After six hours waiting in the swamped emergency room of Cleveland Clinic Martin Health North Hospital in Stuart, Fla., this July, 12-year-old Seth Osborn was finally diagnosed with appendicitis.
During his wait, the pre-teen was “quivering from pain in his lower abdomen,” said a ProPublica report. By the time he arrived at another hospital for emergency pediatric surgery, Seth’s appendix had burst. That complication could be fatal.
His father, Nathaniel Osborn said he and his wife were surprised that the emergency room was so busy –it didn’t even have enough chairs for them to sit in at times – at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. A nurse muttered “COVID” when the family asked why wait times were so long.
Seth wasn’t transported from the first hospital until around midnight. He spent five days and four nights in the hospital and received antibiotics to prevent infection from the ruptured appendix. Usually, patients who undergo appendectomy surgery only spend around 24 hours in the hospital.
While insurance covered most of the Osborn’s initial $48,000 hospital bill, the family still had to borrow against their house to cover $5,000 in out-of-pocket costs.
The hospital system where Seth was treated declined to comment specifically about his case because of patient privacy laws.
“Since July 2021, we have seen a tremendous spike in COVID-19 patients needing care and hospitalization. In mid-August, we saw the highest number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the Cleveland Clinic Florida region, a total of 395 COVID-19 patients in four hospitals.
Those hospitals have approximately 1,000 total beds,” the email from the hospital system to ProPublica said. “We strongly encourage vaccination. Approximately 90 percent of our patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 are unvaccinated.”
As of Aug. 25, Florida was reporting more COVID-19 deaths per day than any other state in the country, reported the New York Times. Even so, Gov. Ron DeSantis has strongly opposed vaccine mandates.
Typically, around 130 children come in for emergency room visits daily at Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center – around a two-to-three-hour drive from the Cleveland Clinic in Stuart – said Dr. Rafael Santiago, a pediatric emergency physician serving Central Florida, according to ProPublica.
During the pandemic, the number fell to 33 and last month it shot up to 160.
As of Wednesday, Seth had mostly recovered. However, his father is still shaken, said ProPublica. He decided to share his son’s story on social media this month and it was shared more than 34,000 times.
“I have no ill will towards the hospitals or the care received at either hospital,” Nathaniel said this week, “but had these hospitals not been so crowded with COVID patients, we wouldn’t have had to wait so long and perhaps my son’s appendix would not have burst.”
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