TMCnet News
N.J. woman trapped in German hospital: Procedure has led to 'nightmare'Jan 24, 2009 (Philadelphia Daily News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A GREEN CHRISTMAS stocking, with the name "Laura" stitched on, hangs in the window of a Camden County home -- a family's hope hanging by a thread. The stocking hangs where Karl Beckett can see it, a few feet from the computer on which he connects with his ailing wife, Laura Beckett, and their daughter, Jill, thousands of miles away in Saarbrucken, Germany. That is where Laura Beckett, 47, has been incapacitated in the Klinikum Saarbrucken hospital since November, when complications from a medical procedure meant to free her from a decade of intense pain left her imprisoned in her own body. And it is where Jill Beckett stays in a hotel room 15 minutes away, fighting a lonely but tenacious battle to bring her mother back home to Magnolia. "It's been a complete and total nightmare that I can't wake up from," Jill Beckett, 23, said recently from Germany, where she has been staying since her mother's procedure. "Days go by where I don't sleep or eat at all." A lack of money is preventing Laura Beckett from coming home, and the funds for Jill's hotel room are about to run out. Like 'being on fire' The Beckett family knew that hope came with a price tag several years ago, when Laura, a longtime teacher's aide at a Cherry Hill school for disabled children, began to lose her battle with reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), a chronic, painful and progressive neurological condition that often follows major injuries. According to Karl Beckett, Laura's symptoms emerged after surgery for a hip replacement she needed as a result of degenerative arthritis. The pain, which Karl likened to "being on fire," slowed his wife down, but never stopped her from rising every day at 5 a.m. with the help of a cane to get their three children off to school before she would take medication and head off to work. "She had to work for the health insurance, but every day she would come home and collapse," said Karl Beckett, 48. Researching RSD on the Internet, the family kept seeing the same name pop up on their screen: Dr. Robert J. Schwartzman, chairman of the Department of Neurology at Drexel University College of Medicine. Schwartzman, the Becketts said, was the gatekeeper to a procedure conducted at the Klinikum Saarbrucken, where patients are given large amounts of ketamine, an anesthetic generally used in smaller doses in human and veterinary medicine. "My mother waited years to see him and get on his list," Jill said. The procedure, Schwartzman says, is not FDA-approved but has proven successful for more than 60 people who traveled to Germany and Mexico to have it done. "This is the first situation with complications," he said. Getting an appointment with Schwartzman didn't mean that the Beckett family could come up with the $60,000 needed to fund the trip and pay for a procedure that insurance would not approve. That money came from a family friend who had been touched by Laura's plight. "She saw how debilitated she was and offered to pay for the procedure and all the costs involved," said Karl Beckett, an unemployed heating-and-air-conditioning technician. On the day after her beloved Phillies won the World Series, Laura, Jill and a friend flew to Boston for tests before heading off to Germany. It was a moment filled with anxiety -- the entire family has a fear of flying -- but also the most hope they'd had in years. "She knew if she didn't go through with this, she might never get better," Karl Beckett said. "Last thing I said to her was, 'I love you and you have to come back to me.' " Complications in Germany Things went well in Germany until the the third or fourth day of the medically induced coma, when doctors at the hospital noticed a problem in Laura's left lung, Karl said. Testing revealed that Laura had contracted a potentially lethal MRSA infection -- something that doctors claimed barely existed in Germany. That infection quickly led to pneumonia, and by the middle of November a frantic phone call came in that nearly toppled Karl Beckett. "The doctors told my daughter to call me. They thought that I should fly over with my two sons," Karl said, choking back grief. "They didn't think she would make it." Laura pulled through the darkest hour, but has been unable to communicate verbally or breathe on her own since the procedure. Jill said her mother communicates "yes" and "no" by sticking out her tongue. Jill says she's had more trouble communicating with the doctors, nurses and support staff at the hospital during the two hours she's allowed to visit every day, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. "I've probably been called a bitch by every person in this hospital under their breath," she said. Language barriers aside, Jill thinks there's a philosophical difference between German and American doctors concerning a family's right to medical information. "There's days that go by where no one will tell me anything," she said. In the meantime, Jill has bargained with her hotel and car-rental agency to lower prices, and has telephoned doctors, charities, and even the U.S. Army to get assistance. "I'm just waiting for the day I get that phone call that I can get the hell out of here -- with my mother," she said. "I will not leave here without her." The Beckett family is not incurring new medical bills for Laura's treatment, but doctors in Germany have told Jill that her mother will not get better under their care. Getting her home would require an air ambulance, and the cheapest estimate Karl Beckett has gotten was $71,000, from a firm in Florida. Beckett said he has only a few weeks of money left to keep his daughter in a hotel, let alone fly his wife home with her breathing machine. Worst of all, he says, he has sensed a gradual washing of the hands by many of the people initially involved and a laissez-faire attitude from local elected officials and embassies. When Karl tried to contact the woman who had paid for Laura's trip, he was referred to her lawyer. As for Dr. Schwartzman, Beckett can't help but feel that the RSD expert could do more to remedy the situation. "He's the one who set all this up. He is the go-to guy in the United States in RSD," he said. "His official line is that as long as she's in Germany, she's not his official patient. He has assured me that he will assume care as soon as he can get her back." Schwartzman says he has been in touch with Laura's German doctors regularly and has been actively trying to get her home, even approacing the Army. "I can't blame them for being upset," he said of the Becketts. "We're doing everything we can." An eerie winter quiet The Beckett house in Magnolia was eerily quiet on a recent weekday morning, snowflakes making the Christmas decorations in mid-January seem appropriate. "She was supposed to be home by Thanksgiving," Karl Beckett said, sitting on a couch beneath the Christmas stockings in the family room. Beckett spends his days trying to set up fundraisers while pleading with officials for intervention. He received a reply in the mail from one congressman, addressed to his wife. "It makes me think they didn't even read it," he said. Phone calls come in at odd hours from Jill, with updates and setbacks. A few days ago, Karl learned that his wife had contracted MRSA again, along with a serious lung infection. Jill often holds up the phone to her mother's ear so Karl can speak with her. She videotapes these moments, sending them to him by e-mail. The Becketts' youngest child, Danny, 15, kept to himself in an upstairs room. "He's hurting real bad," Karl said, after returning from his son's bedroom. "He just wants his mom home." If and when Laura Beckett returns, she will be hospitalized and no one can accurately tell whether she'll ever be able to speak or breathe on her own. If that's the case, the Becketts will simply do their best to make her limbo as close to heaven as possible. "I tell her I'm going to get her out of here," Jill says. "She doesn't believe me." Karl Beckett has set up a nonprofit account on his wife's behalf. It is "Friends of Laura Beckett Medical Fund at TD Bank, NA 129 S. Blackhorse Pike, Runnemede, N.J. 08078 To see more of the Philadelphia Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Philadelphia Daily News Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |