CliffsNotes of “Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?”
And some "bonus material"...
Some readers have suggested that I provide a short summary piece for the of the most recent The Way Out substack article titled “Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?” Given here:
So I have assembled CliffsNotes for the article. Sources for the following statements may be found in the article linked above. If you find this summary curious or question whether the statements could possibly be true, please read the article linked above.
As the title suggests, “Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?” begins with observations about the special circumstances during the Covid crisis for the US state of Hawaii, since it is of a remote island chain in the Pacific Ocean.
-The original Wuhan variant had almost no effect on Hawaii, even though flights were routine through most of March 2020.
- Yet more than one year later, the delta variant of Covid-19 reportedly killed a 29-year-old man with no pre-existing conditions and 3 pregnant women in Hawaii in Sept-Oct 2021. Somehow, the Kaiser Permanente Chief of Infectious disease was able to predict delta’s severity in early August 2021.
- The story of the 29-year-old man who died (a chef on Maui named Chris Lederer) made the news in Hawaii. His death on 17 September came only days after stories of oxygen shortages, including the fact that “Two of the oxygen vendors in Hawaii switched out the tanks that were used to transport other gases with oxygen,” as reported on 7 September. Specifically, nitrogen and argon cylinders tanks were used to supply oxygen.
- The Way Out substack article suggests that this “switching of tanks” might have led to confusion, and a gas mix-up perhaps caused Chris Lederer’s death instead of Covid-19. Eight separate examples of gas mix-ups in hospitals are shown in the article, leading to patient death. The examples also demonstrate a very important point: Health care workers often remain unaware of gas mix-ups for an exceptionally long time. Doctors and nurses justifiably expect that oxygen lines truly do allow oxygen. In some of the 8 examples provided, a contractor or hospital administration were blamed for the deaths. The families of the patients who were killed rightly sought compensation from the hospital for their loss.
- The Way Out substack article then asks: “Is it possible the 3 pregnant women might also have died from an oxygen gas mix-up (perhaps “an honest mistake” with disastrous consequences, as seesm to have occurred for the eight examples given) instead of Covid-19? If so, the families of these three expectant mothers should request an investigation. After all, if the hospital or a contractor were at fault, then they should receive monetary compensation.
- But… the women are not identified in the media. Likewise, a web search revealed no obituaries for any of the three women. Why not? One might their families to seek emotional support, if not financial, from others touched by their story. What would explain this conundrum? The article suggest that the three women *might* be in the country illegally without family support (and single). If that were true, who would be left to advocate for compensation to the newborn baby? If the hospitals screwed up, those babies should get millions of dollars in compensation, correct?
- The article points out that the *hospitals* where the women died also remained unidentified by the media. Are hospitals using the patient’s privacy rights to shield them from liability? Or perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye… Did three pregnant women really die in Hawaii during September-October 2021? Or perhaps they did… but did they really die of Covid-19?
-The mystery surrounding the three pregnant women who reportedly died in Hawaii serves as a prologue for the main focus of the article: Is it possible that oxygen gas generators and oxygen concentrators could be used as a murder weapon by a bad actor or terrorist organization?
- The Way Out substack article points out excerpts of news accounts from Hawaii which discuss how hospitals throughout the island chain were installing oxygen generators to supplement the oxygen needs of patients suffering from Covid-19. Prior to the Covid crisis, hospitals contracted oxygen from companies which use cryogenic approaches to separate oxygen from other constituents of atmospheric air (which is approximately 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen).
- The Way Out substack article provides an overview of how oxygen concentrators function along with a background on why this technological achievement is recent. The article provides an overview of the many benefits of separating oxygen from nitrogen in atmospheric air using an oxygen gas generator– for example, the elimination of delivery costs associated with cryogenic oxygen during a crisis in a remote location. It references a well-written Chemical Review article from 2022 to explain “pressure swing adsorption” using zeolite.
