rubbing her feet, being a liaison between her and the nurses, because we know that when a visitor is in there, The family, the caregiver, the loved one, the advocate is often the one that is alerting the nurses to, hey, something's going on.
Asking those additional questions that often the patient who is too exhausted is able to do.
And so... I was fighting like hell to try and get in.
I was starting to get some media attention and right the two days before Mother's Day on, I think it was May 9th, I believe, 2020.
This is a Friday. My mom was flying in because I'm starting to get all this media attention around Colorado about people dying alone, people being forced to recover alone.
And at this point, Elizabeth had been in the hospital for about a week and a half.
And so because we were going up past the hospital, I'm like, okay, what's the least harmful thing that I can do?
Do I just drive up and drive back?
Because right from 225 on the east side of Denver, you can see the hospital, University of Colorado Hospital, the Anschutz campus, right from 225.
It's right there. Okay, do I just drive by and drive back without any acknowledgement?
Or do I try and make this a little special where I bring the boys up a little early, we grab euros from our favorite Euro place, And then sit outside the hospital, FaceTime over dinner, and then wave to her from the van.
I thought, that'll encourage her.
Then, at the end of that call, she got super emotional.
And whenever she got super emotional, her health would dip.
Two in the morning, I got a call from the hospital.
Your wife is bleeding in one of her lungs.
We're moving her into the ICU. Don't come up.
Two hours later, I get a call again from the hospital.
We think we've isolated it.
It's a couple small arteries.
Don't come up. Because she had been on blood thinners all those years for the pulmonary hypertension, they had to give her a coagulant to stop the bleeding, which then presented a blood clot risk.
And a week and a half later, it was a pulmonary embolism that took her out and they didn't let me in until she was dead.
Wow. They called me to let me know, your wife's gone into cardiac arrest, you need to get up here now.
And on that hour and a half drive, I made two phone calls back to the hospital.
About 20 minutes into the drive, I called again.
They said they were still doing CPR. And I knew at that point I wasn't going to see my bride alive again.
Wow. Just as I was getting into Denver, right past the Ikea on I-25, and that's when her doctor, Dr.
Bull, who's one of the best human beings in the world, I could tell that he did not agree with the stance on no visitors, but he didn't say anything because hospital politics.
I could tell in his face, though, he didn't agree with it.
We interview a lot of frontline doctors, specifically with the COVID situation, and it seems as though, and these are literal numbers, that when it comes to what was happening with COVID, I mean, we're literally talking one out of 10,000 doctors actually stood up and said something,
and most of them were punished heavily for, you know, by through lawsuits, through fibrillus lawsuits, through losing, you know, Everything, like losing money, being bullied, losing doctorates.
We talked to Dr.
Peter McCullough. They took one of his doctorates from him.
What do you say to these people that are behaving this way, that are putting these kind of restrictions when it's logical for a loved one to be with him?
Their loved one during these times and emotional encouragement and what that does on a spiritual level to the person.
I mean, we know there's actually precedent of that making a difference.
What do you say to these individuals when they behave this way?
them all I can do is I can point to them to the study study after study after study after study after study after study after study shows that having a loved one there aids in the healing process and loneliness and isolation increase mortality.
There was one study from I don't remember where it was from but it was I found it.
It was lonely and socially isolated elderly patients were 2.5 times more likely to die prematurely than their most socially connected peers.
Women going through breast cancer treatment are five times more likely to die prematurely if they are lonely and socially isolated.
The AARP commissioned a study.
They wanted to try and figure out what's the health detriment of loneliness.
And they essentially equated it to smoking 15 cigarettes per day.
Meanwhile, conversely, on the other side, having a loved one there aids in the healing process.
And study after study shows it aids health outcomes, increases health outcomes by at least 50% depending on the study.
And so why are they doing this?
I'm not going to get into conspiracy theories.
I'm not going to get into any intent.
They know these studies.
And so every time I've ever tried to ask for a reason, the reasons that they say is, well, we're like, for example, in 2020, we don't have the PPE for guests, for visitors.
And so we are saving that PPE for our doctors, nurses, staff, and other patients.
To which I say, didn't you see this coming with SARS? Didn't you see this coming with swine flu?
With Burt flu? With Ebola?
With Zika? With MERS? With West Nile?
