Toby Faulknor (left) had the opportunity to take a picture with his favorite hip-hop artist Ludacris.
The saying, “everything happens for a reason,” holds true in this story of 11-year-old Toby Faulknor, who was found to have kidney failure after, but not as a result of, a hit-and-run wreck.
The Faulknor family was on their way home from Dalton, Jan. 7, 2011, when their vehicle was hit.
“It was around 6:30 or 7 p.m. when we where on Hwy. 41 coming from Dalton; a car was turning really fast, and it hit me in the side and just kept going,” said Toby’s mother Wisyieh Faulknor.
As a precaution after the accident, she decided to take her family to a local emergency room to have them checked out.
While the family was there, “they took the blood pressure, weight, and height of all of us and the nurse said that they were fine except for her son Toby,” said Wisyieh.
When the doctors ran Toby’s blood pressure, the test showed his blood pressure was dangerously high.
“His blood pressure was 240/145. The hospital staff checked it and rechecked it, and it still came back the same,” said Wisyieh.
A healthy blood pressure is below 120/80, according to mayoclinic.com. With his being that high, Toby was at a severe risk of medical problems.
“The doctor at the hospital checked it with another machine and came to the conclusion that the machines must have been messed up, so he sent us on our way and said everyone was fine,” said Wisyieh.
She said that she just had a “bad feeling,” so Wisyieh decided to take her son to his pediatrician.
After running test on Toby, the pediatrician decided that it would be a better choice to take him to T.C. Thompson’s Children’s Hospital at Erlanger.
While the family was at the hospital, the doctors told Wisyieh that both Toby’s kidneys had failed.
“The doctors told me if they didn’t do anything about it, Toby would die within two weeks,” she said.
The doctors immediately transferred Toby to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the hospital and started running dialysis.
Once he was released from ICU, Toby was taken to Egleston Children’s Hospital, in Atlanta, where doctors began running tests to see if Wisyieh was a match for her son. She was hoping to donate one of her kidneys.
“The doctors told me I wasn’t able to do the transplant because they found early stages of cervical cancer,” said Wisyieh.
The doctors then had to take dramatic measures, so they put Toby on a transplant list, which lead to months of waiting.
“After two months of waiting on the list, they finally found him a match for the kidney transplant,” said Wisyieh. The transplant finally happened “Jan. 5, of this year.”
So nearly a year after the hit and run, Toby finally had the operation that saved his life.
“Toby is doing well,” said Wisyieh. “We have to buy him a lot of clothes, because he is gaining so much weight.”
Wisyieh added, “It has been a crazy time for us and I don’t wish this upon anyone, but we came out alright and everything is going great. “
Is this yet another documented case of a local hospital sending a seriously ill patient home to die thinking everything is fine? Is the hospital industry not regulated? How many deaths have to occur before there is an investigation? OSHA investigates every death in the workplace. Is there no equivalent for health care?
Why do we get articles about books and bird dogs, but nothing of importance to anyone? Answer my questions, it'll make a good article. I can't recall a single article that casts a negative light on the local establishment. I won't suggest any 1984 references, but I will point out that North Korea never airs anything negative concerning their government. They even edit sports footage to deceive their people into thinking they won the big soccer match. Calhoun really did win state, right?
Buy yourself a police scanner and listen to local frequencies. You will be quite amused by how many sick/injured patients and their families request to divert to a hospital other than "the local emergency room".