- A 2015 World Health Organization document titled, “Technical specifications for oxygen concentrators” acknowledges that is “builds primarily on the outcomes of a meeting of subject-matter experts in oxygen concentrators, organized by PATH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle on 13–14 August 2014.”
- PATH and BMGF come to the rescue for India when oxygen supplies run low in May 2021. But it turns out that they have a new partner: Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire involved in the Robinhood-GameStop-Citadel scandal.
- Two stories on Citadel Securites during Griffin’s congressional testimony are linked, as is a letter from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Each are critical of Griffin’s actions.
-Excerpts of a Vice article which came out months later summarize damning, though circumstantial, testimony exposing Ken Griffin’s actions.
- It turns out that Griffin’s 5.5 million dollar gift to BMGF for India’s oxygen generators came in between his congressional testimony and the trial where the damning texts were released.
- The Way Out article then suggests a potential shortcoming of the separation method used by oxygen gas generators to provide oxygen to patients: If the valve timing and the oxygen sensors both failed, it is possible that patients could be provided with nitrogen instead of oxygen. This circumstance would lead to symptoms akin to that of high-altitude sickness and could even lead to suffocation and death.
- The Way Out substack article suggests that regulatory overseers should demand that separate secondary oxygen sensors be placed in the supply line to the patient (which should typically read about 95% oxygen) and also in the vent of oxygen gas generator or concentrator (which should read only about 1% oxygen since nitrogen should be vented).
- The story goes darker. It shows how easy it would be to sabotage the oxygen generator/concentrator to produce mainly nitrogen by changing the valve timing. This change would be extraordinarily simple, and even mundane, when compared to the effort it would take to modify a virus into a more pathogenic form.
- Sensors and devices connected to the internet are also subject to cyber-based sabotage. A sensor which is unattached to a network makes the device more resilient to a cyber attack. Therefore, the Way Out substack article also stipulates that these secondary oxygen sensors should NOT be accessible through the internet. In this way, the devices are more resilient to cyber-terrorism.
- To demonstrate how a “terrorist organization” could wreak havoc using this trait of oxygen gas generators/concentrators, a fictional scenario called “Attack 301” is envisioned and laid out. A terrorist group is invented and designated as the “Inner Party,” named and designed after Orwell’s fiction novel 1984, for this example. The scenario-based approach follows the fictional Event 201, described by its organizers as follows: “The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.” (See https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/exercises/event201/ ). By coincidence, perhaps, Orwell’s 1984 denotes “Room 101” as a torture chamber.
- The Way Out substack article shows how easy would it be for this group to murder those on oxygen generators/concentrators if the machines were hooked up to the internet. In fact, it would be very easy. The (fictional terrorist group) Inner Party would start by killing the weakest people- older people in hospitals and nursing homes.
- So it turns out that as of April 2020, a company called ABM Respiratory *does* have a model of ventilator that can be controlled “from anywhere by health care professionals.” Evidence of this is shown: “ABM’s Tele-Ventilator branded as BiWazeTM ION is based on its BiWazeTM platform developed over the last 30 months and has already US FDA-510(K)-cleared their BiWazeTM Cough system.”
-ABM brought in Peter Soderberg as Chairman of the Board in October 2020. Peter Soderberg also chaired Tactile Medical, a public company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota which is traded on NASDAQ.
- Records show that Dr. Mark Melin received an honorarium from Tactile Medical in November 2019 and served on its speaker’s bureau. Dr. Melin also heads the Wound Healing Institute at a hospital in The Twin Cities are and is affiliated with U. Minnesota.
- Dr. Mark Melin was quoted in the well-known Science article on Lancet-gate. The reader will recall that Lancet-gate refers to the infamous retracted article in the Lancet which relied on fraudulent data to characterize hydroxychloroquine as a dangerous drug for treatment of Covid-19. Dr. Melin provided a statement of support for Sapan Desai, founder of Surgisphere - the company responsible for allegedly collecting the data-, and co-author of the infamous Lancet-gate article. The Way Out substack article suggests that Dr. Melin was quoted makes it *less* likely that Melin is directly involved, but increased the likelihood that someone *associated* with Melin probably knew what Sapan Desai had done.
