Case #2: This case happened in UT….
Excerpts: “Until last Thanksgiving, Riley’s life was typical for a 19 year-old. He ate a big meal at his sister Summer’s house in SLC, then went to hang out with the same friend he saw every Thanksgiving. Riley smoked some weed, something he rarely did.
He couldn’t have known that this move would define his life in a catastrophic way, leaving him at the mercy of a health care system with no guidelines for treating patients who consume either medical or recreational cannabis.
On Friday, Riley told his father, Mark, he wasn’t feeling well, and spent the weekend resting. He went to a clinic on Monday and was diagnosed with the flu. By Friday, still sick and feeling worse, Riley returned to the clinic, had a lung X-ray, and was told he had pneumonia. That night, as Riley struggled to breathe, his father rushed him to the hospital.
Within days, he was on life support machines at the U. of Utah Hospital. Doctors weren’t able to explain why a healthy young man would get so sick, so fast. Pneumonia can be serious, and even lead to death, but usually in people older than 65.
Doctors said he needed a double lung transplant. Riley was given a drug screening, and tested positive for THC; that Thanksgiving night hangout had come back to haunt him. As the transplant team gathered in Riley’s room with the family, a doctor broke the news: The hospital didn’t consider Riley a good candidate because of the THC test. Riley would not get new lungs there.
“I said, ‘What if we don’t get a transplant? What if you cannot find another facility that will take him? What happens then?’” Mark Hancey said.
As he recalls it, the doctor said to Riley: “‘You will die, get your affairs in order.” “She was willing to let him die over testing positive for marijuana. This is what shocked me,” Mark said,
At least a half a dozen hospitals, from Arizona to Indiana, refused to take Riley. Eventually, the Hospital of the U. of Pennsylvania agreed to take Riley’s case. He rode in an ambulance to the Salt Lake City airport on February 17, where a two-engine plane brought Riley and the equipment keeping him alive to Philadelphia.”
After weeks of waiting, he finally got a new set of lungs and now faces a year of difficult recovery. But it almost didn’t happen.
MUCH more in this informative look behind the scenes in the world of transplants and the factors which can discriminate against patients. Highest TRUCE recommendation.
#MMJ #2ndClassPatients #Transplants #MEpol #UTpol #GetSerious #TRUCE
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See full article – A 19-Year-Old Nearly Died After A Hospital Said His Pot-Smoking Made Him A Bad Transplant Patient
