Killer Nurse by John Foxjohn Page A

Kelley’s said, “Even after he lost his leg, there was never a time when he felt sorry for himself. There was never a time when he didn’t attempt to lift people up around him. It just wasn’t in Garlin’s nature to focus on his problems.”
    This was what set Mr. Kelley apart from many others. Not only DaVita employees, but his family, friends, and even casual acquaintances all said that if you weren’t already aware of Mr. Kelley’s health problems, there was no way of knowing from his actions or demeanor. LaFrancis said of her husband, “He never met a stranger. You never knew what he had gone through the way he carried himself.”
    No one ever had an unkind thing to say about Mr. Kelley. The other DaVita patients also liked him. Carolyn Risinger, who’d spent hours with Mr. Kelley while they received treatments, told KTRE-TV, “I knew Mr. Kelley. He came in early with me. He was a sweet man.”
    As it turned out, “He was a sweet man” was the worst thing anyone had to say about Mr. Kelley.
    Early on the morning of April 16, 2008, Mr. Kelley woke early as he usually did. He took a boiled egg and a grilled cheese sandwich to eat as snacks at DaVita—he was known as much for his boiled egg as he was for his warm personality. LaFrancis dropped him off at DaVita’s front door, where Mr. Kelley walked himself in using his walker. He’d spent many an hour with a therapist to get in shape and learn to use the walker because he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone.
    As the med nurse that day prepared the patient’s medication, Mr. Kelley’s PCT, Sharon Dearmon, hooked him up to the machine. Dearmon said that he was his normal joking self, and ate his boiled egg while he watched ESPN on TV. There weren’t any problems with his vitals or anything else when they hooked him up at 5:36 A.M . His flow chart showed that he was fine between 5:36 and 7:30 that morning. In fact, a notation in his flow sheet said he was resting comfortably at 7:30.
    Half past seven was break time for the employees, and Dearmon said that a lot of employees were off the floor then, including shift supervisor Sharon Smith. Dearmon was monitoring her own patients as well as another PCT’s while that person was on break. At 7:35, she had her back to Mr. Kelley as she was taking care of another patient when the alarm on Mr. Kelley’s dialysis machine went off. She turned and found Kimberly Saenz, the med nurse, by Mr. Kelley’s machine trying to reset the alarm. After running over, Dearmon also found Mr. Kelley unresponsive, and called for help. After clamping off his lines, she started CPR, and someone called for an ambulance.
    One of the people who responded to that call for help was RN Sharon Smith, charge nurse for that bay, who’d just returned from break. Smith later noted that she saw something in the bloodline that she’d never seen before. It looked to be a very unusual blood clot. It was fibrous, almost like hair. She said, “I’ve never seen it before and I’ve never seen it since.”
    Dearmon echoed Smith’s description of the strange clot.
    The DaVita employees did everything in their power to save LaFrancis’s husband, but he was still unconscious when paramedics arrived to transport him to the hospital. Once at the hospital, Garlin Kelley remained in a coma for months until on August 15, almost four months to the day that he lost consciousness at DaVita, he died without ever waking.
    After Mr. Kelley died, LaFrancis told a reporter, “He was the love of my life. But I know he’s happy where he is. He’s whole again.”
    One question lingered in everyone’s mind: How could he go from resting comfortably at 7:30 to massive cardiac arrest in five minutes with no symptoms?
    DaVita investigators had found no problems with either the new or the reuse dialyzers. However, after the incident with Mr. Kelley (who