-Peter Soderberg runs a foundation with his wife Elsa. The foundation supports a vast array of “philanthropic efforts” associated with “family planning” in Africa, Haiti, Jamaica, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. One charity called “Act With Her” lists only the Soderberg Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as funders.
- The Way Out substack article asks: Did Gates use connections with Soderberg and Melin (or their associates) to fund Surgisphere and Sapan Desai?
- The article then returns attention to the fictional “Attack 301” and the equally fictional terrorist group the “Inner Party”: To broaden the effect of Attack 301, the Inner Party needs to target a new demographic of victims who are not only vulnerable but who also motivate people to accept the elimination of freedom, specifically through vaccine mandates and lockdowns. They decide to target pregnant women.
-But... how does the Inner Party target this group of young women a full year after the “pandemic” began? They use the excuse of a new variant. It is plausible since some rare viruses yield variants which become more virulent with time via evolution, but this is by far the exception rather than the rule.
- Pregnant women would be particularly vulnerable to “Attack 301” because they routinely visit doctor’s offices and hospitals for pregnancy check-ups. The (fictional) Inner Party takes advantage of any small malady to administer a Covid-19 test. Even a false positive test for Covid-19 might cause the pregnant woman to be hospitalized and given a combination of a sedative (as the Inner Party would control the medications given to Covid-19 patients) and a gas said to be “supplemental oxygen” - but which is actually a different gas. The gas might be administered by a health care worker affiliated with the Inner Party, or it might be unknowingly administered by an innocent health care worker using an oxygen concentrator (or cryogenic oxygen supply) which has been sabotaged by an unknown affiliate of the Inner Party.
- The combination leads the pregnant woman to suffer symptoms akin to high altitude sickness and also Covid-19. Once diagnosed with Covid-19, the pregnant woman victimized by the Inner Party can be fully sedated and uses a combination of the media, which they control, to administer gas with low oxygen content (via sabotaged oxygen gas generators, oxygen concentrators, or otherwise compromised oxygen supplies) in order to either make the pregnant woman appear to suffer severe symptoms of the new variant. In some instances, the Inner Party can murder the pregnant woman outright. Naturally, the Inner Party subjects from only pregnant women who have not been vaccinated from this mistreatment while it spares those who have been vaccinated.
- The article describes how the murder of young, pregnant women leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy that the new variant is more deadly than the original variant. Furthermore, by murdering only those pregnant women who are unvaccinated, the Inner Party also demonstrates the necessity of their mandated vaccines. In many cases, the baby is delivered with the net effect being that the story becomes even sadder as the population imagines the life of the child without his or her mother.
- The (fictional) Inner Party controls the media, so they are able to promote this narrative without scrutiny or skepticism. After pregnant women die as a result of sedation combined with oxygen deprivation, the “dissidents” who suggested that science predicts that the new strain of a virus should be less deadly than the original variant are blamed for the death of pregnant women. This enables the Inner Party to censor critics, using the excuse of public health concerns due to “misinformation.”
- The murder of pregnant women by the Inner Party also improves the likelihood that the population obeys their command to get vaccinated. The Inner Party then uses the media to play on the sympathy toward expectant mothers (whom they murdered) to isolate and castigate those who resist the mandates.
- The article continues… the murder of pregnant women by the (fictional) Inner Party lacks in one regard. There is no firsthand account of the disease progression. Therefore, the Inner Party allows some of the pregnant women to survive so that they may tell their story. They need to ensure, however, that the accounts are harrowing in order to promote the vaccines and mandates. So they perform risky and invasive medical procedures on the women, ensuring long hospital stays.