I mean, come on! Where are your stockpiles of PPE? Well, Steve, the federal government stopped funding of those stockpiles.
You're just passing the buck!
I got into this, and this is kind of jumping ahead in the story a little bit, but I got into this with a The lobbyist for the hospital association.
We were trying to get legislation here in Colorado and I cornered him.
I just went right in front of him during a break and I was like, did you not see this coming with SARS, etc?
Well, Steve, we were relying on the federal government.
What are you doing passing the buck?
Well, Steve, with a global pandemic, global supply chains are going to get hurt.
Did you not see that coming?
Really? Did you not think a global pandemic would affect global supply chains?
So why are you so reliant on China to try and get all your PPE? The logic behind all of this is ridiculous.
The other thing that I've heard is they're just trying to protect the doctors, nurses, staff, and other patients.
To which I say, I totally get that.
I totally understand the need to protect doctors, nurses, staff, and other patients because my wife was one of those other patients.
But there was a study out of a hospital in Boston that tracked 945 patients that went into this one hospital.
And they figured out, okay, who went in with COVID? They're excluded.
Who went in and was asymptomatic?
They're excluded. They just went in with the people that were not asymptomatic and did not have COVID. How many of them got COVID while they're in the hospital?
Them, out of those 945 patients, how many do you think got COVID while they're in the hospital?
You said 945?
940? One.
One got COVID while in the hospital.
Hospitals are doing a good job.
Oh, wow. Okay.
Sorry. Yeah. Only one out of those 945 patients.
And it came in from an asymptomatic spouse prior to universal masking.
Wow. And so the efficacy of masks, I'm not going to get into that.
That's a whole other subject.
But clearly hospitals are doing a good job of preventing COVID from spreading from patient to patient while they're in the hospital for those that don't have COVID and are going in for something else.
So we can balance that need to protect doctors, nurses, staff, and other patients while giving that individual what they need, which is love and attention.
Because them, the last week and a half of my wife's life, she complained to lower back pain.
And I kept telling her, babe, as soon as I get in there, I'm going to rub your lower back.
I'm going to bring in the massage gun.
I'll bring in the ice pack.
I'll bring in the heat pack.
I'm going to take care of you.
Then the autopsy showed it was undiagnosed kidney stones.
Wow. That's my job as the loved one.
Not the nurse's job to ask those questions.
The nurse comes in, checks the stuff, and has to go on to the next patient.
It's my job.
As the loved one, to have been in that room and to rubbed her back and to have asked, hey, her lower back's been hurting.
It's not getting any better.
I got the ice pack, the heat pack, the massage gun, rubbing it, the bio freeze, whatever.
I'm rubbing Bengay on it.
Nothing's getting better. What could this be?
That's my job. I mean, how degrading is this as a loved one and a father as the husband to have these restrictions?
I mean, it seems tyrannical to put these restrictions on you.
The stress is unbelievable.
And there's an added wrinkle to this that has rippled in the years following.
So I'm big into health.
I'm big into biohacking and taking care of myself and working out.
I've got a cold plunge. I've got a sauna.
I've got a workout equipment here at the house.
I'm totally into that.
And I was listening to Huberman Lab by Andrew Huberman.
And for those that don't know, he's a neuroscientist at Stanford.
He's got a podcast, Huberman Lab podcast, one of the top health podcasts that there is.
And he was doing a deep dive into grief.
And he does these deep dives into a whole lot of different subjects, like getting better sleep, optimizing hormones, yada yada.
But he was doing a deep dive into grief.
And so I really paid attention to that when I listened to it.
There's something called complicated grief and non-complicated grief.
Complicated grief is also called prolonged grief.
One of the studies that he pulled and that he cited was the person's stress level, cortisol levels, when they go into that death, will often determine whether it's prolonged complicated grief or non-prolonged grief.
It's regular non-complicated grief.
And so when someone is in this high state of stress, whether they're naturally there or the circumstances of being locked out and being the stress of not being able to be in there increases the chance of it becoming prolonged and complicated grief.
And I see it over and over and over and over in these Facebook groups that I'm in of these widows and widowers that lost their spouse And we're locked away and we're unable to get to be with them.
The level of stress is just up there and I still see them stuck to this day, unable to pull out.
And it's heinous that this was the plan all along is to let people die alone and to To also traumatize these nurses and doctors, these nurses from holding up a friggin' iPad while someone was dying and to know that things could be...
things should have been different.
