When Gary Fowler was sick and suspected he had contacted COVID-19, he went to the emergency room at a metro area Detroit hospital. The hospital denied him testing for the coronavirus. He went to another hospital and was denied testing there too. Then Fowler went to a third hospital and was turned away again when he asked for testing.
He was begging for the test because he was having difficulty breathing, family members said. Fowler died at home, age 56.
Gary’s father, David Fowler, 76, died of coronavirus six hours earlier.
“My dad passed at home, and no one tried to help him,” Fowler’s son Keith Gambrell, 33, told USA Today. “He asked for help, and they sent him away. They turned him away.”
Fowler died while sleeping, sitting up in his recliner. He had taken to sleeping in a chair because it had become so difficult for him to breathe. His wife of 24 years, Cheryl Fowler, was by his side.
“He was begging for his life, and medical professionals did nothing for him,” Gambrell said.
Gambrell lives in Detroit’s 48235 ZIP code, a coronavirus hot zone with the highest infection rate per capita – 162 cases per 10,000 residents – and the highest number of confirmed cases of the virus at 724, USA Today reported.
Black people in Detroit and all of Michican are dying from coronavirus at disproportionately high rates, say experts.
About 33 percent of the cases and 40 percent of deaths in Michigan are in African Americans, said Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Khaldun spoke during a Facebook Live interview with Detroit’s Civil Rights, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity Department.
Detroit’s communities of color have a harder time getting tested than the city’s majority-white communities.
“We know there’s often delays in diagnosis for all kinds of medical conditions in the Black community and people of color. So are there delays in testing? Are there delays in treatment? Are we sending people home when they really should be admitted to the hospital because they’re so at risk for deteriorating quickly? Those are the types of things that we’re going to have to look at,” Dr. Khaldun told USA Today.
“And again, they’re happening with other diseases and I’m sure they’re happening with COVID-19 right now.”
Fowler was denied testing three times, according to Gambrell. With a fever and shortness of breath, he went to Beaumont Hospital and explained he had been in contact with someone who had been infected with the virus — his own father. Still he was denied.
Gambrell said the hospital told his father that he most likely had a fever from bronchitis. Days later, Fowler went to the emergency room at Detroit Receiving Hospital with a fever of 100.7 degrees and shortness of breath. Medical staff there suggested he should go to Henry Ford Hospital to receive better care.
So Gambrell drove his father nearly three miles across town to Henry Ford, where Gambrell said his father explained, “‘My chest hurts. I can’t breathe. I have a fever that has not broken. I’ve been taking Tylenol, I’ve been drinking stuff and it is not breaking. I think I have the virus because my father tested positive for it and I saw him…the day he went to the hospital.’” Still, Fowler was denied testing. Henry Ford said it has no record of Fowler coming in.
Fowler’s case highlights the difficulty of getting COVID-19 testing in Detroit’s Black community.
“The American Hospital Association sent a letter last week to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar about the racial disparities in the federal COVID-19 response, highlighting a lack of available tests for African Americans, unequal medical treatment for those who have the disease and lack of public health information about coronavirus for communities of color,” The Detroit Free Press reported.
The troubles aren’t over for the Fowlers. On the day her husband died, Cheryl, 57, got sick, too. She started coughing and had a fever of 102 degrees.
When Cheryl’s cousin, state Rep. Karen Whitsett, who also had COVID-19, heard about the deaths of Gary and David Fowler, she contacted the family and put them in touch with the doctor who had treated her.
But even Whitsett said she’d had trouble getting tested.
“The part that bothers me the most through this whole entire process is that…if I hadn’t used my name, if it wasn’t for my name and my job title, I don’t think I would have gotten anywhere, either,” with testing and treatment, Whitsett, a Detroit Democrat who represents the 9th House District, told the Washington Post.
“We have people dying. And they’re in my community, and they’re in my district, which is my family,” Whitsett said. “People in my community are not my constituents. They are my family. And they’re dying. So I need politics to stop and I need lives to be saved.”
Whitsett has been in the news lately for praising President Donald Trump and crediting him with saving her life because he promoted the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus. She was given this drug in her treatment and went to the White House to meet Trump.
The doctor who prescribed hydroxychloroquine for Whitsett also issued prescriptions for Cheryl and the rest of the family.
Still, Cheryl’s condition worsened and she also had to travel hospital-to-hospital before she was tested despite having a doctor’s note.
At Beaumont Hospital, Grambell said his mother was passed over.
“Before they even looked at my mother, there was a young caucasian lady complaining about sushi she got from GrubHub that upset her stomach, and they swooped her in the back like she had coronavirus,” Gambrell said.
“But my mom, she had all the symptoms, and they told her to just go home. That makes no sense…They helped a girl who ate bad seafood over someone with all the signs of needing medical help.
“I felt like they sent my mother home to die.”
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 70: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin goes solo to discuss the COVID-19 crisis. He talks about the failed leadership of Trump, Andrew Cuomo, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and New York Mayor de Blasio.
His mother finally got admitted to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
“She tested positive for the virus as well,” he said. “It was a blessing they kept my mom. I think the only reason they kept my mom was because she had prescriptions to get tested for the virus.”
Cheryl Fowler was put on a ventilator to help her breathe and ultimately recovered. Gambrell tested positive for COVID-19 as did his brother Ross. They have since recovered.