- The procedures on the pregnant women are conducted primarily at university hospitals so that they may be framed as success stories resulting from advanced new technology. For the women who survive, the Inner Party-controlled media showcase flowery success stories about how the doctors/professors practically pulled off a miracle to save the pregnant women. While some health care workers are agents affiliated with the Inner Party, many health care workers are completely unaware that many of the symptoms originate from pregnant women being deprived of oxygen. Those in the latter category are chosen by the Inner Party for media interviews because they truly believe what they have miraculously saved the pregnant mother’s life.
- But if you read the stories carefully, they are consistent with the women being sedated and deprived of oxygen to put them on the pathway to the (mostly) university hospitals. The pregnant women themselves are interviewed but have little memory of their ordeal. They suffer greatly and experience many long-term effects. They are usually completely unaware that they have been the victim of a terrorist attack (Attack 301). The Inner-Party-controlled media presents these stories with emphasis on the suffering in order to drive fear of disease into the collective mind of the public. While the doctors and nurses celebrate their success story, the Inner Party agents are well aware that they simply allow the oxygen to flow properly to the patient once it was decided to allow her to live.
- The Inner Party’s tactic is effective in part because the possibility that pregnant women would be intentionally harmed in a hospital setting is so morally repugnant to normal people. Those who dare to suggest that such a terrorist organization might exist and may be doing such harm can be characterized as weird, or even insane. So, most people who suspect a problem simply remain quiet to avoid being provocative. The upshot is that the Inner Party tactics which are the most evil are also the most effective.
- The Inner Party tactic may also tempts those who suspect a problem in hospitals to blame health care professionals who themselves has been tricked by the use of a sabotaged (non-) oxygen gas being supplied to the patient. In such an instance, the innocence proclaimed by the nurse or doctor who state that they were doing all they could for a suffering patient is quite real.
- It turns out that, back in the real world (outside the “Attack 301” simulation), stories on pregnant women reportedly dying “due to the delta variant of Covid-19” did occur with much great frequency. It is very sad to read and watch a video report of one account. However, when multiple accounts are congregated, a troubling picture emerges. This is the subject of The Way Out substack article entitled, “The War on Love: Were expectant mothers murdered in US hospitals to promote the Covid-19 agenda?” found at
. This article provides news accounts of 46 of these women who died. It also includes analysis strongly suggesting that the alleged increased risk of severe cases of Covid-19 due to pregnancy was exaggerated.
- The Way Out article “Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?” includes the transcribed text of a speech made in April 2020 by Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, a doctor in New York City. Dr. Kyle-Sidell posted his video, which was professionally recorded by WebMD, on youtube. He characterized his eye-witness account as follows: “Covid-19 lung disease, as far as I can see, is not a pneumonia and should not be treated as one. Rather, it appears as if (it is) some kind of viral-induced disease, most resembling high-altitude sickness. It is as if tens of thousands of my fellow New Yorkers are on a plane at 30,000 feet and the cabin pressure is slowly being let out.”
- The article includes stories of 20 women who survived (and one who died) while reportedly “hospitalized with Covid-19” while pregnant. In most instances, a procedure called ECMO was used for these women. Most reports present the doctors and nurses as heroic and the women themselves as brave. A total of 21 examples are given, and two additional examples will be given below.
- Two very recent stories are relevant. The first is a follow up story on Cierra Chubb, one of the 21 women whose story was included in the article mentioned above. She was interviewed on Good Morning America on 10 March 2023, and her story is included.
- The second story is a New York Times article from 20 March2023 describing a new “Killer Fungus” touted by the CDC. The model of sedative combined with oxygen deprivation would work for “dangerous fungi” just like it does for “dangerous viruses” for a terrorist organization. Is this the model for a new pandemic?