I mean, is this a matter of like, sometimes as we do these interviews, it feels like the entire system is corrupt.
Everything's falling apart.
And we deal with the family law world, where after this episode, we're doing a family law episode.
And you see in the family law world, parents being attacked, especially fathers.
Fathers are a big one.
They seem like they want to destroy the patriarchs.
They seem like they want to destroy dads, masculinity, you know, and it's a reoccurring theme, whether it's our medical industrial complex, Our military-industrial complex.
Our judicial-industrial complex.
Everything seems to be highly corrupt and heading in a complete wrong direction that's destructive to us.
Do you agree?
Do you see this or am I just crazy?
No, absolutely. And part of it is...
So I'm a co-host of...
I became the co-host of my second favorite podcast for years.
Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, who's an interventional cardiologist turned functional medicine doctor.
He had a podcast called Living Beyond 120.
He later rebranded it called Gladden Longevity.
Before we started recording, I mentioned I have an audio production business.
Gladden Longevity came on as a client, and then Dr.
Gladden asked me to come on and be the co-host.
And Dr. Gladden and I were talking about this with one of his physicians there at his office in Dallas, Texas.
And it's really, healthcare has become in America so convoluted because the power has been taken away from the doctors and been given to the administration and administration Budgets have ballooned as they have figured out ways to make these hospitals very profitable organizations.
And so this ballooning of administration has hurt the doctors, taken power away from them, and taken it out of Really, the care of the doctors who swore that Hippocratic oath to do no harm.
You have this whole new generation of doctors coming in who have been ingrained over the last 20 years with this administration-heavy system and have lost really why they fell in love with being a doctor in the first place.
And so that healthcare in this system is fundamentally broken.
And then last night when I was on a call with, it's a C-19 widows and widowers support group.
And I was on a call and there were two people, two stories in particular that really stood out to me.
One was a lesbian who's lost her wife.
They both were in the same hospital, both with COVID. Her wife died, and she was in the very next room, only allowed to see her wife once.
Once. I've heard of this one other time.
You know what's mind-blowing about this?
Same disease and they won't let them be in the same room.
That way they can support each other and love each other and reach over when one is stronger and hold the hand and give encouragement.
I've heard of this a couple other times and it is so infuriating that these hospitals Likely, I'm assuming likely, are billing for individual rooms to try and maximize the amount of money that they're getting, and so they're keeping these couples separate.
Sadistic. I mean, one of the things I wanted to mention, sorry I tried to interrupt you earlier, but I felt this passionate fervor to mention this.
You said that you don't want to get into conspiracy theories.
Let me get into some conspiracy truths.
We actually have a show on our America Happens Network called Conspiracy Truths by the wonderful Mindy Robinson.
And the conspiracy truth here is that...
When you consider that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could have saved all these lives, how do you not get in that negative headspace that this was ultimately some kind of population control mechanism with nefarious ideas?
I mean, how do you get beyond that?
Because a lot of people didn't have to go through this because of the clot shot or whatever they call it now.
They could have just taken medication, tried and true that saves lives, but we're intentionally kept away from that.
The reason I'm able to population control, not think that, is because they were making a hell of a lot more money with remdesivir.
Yeah, I know. They were making a lot more money with remdesivir.
With remdesivir, it's all about the money that Gilead was making, and the hospitals were billing, and that's where that came in.
Yeah. And you get into other things like the opiate epidemic, doctors overprescribing when they know this stuff kills people for the last 30 years, 100,000 or so deaths a year.
And I'll use the words of a doctor.
I'm not going to say this myself.
I just interviewed Dr.
Levy. Who is one of the frontline doctors since day one.
He's been fighting the scandemic or pandemic or whatever you want to call it.
And he says that medicine is the greatest fraud.
Modern medicine is the greatest fraud in modern history.
What do you say to that? I've heard Peter Diamandis, who's a well-known entrepreneur, co-host of my favorite podcast, Exponential Wisdom by Peter Diamandis and Dan Sullivan.
I've heard Dr. Jeffrey Gladden talk about this.
I've heard of numerous others. In America, we don't have a healthcare system.
We have a sick care system.
We're managing symptoms.
We're managing sicknesses.
We're not attacking the fundamental things that keep people healthy.
