RIP Edith Isabel Rodriguez

[PrinceMyshkin]

LOS ANGELES - A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility, newly released tapes of the emergency calls reveal.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Relatives said Rodriguez was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes while she was at a hospital waiting area. Experts have said she could have survived had she been treated early enough.



A little more of our humanity
died with you, Edith Isabel Rodriguez...
Unknown to you, dear lamb,
unknown to the rest of us,
it wasn’t only your vital organs
that were giving up, minute
by minute, but the most vital organ
of all, our ability to feel each other
without which, even the most common stone
is more worth holding dear.

[goldenrod]

What the hell is happening in our hospitals in North America?!

goldenrod.

[asilef73]

Jesus. Well said, Jer.

[PrinceMyshkin]

What flitted through your mind
as you lay dying there on the hard emergency room floor?
(Not nearly as hard as the hearts
of those who stepped gingerly around you.)
Was it Rosebud?

Was it “Mama?” “Mamacita?”
The memory of your first kiss,
your heart quickening, your mind
aswirl, or the recollection
of your first heart-break, next to which
you thought that dying might even be fun?

Was it that empanada
you had in some greasy-spoon
in Tijuana one overcast spring day?
Or your first grown-up dress,
the one that showed your figure off so nicely
you were almost ashamed to go out in it?
Or was it Rosebud?

Was it that first glimpse
of your first nina’s beloved face,
so small, crinkled with
the joyful pain of being alive?

Or was it Rosebud?
The Rosebud of the supposed
meaning of it all?

[lavendar1]

This affected me deeply because a family member recently received similar (albeit without such disastrous consequences) mistreatment at the hands of paramedics. Thankfully, though, in his case, ER personnel were able to undo the damage.

Sadly, these instances demonstrate how elements in our society continue to drift into the dangerous waters of the philosophy that "some people count, some people don't."