August 7, 2025 • 57 mins
Amy Vilela is an American politician from the state of Nevada. She worked as an accountant before becoming an advocate for single-payer healthcare, also known as Medicare for All, after her daughter was turned away from a hospital and died of a heart attack because the hospital thought she lacked health insurance. Vilela ran for the United States House of Representatives in 2018 and 2022, and co-chaired the Nevada campaign for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
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(00:35):
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Speaker 2 (00:48):
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Investigator at Opperman and this show is brought to you
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(01:55):
chocolate cocoa deals. Okay, uh, we have on the phone
with us Amy Valella and she's the mother of a
young woman named Shalin, and you can go to Shalin
dvt dot org where you could find some more details
on this story. This is one of these really horrific stories.
(02:18):
And Amy Velela now she lost her daughter due to
incompetent and heartless medical system that we have here in
this country, and she's devoted her life to her daughter's
memory and to getting this story out of Amy.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Are you there, Yes, I am you are.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I'm so sorry about your loss. You know, like I said,
you know, I have my own seventeen year old daughter
and so God forbid you know anything like this could happen.
Before you tell us about what happened to Shalin, Can
you tell us about yourself? Who is Amy Valela?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Well, I can tell you that I fought my way up.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I came from a life of poverty and.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Abuse of every type that you can think of, and
I fought my way up as a single mother with
my children and try to teach them the importance of
education and making a name for yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
How did you wind up here in Vegas?
Speaker 4 (03:23):
So my husband is in the military and Chillin's stepfather,
and we got reassigned here in Vegas about three years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And so yeah, so Amy Velella is a local Vegas
and all the activists you hear that come on the
show all the time. Everybody knows her. She's involved in
the all the stuff here locally. Now, tell us what happened.
Why did Shalen have to go to the ear in
the first place?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well, when shelyn she called me up, I think it
was in March of two thousand and sixteen, and she
said she wanted to come out and be close to
her siblings and and her family. She was living in
Kansas City, which I'm originally from.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I lived there for about eighteen.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Years, and Shelynn decided she wanted to come out to
Las Vegas and finish her schooling to become a nurse.
And she I have two younger children who are four
and five now, but she wanted to be close to
her siblings. That was important to her. Family was really important.
So when she came out here, she had just driven
(04:32):
twenty two hours from Kansas City to Las Vegas. The
first thing she said was mo by me, it's swollen,
and look it's red. Her leg was red and swollen.
As a matter of fact, she said it so much
that I was starting to get irritated. I was like,
I get it chilin your leg. Yes, you know, like
(04:54):
we get it your leg swollen. It's probably just for
you traveling. She had had a previous injury on her knee.
She a torn acl and she had been to the
emergency room in December of twenty fourteen, and she had
also gone in April of twenty and fifteen for a
follow up and they had told her, you know, at
(05:15):
your age, we should wait and see if it will
resolve itself. Before you do, you explore the option of surgery.
A lot of times at your age you know, you'll
get enough mobility that you won't want it to need surgery.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
What was sorry?
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
What was her age?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
She was twenty two, just turned twenty.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Two, okay, so, and she took like a twenty hour
car rid.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes, she drove from there.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
She had our belongings, she'd sold everything from her home.
She had what she hadn't sold in her car, and
she wanted to start a new life around her family.
We moved quite a bit because of the military, but
she knew this would be where her oldest, the second
oldest of my children, her brother would be settling and
(06:04):
starting his life. So she really wanted to connect with
the family again.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay, And she was going to live with you here
in Vegas, so shouldn't get her own place.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
She was gonna live with me Initially. At the time
of her death, she was looking places with her brother.
They were planning his twenty first birthday. They were so excited.
They were taught. They were looking around at the apartments,
gotten two jobs out here. My son was finishing his schooling,
and they were getting ready to start life as brother
(06:36):
and sister as adults.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And when was this in, Like, what year did this happen?
What month?
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So this was in May of twenty fifteen and Gina
twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
May twenty fifteen. Okay, and then okay, so then she's
complaining about the knee. What did you gutsk calf?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I'm sorry, it was a knee and calf. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Right, So is this like that kind of thing where
they warn you about when you're taking a long plane
flight that you could get like a clot.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Yes, now that now that I've looked back, yes, this
is something they complain about.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
There was a lot of external factors.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Shellin had a lot of symptoms and risk factors that
should have been a red flag for any any physician.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, because if I know about it, you'd think that
someone worked in a new or would know about this.
So okay, So then then what happened that day? How
did you finally get her? H she was complaining about
the knee in the caf.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, so she kept on complaining.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
It was like, you know, and and the main thing
that stopped Shelyn from going was was she felt her
insurance had stopped her last day of work. Shellin had
always been insured and she had just started a new job.
So she's like, you know, it's probably just with the knee.
I'll wait till my new insurance starts, my new job, right,
and then I'll check it out. It's probably just something
that I need to do, like some physical therapy, you know.
(08:01):
But then she was playing horsing around. She had found
love again, and she had found she had a boyfriend
here in Vegas, and he was a wonderful gentleman, very
hard working, great guy. And they were playing around, horsing
around at the pool and he picked her up a
thrower into the pool and he dropped on both her knees,
(08:23):
and but the one knee that she'd already been experiencing
pain in became excruciatingly painful, to the point that she
was screaming out of pain that it was the worst
pain she ever felt.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I was in Phoenix at the time for business.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
I'm an executive and I was down there in front
of business trip and I fielded a call for my
husband and he was like, you know, Shelynne saying it's
the worst pain she's ever felt in her life. I
could hear her screaming in the background. I'm like, why
are you calling me?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Take her to the er?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
And so Silin being the person that she was. She
was very conscious of finances and stuff, and they're like, well,
we're not sure if insurance has started or not. And
I'm like, that's we'll deal. Well, we'll handle it, you know,
just tell her we'll pay for just take her to
the er. My husband is a pilot and Air Force
I'm an executive. We surely can feeled a payment to
(09:22):
the er for in our visit.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So she goes.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
So they went to the R and again it was
just in the one knee. Even though she had fallen
on both, the one knee was excruciatingly painful.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
And so she went to the R.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
She went in there and the first thing that happened
was they asked her about insurance and sillin. They said,
do you have insurance, and she replied no. They had
then had my husband following up Trycare, which is military insurance.
