But this much is for sure: Michael Hickson, a 46-year old quadriplegic who'd contracted COVID-19, died at St. David's South Austin Medical Center in Austin, Texas, on June 11 after the hospital ended treatment for him and moved him from the intensive care unit to hospice care.
Melissa Hickson says her husband was denied potentially lifesaving treatment because doctors at the hospital made a decision based on their biases that, because of his disabilities, Michael Hickson had a low quality of life.
Michael Hickson's death has become a cause among many with disabilities, an emblem of a medical system that they believe views their lives as having less value, even before a pandemic put doctors and hospitals under stress.
That was June 5. One morning, three years earlier, Michael Hickson, a Morehouse College graduate who was an auto insurance claims estimator, went into sudden cardiac arrest as he was driving his wife to work. Blood stopped flowing to his brain and other organs. Sudden cardiac arrest is often fatal,
Anderson says a medical team of doctors, palliative care specialists, a chaplain made the decision that Hickson could not survive further treatment. The team then got signoff from Michael Hickson's medical guardian.
A Texas probate court earlier this year had stepped in and appointed an elder care agency to make medical decisions for Michael Hickson. That happened after Melissa Hickson disagreed with a previous hospital. She says it wanted to discharge her husband to a nursing home. She insisted he needed more
NPR listened to the five-minute recording Melissa Hickson made of her conversation with the unnamed doctor. The doctor speaks of Michael Hickson's quality of life, of wanting to make a "humane" decision. He says he's seen only three people with COVID-19 on ventilators in the ICU all young and prev
Stahl says there's research that we all of us, and especially doctors see someone such as Michael Hickson with a significant disability and say, I wouldn't want to live like that. And we have a bias to underestimate that person's quality of life.
