Toy Hall of Famer Mark Boudreaux, a COVID patient whose lungs were destroyed by a prolonged period of time on a mechanical ventilator, will remain on life-sustaining machines for now.
A Hamilton County probate judge in Ohio stopped Bethesda North hospital on Tuesday from going through with its plan to remove Boudreaux from a dialysis machine. The patient had expressed the wish to live.
Judge Ralph Winkler, however, didn’t make the ruling in the hospital controversy. Instead, the court ran out of time to complete the hearing and continued the proceedings until April. 5.
“I can’t help but think it was Divine intervention,” Judith Boudreaux, Mark’s wife, told The Epoch Times.
A petition to save Boudreaux has since been started by family friends.
A lawyer for Boudreaux filed the petition with the probate court after Bethesda North said it would be taking the 68-year-old patient off a dialysis machine by March 21. In addition to the ventilator, Boudreaux depends on dialysis to live.
The hospital has yet to respond to multiple inquiries from The Epoch Times about Boudreaux’s case.
Judith believes that her and her husband’s staunch opposition to the COVID vaccine and COVID testing may have played a part in how Mark was, and is now, being treated. The hospital, she said, pushed the vaccine so hard that she put a sign next to Mark’s bed that says in all-capital letters “NO COVID TESTS!!” “NO COVID SHOTS!!”
“Some days I just feel like crying all day,” said Judith, who is almost into her 400th day of advocating to help save Mark “from the very medical industry who put him in this position in the first place.”
Boudreaux was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame after a 43-year career as a toy designer. Among his creations are some of the most celebrated toys in the world including the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, considered the most iconic spaceship designed in movie history.
He also created toys for Marvel, and Strawberry Shortcake, and helped design sets for blockbuster movies such as “Jurassic Park,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Batman.”
He was placed on a ventilator last February after he tested positive for COVID and showed some mild breathing problems attributed to the virus, his medical records show.
The hospital left him on the ventilator, which eventually damaged his lungs and led to other medical problems including weakening his kidneys enough to require him to be replaced on dialysis.
Dr. Charles Thurston, who has treated COVID patients worldwide, reviewed Mark’s entire file of medical records since he was put on the ventilator.
A national volunteer advocate for patients, Thurston told The Epoch Times, that the hospital was reckless for leaving Boudreaux on the ventilator. He said records show the hospital did not provide Boudreaux with any other treatment for COVID and did not start him on physical therapy despite his being bedridden for months.
Over time, Boudreaux became so weak he lost his speech and ability to walk, and now finds himself in what Thurston calls the ultimate “medical Catch-22.”
Boudreaux needs a lung transplant but cannot meet the criteria that would make him eligible for one.
According to national transplant guidelines, a patient must be able to walk a short distance, usually between 100 to 400 feet, in order to even qualify for placement on a candidate list for a lung transplant.
Thurston said he believes, in the right facility, Bordeaux would have a chance to be rehabilitated enough to meet the criteria. The problem is, said Judith, he has been ruined “so bad medically” that no other healthcare facility will take him.
Earlier this month, adding insult to injury, Judy said Bethesda North told her they had reviewed Mark’s living will and, based on what it said, we’re going to remove Mark from the mechanical ventilator.
However, when both Judith, who has power of attorney, and Mark himself by writing on paper “I want to live,” challenged the use of the living will. The hospital then announced plans to remove him from the dialysis machine.
Attorney David Blessing, who filed a petition to block the hospital from taking Mark off the life-saving machine, declined to comment on the case.
His petition to the Ohio probate court names Scott McCardle and Sateeth Keari as two doctors at Bethesda that has determined Mark to be in “terminal condition,” and that McCardle has recommended withdrawing the life-sustaining support.
The petition also states that TriHealth Inc., Bethesda North’s parent company, has indicated it wants to end Boudreaux’s life-sustaining support. TriHealth has also not responded to inquiries by The Epoch Times about Boudreaux’s case.
Boudreaux’s petition to block the hospital from taking away his life support based on his living will, argues that the doctors must first determine that the “patient no longer is able to make informed decisions for himself and that there is no reasonable possibility that the patient will regain the capacity to make informed decisions for himself.”
Ethical protocols for patients on life-sustaining machines also seem to contradict the hospital’s decision.
In 2003, long before COVID, The National Library of Medicine published a study on the issue by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study concluded that “rather than age or the severity of the illness and organ dysfunction, the strongest determinants of the withdrawal of ventilation in critically ill patients were the physician’s perception that the patient preferred not to use life support.”
So far, Boudreax has defied all odds of surviving being on a ventilator.
Before Bethesda placed Boudreaux on a ventilator, there were several published articles in the media as well as top medical journals warning hospitals against the use of ventilators to treat COVID patients, especially patients who are 65 years and older.
One of those was an April 8, 2020, report published by the Journal of American Medicine Association.
The report was based on a study of 5,700 COVID patients admitted to hospitals over a one-month period in the New York City area. According to the study, only 38 of the 320 COVID patients, or three percent, placed on mechanical ventilation survived.
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