She discussed it with her husband over Facetime, and Keith was intubated and placed on a ventilator. 21, the nurse practitioner called Darla and told her that Keith’s oxygen levels had plummeted and that he would have to be placed on a ventilator. The nurse practitioner told her the medical center does not use ivermectin because the science was unproven and that it wasn’t an approved treatment for COVID-19.Īt 12:30 a.m. The prescription hadn’t been filled, though. Tarik Farrag, a doctor who is affiliated with the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a group that advocates for the use of ivermectin to treat the disease and had a prescription for the drug. Darla asked the nurse practitioner who was treating Keith about ivermectin. They had consulted online with Dr. The next day, Keith was admitted to the intensive care unit. Keith Smith “was adamant” that he didn’t want that treatment. The hospital staff told Keith and Darla that he had to be intubated and put on a ventilator. Keith Smith was put on oxygen, the machine maxed out. She took her husband to UPMC Memorial because it was a five-minute drive from their home in Manchester Township and “time was of the essence,” she said.
19, his wife said, he began coughing up blood. More: North York councilwoman says tax collector sent unwanted 'pornographic video' of himself 'Boy, he could play that thing': Bluegrass legend Bill Runkle dies after contracting COVID 'The love of my life': They were inseparable - until COVID took their lives 11 days apart Previously: Ivermectin - Wife of York County man on 'death's doorstep' from COVID sues UPMC to use drug Darla would not say whether he was vaccinated, citing privacy laws. Both of their sons, Carter and Zach, also tested positive, as did Darla. Their cases were mild, “like an annoying flu with a persistent low-grade fever,” Darla said. 10 a home COVID-19 test indicated that he was infected with the virus. Keith Smith, a structural engineer by trade, wasn’t feeling well, and on Nov. The long weekend came at the end of what has been a long month, starting when Keith Smith was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Nov. “I finally got some sleep last night,” Darla Smith said Monday morning. The court order touched off a weekend of back and forth between the lawyers involved, Darla Smith and the hospital’s administration, ending Sunday night when Keith Smith, 52, received his first dose of ivermectin. However, the following paragraph of the order directed UPMC to allow the doctor who had prescribed the drug or another physician or registered nurse to administer it under the doctor’s “guidance and supervision.”
Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of the viral disease. The brief order denied Darla Smith’s request for an emergency injunction to force UPMC to administer ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that is not part of the medical center’s COVID-19 protocols and is not approved by the U.S. The order, in response to Darla Smith’s petition to compel the hospital to administer the drug to her husband of 24 years, was, to some, kind of confusing, and that led to two days of lawyers negotiating its implementation, frustrating Darla's attempts to have her husband receive the drug. A court order that permitted Keith Smith, on a ventilator in a medically induced coma from COVID-19, to be treated with the controversial drug ivermectin, was issued late Friday afternoon.