It's one of the reasons, Ben, why I am so passionate about my health.
Sunday and Monday this week, I hopped in my cold plunge for three minutes in sub 40 degree water.
Because I understand the health benefits of that.
Why yesterday I was in my sauna.
Right now my sauna is fired up.
So as soon as I'm done with this, I'm gonna hop in my sauna and sweat for 45 minutes.
Nice. Just before this interview, I hopped on my Carole bike.
So it's a HIIT training bike that essentially gets the equivalent of a 45-minute jog and a 10-minute bike ride.
And I stacked that with LIVO2 Xtreme.
So I'm using low oxygen environment and high oxygen environment to really train my body to utilize oxygen better.
I don't want to be in the hospital.
I don't, I for no reason whatsoever want to go to a hospital and get anything done because I want to take good care of myself.
I've seen way too many people that have died because of the COVID protocols, which are nefarious.
Nefarious. The way in which they just put people into these cookie cutter.
Okay, you're getting remdesivir.
All of a sudden, while your body starts failing, okay, now we're going to ventilate because the remdesivir was damaging your organs.
Now we're going to ventilate you, and we're going to overdo this stuff, and we're going to...
Oh, look! All this kickback money we're going to be getting from the government.
Hey! Yep.
You know what? You know what? Like, it's so repugnant.
I mean, Nazis were getting paid to kill people.
This is a different level.
Financial incentive. Did the Nazis get like a financial incentive per dead gypsy or Jew?
I mean, it's insane.
It's insane. It's like looking at us from a bird's eye view, I fail to see what the difference between this atrocity is versus...
The last, you know, 5,000, 6,000 years of human history where some tremendously atrocious things have happened.
But I actually think this is the worst.
I think this is the worst. The numbers, everything considered is the worst.
It's awful. Vem, you mentioned the military industrial complex.
I would suggest that you add what Eisenhower wanted to put into his farewell address, which was congressional military industrial complex.
He wanted to add that congressional.
But some of the top aides implored him to remove it, and we need to be adding that back in, because in this case, It is the Congressional Healthcare Industrial Complex.
Really, it's a Congressional Healthcare Pharmaceutical Complex, which is a big part of why this thing went so bad.
It's because you had Congress getting money from pharma and from the healthcare system, and everyone's all in bed together and causing this massive clustered mess.
And you have the government knocking on your door saying, hey, I'm here to help you.
And remember what Ronald Reagan said about the government knocking on your door.
It's the worst freaking news you could ever hear.
Hey, I'm the government. I'm here to help you.
Steve, you've had a remarkable history beyond this immense tragedy that you've dealt with in terms of the work you've done with Family Talk and the podcast.
Let's talk about that for a little bit.
Tell us about your history.
And, you know, it sounds like you're part of the biggest podcast, one of the biggest podcasts or radio shows in American history.
Yeah, so...
When I was in college, I grew up in South Central Wisconsin and I went to, I ended up finishing school at Madison Media Institute.
And during that, right as soon as I was finishing that last semester of school, I was like, what am I going to do?
There's nothing here in Wisconsin.
Well, I met a girl in an AOL chat room and then met her down in Oklahoma Baptist University where she was going to school and her parents for a graduation president got me a ticket to come out and go meet them.
And I fell in love with Colorado Springs.
And while I was out here, they mentioned focus on the family was here.
And I was like, focus on the family.
Dr. Dobson. I remember Dr.
Dobson. My mom was a big Dobson supporter growing up.
And so I was like, what the heck?
I'll just put my foot in the door. It's an internationally syndicated radio broadcast.
I went to school for audio engineering and production, and I interned at a local radio station.
So this really seemed to be a really great fit for me to get my foot in the door.
And I did. I got my foot in the door.
And just so listeners know and viewers know, six weeks after I moved here, the girl met another guy at school and dumped me.
But one of the best things that ever could have happened to me because some incredible men and women.
So I just started working my way up through the ranks at Focus, became the chief audio engineer.
In 2008, we were inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame as the first religious broadcast ever inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.
That's awesome. We beat out Dr.
Laura, we beat out Bob Costas, and we beat out the king of radio, Howard Stern.
King of radio, yes.
King of the jab over there, but hey.
And so when Focus finished that leadership transition, I followed Dr.