- The article concludes by pointing out what might be a curious coincidence. Dr. Mark Melin is reportedly the West Campus Medical Director of the Wound Healing Institute at Mount Health Fairview (University of Minnesota), which is less than a ten-minute drive from St. Louis Park, MN – the home of the late George Floyd. Video of the Derek Chauvin trial revealed that George Floyd was hospitalized for a glass cut on his hand in early March 2020. It would be interesting to know if George Floyd was hospitalized at the same hospital at which Dr. Mark Melin works. (For more on this topic, see
and
.)
*** Bonus Material ***
The Way Out substack article “Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?” is long partly because entire articles for the pregnant women who underwent extensive medical treatment were included to provide full (and referenced) context. Bold font was used to highlight points The Way Out author finds most noteworthy. Two additional examples are given below which demonstrate examples different time periods (the pre-Covid-vaccine period of April 2020 and the post-Covid-vaccine time period). They are numbered 22 and 23 since they follow the 21 examples provided in “Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?”
In the April 2020 story, a few points align with others in Does the story of Covid-19 in Hawaii reveal a potential murder weapon?” Here are common questions raised:
(1) Was the diagnosis of Covid-19 correct?
(2) Was the patient provided with early treatment of Covid-19 via antiviral drugs or antibiotics?
(3) How and what context is the use of supplemental oxygen described?
(4) Was the patient sedated at an appropriate stage of apparent disease progression?
(5) Were family members or friends prevented from being with the pregnant woman who was hospitalized?
(6) Was there a “sudden” downturn or upturn in the patient’s condition? (If so, could this be due to changes in the oxygen supply?)
(7) Was the patient transferred to different hospitals?
(8) Were any hospitals affiliated with universities?
(9) Was ECMO used and, if so, was its use justified?
*** Pre-Covid-vaccine story, April 2020 ***
22. Megan Stites, Celina, OH:
“Sick with coronavirus, 7 months pregnant, nurse fears, 'I'm not going to make it through'” by
Anne Saker, Cincinnati Enquirer, 24 April 2020
Megan Sites of Celina landed in a hospital this month critically ill with COVID-19, fighting for every breath. She also was seven months pregnant with her second child. For more than one bad moment, a thought tormented her. She could die.
Sites, 27, is a labor and delivery nurse at Joint Township District Memorial Hospital in St. Mary’s, Ohio - about 115 miles north of Cincinnati. She is married to Donny Sites, a Mercer County deputy sheriff, and they have a 2-year-old daughter, Reign.
In late March, Sites felt feverish. She developed a cough. She tested negative for flu, and because she is a health care worker, she was screened March 29 for the new coronavirus. The county health department called her the next day with bad news.
Sites wept. “I can’t get sick,” she said.
She consulted with her midwife, but, “I was between a rock and hard place.” Antibiotics for COVID-19 could endanger her pregnancy, and she couldn’t use a steroid for a preterm delivery because that drug has been shown to aggravate COVID-19.
On April 1, an anxious Sites came to Joint Township’s emergency department struggling to breathe, unable to lay flat. Testing found her lungs clotted with disease. She was awake when the doctors put her on a ventilator, and she felt the tube scrape into her trachea. Then her hospital sent her to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton.
She improved, the breathing machine was removed, but, “within 24 hours, 48 hours, my condition completely worsened.” Visitor restrictions at hospitals due to the pandemic kept Donny, her parents, her in-laws, her friends from her side. Alone, Sites worried about the future.
“I had a few breakdown moments. I told myself, this is it, I’m not going to make it through,” she said. “Everything in my body, it hurt to breathe, to move, to cough, to anything, it hurt."
She asked to go back on the ventilator. This time, she asked for sedation.
On April 8, the Miami Valley doctors told Donny Sites they hoped that because of Sites’ youth and overall good health, the ventilator could get her pregnancy to 30 weeks.
Twenty minutes later, the doctors called back. Megan’s lung had collapsed. She was near death. There was a chance to save her. But they had to deliver the baby the next day.
