Ryan Kehoe

Review of Exempla St. Josephs

Horrible experience. I walked into the hospital a...

Horrible experience. I walked into the hospital and left in a wheelchair unable to walk!

Starting on July 13, 2019,

I was dragged out of my hospital bed with a fractured vertebrae and put into a wheelchair with no foot support, so I had to hold my legs in the air with my painfully broken back, and wheeled down the hall to another room because they thought I had a weapon (which I did not). The entire time I was screaming and crying in excruciating pain while begging them to stop hurting me. I was not a threat, I could not even stand or sit up in bed. I did not threaten anyone or raise my voice. I asked for my meds and got security saying I had a weapon and suffered through this experience instead. After that I was scared for my life and told I would have to remain in the hospital for 6 weeks still. I was trapped and felt like a hostage captive by my torturers.

Dr. Rivkin was exceptionally terrible and denied me, along with with failing to mention or discuss with me, any alternative care for my infection. There is a traditional and medically accepted alternative that I researched myself and was denied by the staff here, although they normally offer it, and I eventually recieved it only after escaping their prison and visiting my primary care physician, who they said knew I was in St. Joe's but actually did not, and he prescribed the infusions I so desperately needed.

The staff here also LIED to my family in Florida telling then I had a heart infection, which is almost as good as a death sentence, prompting my mom and sister to fly out to Colorado to see me within a few days time as it could be their last chance to see me.

I was treated like I was less than human and do not understand how they can sleep at night knowing full well what they did to me.

Dr. Rivkin should not be allowed to practice medicine. She violated the oath she took when she started practicing medicine.

Even our enemies in war are required to be treated better as per the Geneva Convention.

I have been told by nearly all my doctors in the past that I have a high pain threshold, but no one could endure what I went through without coming out of it scared to even see a doctor ever again for so much as a routine checkup.

Here is the kicker:

After the doctors tried to double my oxycodone dosage at one point. I told them I did not want an opiate addiction when I left the hospital and I wanted to deal with a certain amount of pain and decrease my dosages. Their response was that they denied me any pain meds after that at all with my fractured vertebrae painfully healing and labeled me an opiate addict. How do you figure that makes sense? They then called me a drug seeking addict anytime I was in pain and requested meds further denying me the same meds they tried to double in dosage for me the day before. I have never had an opiate addiction. I was not seeking drugs, just help.

Thankfully I escaped and found the help I needed. It is now a little over a year later and my back fully healed with the infection eating away a disc and two of the bones in my spine fused together without surgery or any assistance from this torture chamber loosely called a hospital. I am back on my skateboard, riding a supersport motorcycle, running, jumping, and playing basketball no thanks to St. Joseph's House of Horrors.

One final note, the patient advocate their was very nice though a little absent, and a special thanks to one nurse who works their that was the only one in scrubs or a lab jacket that was nice to me and wheeled me out. I do not want to attach her name to this rant, but if she sees this I just want to say I have not forgotten you. Thank you. You are the only good thing that hospital had to offer me.