Dobson to go help start Family Talk, which our marketing company said was the largest rollout in radio history.
Left in 2012, created my audio production business, Right Turn Media.
We produce podcasts, radio and audiobooks and do some video as well.
And so, yeah, it's a big passion of mine.
But with Never Alone, I'm right now in the process of going through a book called Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz.
Systematizing your business, handing more stuff off to your staff, that way you can take more time off.
Well, my more time off is going to be devoted to Never Alone, the Never Alone project.
With Never Alone, we've seen legislation here in Colorado.
We've helped with a couple other states, North Carolina.
I've talked extensively with Julie Mayberry in Arkansas.
About the Arkansas legislation that got passed.
Arkansas, in my opinion, is as close to the gold standard of patients' rights visitation legislation as there is, but even there in Arkansas, um there there there's no punishment for the hospital so hospitals are still locking people out and because no one knows about it they're still locking people out and people that do know about it are often afraid to report it to the state so so they're breaking their own laws
you're saying that they're locking people out and because people are ignorant of the laws exactly exactly i mean here in colorado we have we have Weak legislation.
But it's legislation, nonetheless, that one of my board members, Rachel Stovall, she's working part-time for the United Way right now.
She sent Elizabeth's Law, really, to...
Elizabeth was my late wife.
Sent Elizabeth's Law to a number of people, and every single time it's gotten them in.
Wow. Just last week, just last week then, sent...
No, it was Monday.
It was Monday, this week. I sent it off to a friend of mine who had...
A friend of a friend who was in the hospital and locked out alone, and within three hours of getting the bill number, the legislation, and a picture of Elizabeth's law, They were in the hospital visiting their loved one.
And so these hospitals are doing it with impunity because they fight like hell at the state level because they do wield a lot of power.
I've got a couple friends in the state legislature and state senate that have told me the second most powerful lobby at the state level.
It's usually the hospital association behind the teachers association.
Because they're such a high employer, employ so many people, and they have deep pockets for lobbying.
And so in nearly every state where we have legislation, there's some kind of flaw.
In Florida, champion from on high.
We had no patient left alone legislation.
Then, do you know that it only guarantees a daily two-hour visit?
Wow. This is in Florida.
It's in Florida. In Texas, it can be overwritten by a doctor.
And we all know that all it takes is an administrator to say, we're locking down, no visitors.
Under penalty of your hours being cut, your patients being cut, your employment being terminated.
The friend that I sent on Monday, the Colorado legislation, she's a COVID protocol survivor.
Wow. And her doctor...
As punishment for her not being vaccinated, said no visitors.
Wow, wow. Overwrote it in Texas.
Wow. You know, there's shades of what I hear what judges do, where they're abusing their power.
A lot of doctors abusing their power.
I mean, just bitter, spiteful, just evil.
Evil. How do you do that? How do you punish somebody like that?
Punish them by preventing love?
I mean, and that's supposed to be okay?
It's, it's, it's so bad.
And the good thing about Gale, in Gale's case in Texas, is her husband just barged into the ICU, barricaded himself, called the police, and basically worked the phone to try and get, to buy himself some time to try and get his wife out and home.
And he did. And Huckleberry is an amazing human being.
I met him at our San Antonio, remember, the victim's rally.
Two weeks ago, and the guy's just, the guy's a hero in my opinion.
Wow. And believe me, I guarantee, I guarantee of him, listeners are thinking, what would they do if their loved one was in the hospital?
The thought every single day was, do I get some friends together with phones, live streaming, and watch me get arrested?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. While I try and barge into that hospital.
Yeah. The only reason I didn't do it is because I knew it would negatively affect my wife, and the only thing I wanted was for her to get home.
That was it. Otherwise, the thought hit me every single day.
Do I do it? No.
I know it's just going to stress her out, and all I need to do is I just...
I need her home. I need her home.
Yeah. I don't know.
This seems to me like a crime against humanity.
I don't know if the international criminal courts actually classify this as a crime against humanity.
Certainly, they classify forcing something onto somebody without medical consent as a crime against humanity.
We don't have any... Anybody that's actually calling it that on an official level, but it is.
I mean, as a Christian, how do you not see this as a battle between good and evil?
You're not letting people see their loved ones.
You're not letting the transference of love in that most key moment in somebody's life when they might be losing their life.
How do you not see this as literally God versus the devil?