At the same time, Megan’s doctors reached out to University of Cincinnati Health, the region’s academic health center, for help.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a “near-last resort,” said Dr. Suzanne Bennett, UC Health critical care anesthesiologist and associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine for the UC College of Medicine.
The ECMO device temporarily replaces the function of the heart and lungs for patients and can treat some people with COVID-19’s severe lung damage. UC Health also can move its machine by air or ground transportation.
UC Health had never put a pregnant woman on an ECMO machine through the pandemic, but Sites was a good candidate.
The machine and a medical team were in the air for the 50-mile helicopter flight to Miami Valley Hospital as Sites went into surgery to deliver her son by cesarean section at 29 weeks and six days. The baby was whisked to neonatal intensive care.
Then surgeons inserted a port into one of Sites' veins that diverted her blood into the ECMO machine, through a membrane that acts like a lung, removing carbon dioxide and refreshing the blood with oxygen. The blood went back into her body by a port in another vein.
The doctors also inserted a tube into her collapsed lung. Sites was still on the ventilator, too. They turned her on her stomach, to allow her ribs more freedom as she breathed.
Still sedated, her C-section wound merely packed, Sites and the ECMO machine was loaded onto an ambulance for the ride to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Five days on the ECMO machine allowed for healing, and Megan Sites had “an incredibly remarkable recovery," Bennett said, "improving much faster than most people we’ve seen in this condition.”
When the ECMO machine was removed, Megan needed several days to shake off the week of sedation. Then a nurse asked whether Megan knew where she was. Dayton, Megan Sites replied, No, she remembered the nurse saying. You're in Cincinnati, and we had to take the baby.
Due to the hospital visitation restrictions, four days passed before Donny Sites got to see his son, Jameson Ivan Leroy Sites. He took pictures that family and friends got blown up and gave to UCMC nurses, who set them up in Megan’s room.
Megan gazed at those photographs as the nurse explained how she had delivered her son. It felt surreal to her. Her family had details, that Jameson had arrived at 3 pounds, 9 ounces and 17½ inches, in good health, and he has twice has tested negative for the new coronavirus.
“Watching her FaceTime with her family and new baby left us all with a renewed sense of hope for others battling the disease,” Bennett said.
The doctor credited Megan's recovery to the collaboration between the hospitals. “This lady,” Bennett said, “is alive because of a lot of people.”
On Tuesday, April 21 [2020], Megan Sites rolled out of UCMC in a wheelchair, discharged, as doctors and nurses applauded her.
She and Donny drove right to Jameson’s bedside, where a NICU nurse scooped him up and lay him for the first time in his mother’s arms.
“It just completed my puzzle. I knew I had had a baby, but until you,” and she paused. “It’s hard to explain. But then I got to hold him, and it was real for me, that this is my son, and he’s perfect."
*** Post-Covid-19-vaccine example ***
For articles released after the Covid-19 vaccines were available, several additional questions may be asked. For this April 2022 story below:
(1) Does the article state that the pregnant woman diagnosed with Covid-19 was unvaccinated?
(2) Was a substantial portion of the article devoted to advocating for the Covid-19 vaccines?
23. Emilia Pelton, Charlotte, NC
“Expectant COVID mom faced deep odds against survival: Just in time for Mother's Day, a ‘1 in a million’ story”
Page Leggett, Contributing Writer, Updated May 3, 2022, Published April 21, 2022
https://www.novanthealth.org/healthy-headlines/expectant-covid-mom-faced-deep-odds-against-survival
After enduring two miscarriages and years of infertility treatments, Emilia Pelton and her husband, Chris, were ecstatic with the news they were expecting. And after trying so hard, they were going to do everything they could to protect their baby girl. And Pelton felt safest not getting a COVID vaccine.
Pelton, 30, works from home, traveling only occasionally for her jobs (she’s part of the gig economy) as bookkeeper for a Louisville, Kentucky, law firm and warranty manager for a manufactured home retailer in Texas, and felt she wasn’t likely to contract COVID.