That is a really, really complicated, complicated subject.
I'm one that...
I believe...
Yeah, I do see good versus evil, but I also see hurt people hurt people.
People that grew up in a very different environment than I did.
They see the world very differently.
And so...
All along, while Elizabeth was in the hospital, all I ever asked for was for the administration and the decision makers at the hospital to be very communicative with those families that were locked out and have an open dialogue, a discussion.
The fact that they never did that, they never did that, is one of the most infuriating things about this thing.
And so, yeah...
Do I want to call those people evil?
No. No.
Because I want to continue to have a dialogue with them.
I'd love to work with the hospital association and I'd love to work with administrators.
But our first year we tried to do legislation in Colorado in 2020, June of 2020, We worked with the hospital association and right before it went to committee they gutted that bill from a requirement to let visitors in to a strikethrough that just basically said we suggest hospitals review their visitation policies.
And so hospital association is doing what the hospital association is supposed to do which is protect their members.
That's what they're doing.
But Really, they need to think about the patience as well, because unfortunately, patience don't have big lobbies that are throwing money around and buying politicians and buying influence, really, rather than buying influence with politicians.
Yeah, really the only way we're gonna see federal legislation, which is our goal with the Never Alone Project, is federal legislation that protects a patient's right to have one screened loved one per day, no time limits.
Because we all know that having a loved one there aids in the healing process and isolation kills.
I got a call in early May, actually it's late April, early May of 2020.
I have a friend who's a nurse at one of the hospitals here in Colorado Springs.
And she told me, Steve, we had a patient who we didn't think was going to make it through the night.
And before they started, before they opened up visitation, they snuck the daughter in.
So they snuck this adult daughter in so that way she could be with mom.
Mom rebounded and went home.
She went from not looking like she wasn't going to make it through the night to rebounding and making it home.
And I genuinely wonder then, I genuinely wonder how many people would still be here Had a loved one been there and been able to love, give attention, as well as catch any potential hospital mistakes, as well as fight back to those hospital COVID protocols.
No remdesivir, no ventilator, uh-uh, no, no, no circumstances.
Yeah. How many people would still be here?
Yep. Yep. You know, it's like you're talking about hurt people, hurt people.
And, you know, we do so many podcasts about these topics of corruption.
And what I see is broken people that want to break people.
That's what I see. I see broken people that want to break people.
Yeah. It seems as though certain industries, and again, I go back to family law because that's a catastrophe, where it feels like certain individuals that are broken are placed into positions of power because of the evil they're willing to do.
Because they're more malleable.
Because people like us that were raised a certain way that have certain faith are not capable of doing those things.
We have an epidemic across this nation of people in influence Can I cuss on this?
You could, man, go right ahead, dude.
I've had F-bombs flying left and right when I get in the mood, so the red carpet is there, my brother.
We have an epidemic in this country.
People in places of influence that don't have their shit together.
They don't understand who they are.
They're dealing with stuff from their childhood.
They're dealing with insecurities.
They're dealing with that they built up this shell around themselves rather than digging in and figuring out and getting healing, working on themselves and becoming a better human being.
95% of the people, probably even more, that run for office should not run for office.
Yeah, they should run for therapy.
They should run to the therapist's office because they have such insecurities that they're already broken enough to do all the evil that the moneyed interests are wanting them to do.
Excuse the interruption. No, bro, I completely and totally agree with you.
There are so many people that should not be running for office.
I have a friend of mine in town, he's an attorney and used to be an intern for the Bush White House, GW Bush White House.
And he had Steve Largent come in when Steve Largent was Congressman from Oklahoma.
He did this morning devotion kind of time for hanging out with these interns.
And he said, we need more people here in Washington that don't want to be here.
Exactly. And so many people, they get this and this is a power trip to them and it's I see it at so many levels.
My God, I see it at so many levels.
At the state, local level, that it's a power trip to them.
And it's the same thing for people that advance in health care and for so many people.
They get their identity out of having this power and this influence and being the man and being the decision maker or the woman and being the decision maker.
And there's a lack of intelligence there.
There's a lack of intelligence with some of these people that they are not the best and the brightest, because the best and the brightest, often enough, are not such mercenaries.
It's always the less talented people that want to rise up, that are willing to do things, that the more talented people, the people with God-given talent, are a lot of the time not willing to do certain things.
And I'd say even more than that are people that have a lack of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence, EQ, is something we really as a society need to start valuing over IQ. Because the more you have a stronger EQ, you'd be able to understand people and work with them.
And we really need to demand more of our leaders in terms of emotional intelligence.
Totally, totally. Steve, this is amazing, man.
Thank you so much for the work that you're doing with the Never Alone Project.
And certainly, just the path you've traveled in life, you are a remarkable individual.
Is there anything that we didn't talk about during this episode that you'd want to mention in closing?
NeverAloneProject.org.
You can also go to NeverAlonePandemic.org.
We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, Never Alone Pandemic.
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We have big vision.
We have a big dream of really mobilizing a grassroots community to raise awareness about this issue.
If you have gone through some sort of a lone situation, your aunt was in the hospital alone, your mom was in the hospital alone, you were in the hospital alone, your spouse, your kids, We want to collect those stories and really mobilize people so that we can see change at the state level and ultimately at the federal level because then no one should die alone.
No one should die alone, certainly.
And frankly, nobody should be in the hospital alone because like you said, love is healing and we need to be able to heal through our love for our loved ones.
And in fact, I mean, I think it's amazing that you're trying to get one person.
I don't understand why The entire family, everybody that loves that person, wouldn't be allowed to be in that room.
I mean, that is just ludicrous to me.
Especially at such a...
I mean, literally, you're going to remember this for the rest of your life, that moment, and you're not there.
It's awful. When I got home and I broke the news to my boys that their mother didn't make it that night on May 19th, 2020.
My then 13-year-old son Caleb jumped up and he's like, I gotta go ride my bike.
And he ran out of the house.
Matthew, my 15-year-old at the time, he's now 18, he just sat there on the couch and he stewed and stewed.
And after about 10-15 minutes, I sat next to him and I was like, what's going on in there, bud?
I put my arm around him.
I tapped his chest. What's going on in there, bud?
And he said, Dad, I'm equal parts sad, equal parts pissed because the last three weeks of my mama's life were stolen from me.
This is what we're talking about.
I mean, with Elizabeth's story, I have so many questions.
If her doctor had seen her in person, would that early antibiotic treatment have been enough to save her?
I believe yes. I've saw her pull out enough times that I'm confident it would have.
If they would have allowed visitation and she had gone in sooner, would she still be here?
I believe the answer is yes.
If they had allowed one screened visitor per day, Would her health have dipped there on Mother's Day?
Because you know what? Mother's Day weekend, I would have had Matthew go in one day.
I would have had Caleb go in the next day.
So that way she would get that love and attention.
I don't believe her health would have dipped.
And at the very least, in those minutes between when...
We had an 11-minute FaceTime call on May 19th because she was set to come.
They announced she was coming home either the 20th, 21st, or 22nd.
And so we were talking about, what do you want for meals?
Who do you want to come over? We want to shower you with love and attention, but we don't want to overwhelm you.
What do you want for takeout?
We're going to get your favorite meals.
All of that. We were kind of starting to nail down those details.
30 minutes later is when I got a call from the hospital.
And my first thought was, sweet, I'm picking her up tonight.
Maybe I'll take her tomorrow.
Maybe tonight. Instead, it was the nurse telling me, your wife has gone into cardiac arrest.
You need to get up here now. I found out after the fact that the nurse just left her room at some point between when we hung up and when the doctor just happened to walk in and see her on all fours gasping for air, no alarm going off.
And my question has always been in those minutes Between when the nurse left her room and when the doctor just happened to walk in, would me being in there have been enough time to save my wife's life?
Would my boys still have their mother?
And this is a question that so many people have that weren't able to be with their loved ones.
Would me being in there have made the difference?
And this is what we're fighting for to make sure that this never happens again.
NeverAloneProject.org Wow, such a worthy cause and frankly it's very sad that you even have to fight such a logical fight.
But we are living in illogical times and frankly without people like you we would be even more screwed than we are.
Thank you, Bob. For the viewers out there, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Blood Money.
Please check out AmericaHappens.com for our latest episodes of Blood Money and also the other series that we do like Gloves Off with Joy Gilbert, Conspiracy Truths with Mindy Robinson and the State National University with Gianna Michelli and much more.
I will see you on the next episode of Blood Money.
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