And yet …
She landed in the ICU with a case so severe, it endangered not only her unborn baby’s life but her own. It took a highly trained medical team to pull her through. Dr. Tom Theruvath (chair of the department of cardiothoracic surgery at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center) oversaw Pelton’s cardiac care and called her survival story “one in a million.”
She was due May 12. But on April 28, Cecilia Sloan Pelton entered the world as an early Mother's Day gift.
Scary Descent
Pelton got COVID, she believes, on a business trip in December 2021. She tested positive Dec. 20 and felt progressively worse each day. Soon, the marathon runner became weak just walking up the stairs.
By Dec. 27, she was in the emergency room, 21 weeks pregnant, at Novant Health Huntersville Medical Center, just a few miles from their house. Pelton spent one night there and was transferred to the ICU at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center the next day.
At Presbyterian, “I thought doctors would maybe put me on some oxygen, give me some medicine and I'd be fine,” Pelton said. But she was much sicker than she realized. Her condition continued to deteriorate.
When she could no longer breathe on her own, her team made the decision to put her on life support. But after just 30 minutes on the ventilator, she continued to decline and they decided her best and last chance was to also be placed on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) life-support machine.
ECMO is a form of life support that gives the sickest COVID patients a better shot at survival. It can do the work of someone’s heart, lungs or both when they’re no longer able to get the job done because the patient is so sick. It’s the last tool doctors have for a patient in respiratory distress before a lung transplant.
While being on a ventilator involves a breathing tube down a patient’s throat, being on ECMO involves a cannula, a tube inserted into a vein – in this case, in Pelton’s neck, said ECMO specialist Leslie Morton, a nurse and key member of Pelton’s care team. “We take blood out, put oxygen in it and take the CO2 out and then return it back to the heart to be pumped through the body,” Morton said. Pelton is the only pregnant patient at Presbyterian Medical Center to have ever been placed on ECMO.
A doctor told her, before placing her on ECMO, that she had a 1 in 5 chance of surviving. In other words, there was an 80% chance Pelton – and her baby – would die. It was devastating news for her and her family. Her medical team went to work, hoping to beat the odds.
When Pelton was intubated, she was unable to talk. But she still had a lot to communicate to her family and medical team. Chris brought her a whiteboard and markers, and the staff complimented her on her penmanship even though she was heavily sedated. “We found, in all of this, occasional comedic relief,” Pelton said.
Her family came in from Philadelphia; Chris’ from Texas. “Everyone swarmed in to support us,” she said. Eventually, Chris and her sister could visit her bedside. “Anytime I could have someone stay with me, that meant so much. I slept with my hand on top of their hand just so I could know someone was there.”
On Jan. 6, she came off the ventilator. ECMO was working, it seemed. But her ordeal was far from over.
“I started getting a really terrible pain in my side,” Pelton said. “It got to the point that I couldn’t even talk or function.” Doctors discovered she had a life-threatening hematoma – a pool of mostly clotted blood that forms in an organ, tissue or other part of the body – that was displacing her kidney. They immediately took her off ECMO because they realized the clot was coming from the blood thinners she had been on for ECMO. “They had assumed I was doing so well on it that coming off would be no problem. I ended up coding.”
It was terrifying for Chris. “He had been sitting in the waiting room, and he heard ‘Code Blue ICU,’” Pelton said. “And he thought there's a chance it was me but he had no way of knowing. Then, they said, Code Blue OB (meaning obstetrics) ICU, and he was really afraid it was me.”
The medical team immediately re-intubated Pelton to get her oxygen levels back up. The results were mixed. “My numbers were going up and down,” Pelton recalled. “My sister was with me that night. And I kept asking her what country I was in. I was completely delusional. At this point, it had probably been about 36 hours since I slept. I couldn't sleep because I was so afraid I might not wake up.”
“Nothing was working,” she continued. “I couldn't get a full breath.”
At this point, Pelton’s medical team was concerned she may need a lung transplant. On Jan. 13, she was airlifted to Duke University Hospital.
But then another turn: She improved dramatically overnight. There was no need for a lung transplant. She came off the ventilator Jan. 14 and was discharged from the ICU the next day and taken to the labor and delivery wing of the hospital. She was discharged from Duke on Jan. 25.
Scared for the baby
But during a time she should’ve been gaining weight with the baby, she lost 30 pounds.
Throughout the ordeal, of course, “I’m thinking about the baby the entire time,” she continued. “They monitored her so closely every day and they were very communicative about what was going on.”
Dr. Margeaux McGraw, Pelton’s OB-GYN, explained: “If mother doesn’t get oxygen, then baby doesn't get oxygen. The baby was still so young from a gestational age standpoint. And so, the priority was definitely keeping Emilia as stable as possible because that would also keep baby as stable as possible.”
While Pelton’s medical team was concerned with keeping her alive, she was mostly concerned about her baby. Her medical team was, too, even though Morton said, “At just 20 to 21 weeks (when Pelton was admitted), the baby wasn’t viable yet. We knew saving her life was the priority, but we couldn’t ignore the fact that she's pregnant. We knew about her history and her difficulties getting pregnant. The whole thing was pretty scary.”
“Dr. Tom Theruvath oversaw the entire process,” Pelton said of her cardiac specialist at Presbyterian. “He was very good at putting me at ease throughout the whole thing. Dr. (Jeffrey) Walls was the doctor who contacted Duke and oversaw everything pulmonary-related. Dr. (Curtis) Flood oversaw everything obstetrics-related, and he was great.”
Pelton’s regular OB-GYN, McGraw, consulted with the team and kept a close watch over her patient daily and sometimes hourly.
Pelton is grateful for her entire medical team, which included nurses and respiratory techs. “The nurses were so great,” she said. “Leslie (Morton) shaved my legs for me. Bailey (Hunter) braided my hair. They knew I loved dogs and made sure, anytime there was a therapy dog on the hall, that they brought it in my room.”
Back home in Charlotte, “I've been making progress every single day,” Pelton said. “I'm really fortunate. As the patient, you have faith that doctors wouldn't suggest the next thing if that wasn't the right thing to do.”
There’s been a lot of celebrating since the Peltons returned home. “My neighborhood put on a parade the day I got home,” she said. “Everyone has these hearts on their front door with a little prayer underneath it. It gave me chills.”
And the nurses who saw her through this trauma continue to text her and Chris to check in. “God was definitely on her side,” Leslie Morton said. “And she’s such a fighter. I was really impressed with Emilia.”
Theruvath added: “When Emilia was in the hospital, I told her husband that, if she survived, we’d have not a 100% – but a 200% – survival rate because we would’ve saved Emilia and her baby.”
The vaccination question
After surviving her harrowing ordeal, Pelton has embraced the importance of getting vaccinated and has received both doses.
Doctors and public health experts continue to stress: The vaccine is safe for pregnant women and those trying to conceive. The only significant risk around the vaccine is choosing not to get the shots.
“I think it was always in the back of our mind, like maybe later on in pregnancy, I would get it – just not in the first trimester,” Pelton added. “We had had so much trouble getting and staying pregnant. I didn't want another factor to come in and possibly ruin those chances. The doctors I met at Presbyterian were so understanding of why I didn't get it, which meant a lot to me. When they told me I needed to get it, I trusted them. I got my first vaccine and my flu shot on the same day.”
Emilia and Chris are ecstatic to be back home. And she’s maintained her sense of humor through this whole trial. “I joked with the staff that we’re going to have a home birth,” she said. “I'm not ready to go back to the hospital.”
*** Concluding comments ***
If an action is too evil to comprehend and to describe without reproach, the tactic becomes more effective. One must find creative ways even to express the argument.
“To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” -Sun Tzu, Art of War
*** End ***