It's the UH, it's the insurance that all military active
(10:00):
military members kid.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Which hospital was this?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
This was Centennial.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Hills Centennial Hills, Okay. And that was the closest one to.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
You, closest one to us. We live up in Providence
in Las Vegas, Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So you get in there and right away they want
to find out how they're going to get paid.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
The thing that most people don't realize is that everyone's saying, well,
you know, why wasn't she on your insurance. Military insurance
does not have to abide by the ACA.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
She did not.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
They do not cover adult children unless they meet very
specific criteria, one of which is currently enrolled full time
in college. Again, she was just moving and she hadn't
started the college out here. She was in the midst
of getting enrolled and waiting for the next period to
start where she could start going full time. So she
(10:56):
went in there and they had him calling. They had
him calling from the waiting room to try care, which
is documented that calling up to see if they couldn't
get her roll.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
This is before she's even seen.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
She says, I don't have insurance, and the woman at
the desk says, well, it's going to be very expensive.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
There's the door.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
If you leave now, it won't cost anything, and Shelen's like, no,
it's there's something really wrong with my leg.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
So at this time she's still with my husband and
with her boyfriend at the time, and they're sitting in
the waiting room.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
He has to leave. Eventually, he's tried calling.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
They've called me again at my job, and I'm like,
to be honest with you, it's getting irritated. I'm like,
why do you guys keep calling me? This is an emergency.
We'll deal with the insurance and the bills later on.
Just just find out what's wrong.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
You know. I've never dealt with that myself.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I've never had anyone question when I was an emergency
room before I go in about my insurance. That's usually
something that is done after you've already been seen and assisted.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, okay, how long did it take before she finally
got to see a doctor or even a nurse?
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So the timing I think is about like an hour
and then she was taken to the back. I then
feeled another call from Sellin, and to be honest with you,
I mean, I'm getting frustrated because I'm thinking, this is simple.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
You're at an er. All you need to do is
tell them that you need to be seen.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
I mean, I've never I can understand why people question
this case because I've never experienced this myself. Either, I
get another call and she's like crying, Mommy, they're not
helping me, and that's really hard and I was. I remember,
I was irritated with I'm shellin you're just not telling
them what you neat then, and she's like, I'm telling them.
(12:58):
All they want to do is an extra ray, and
I keep telling them, you know, there's something really wrong
with my leg and I don't know what it is,
and they won't give me anything else.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Oh, because they didn't think she could be able to
pay for it, so they didn't want to give her
like a full examination.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
That is what I think.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yes, oh my god.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
You know it's interesting that I went to the same hospital.
I'm dual insured, right, and I had a I have
what's called a handle hernia over my esophagus doesn't close
all the way, and so once in a while I
get a really bad case indigestion, like to the point
where I need to have them give me some prescription
strength anti acids. I went to the same hospital and
(13:43):
I was given an MRI in EKG interveningence pain medication
and held for observation. So I had no reason to
doubt that this hospital wouldn't give her every test that
they possibly could to ascertain what was wrong with her.
The only difference is I was dual insured.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right now. Did they ask all those questions like when
you as soon as you mentioned to me that she
had taken that long car ride, you know, like right away,
that's the first thing I thought of. Did they ask
those kind of questions.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
No. As a matter of fact, her medical records, which
I have a print out from Centennial, they even have
her race wrong. My daughter was African American and Caucasian.
They have her listed as Hispanic. She absolutely had no
Hispanic in her whatsoever. They said that she had no
(14:37):
previous surgeries. My daughter had a metal water in her
arm from a break when she was nine, and she
had a huge scard ton arms. She hated that scar.
I mean, it was not something she would have forgotten.
She also had They said, ye had no chronic medical conditions.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
My daughter had pcos.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
She had just filled her prescription for metamorphine just a
few days before for this visit, and she was They
said no medication. So not only was she on that medication,
but she was also on birth control and she had
sickle cell trait. What she knew of everything that I
just mentioned to you, with the exception of the arm
(15:17):
injury is a risk factor for a blood clot.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh my god, What about what time of the day
was this when she was at the air Was it
like in the middle of the night they had like
a skeleton staff or something there.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
No, it was I was still in a meeting, so
it was around four o'clock, three o'clock, maybe close to
five actually, now to think.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
About it, was it a five?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And what day of the week?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
To be honest, I don't remember exactly what day, but
it would have been a weekday because I was in
a business meeting, so it was in the weekday.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Okay. And does this hospital have a reputation for doing
this kind of shoddy kind of no, because when you
went in there, everything was fine.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
When I went everything was fine.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
But after I had this experience with Slynn, I did
look online and it's it's you know, it's public knowledge.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
You can look up.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Online and there are tons of horror stories on their reviews.
And then if you go to UHS, which the mother hospital.
You know, their corporation, so they have like an umbrella
over a bunch of sub corporations what we call an
accounting world, you know, sister corporations. Centennial falls under h UHS,
(16:33):
and there is a ton of information about UHS online.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Right, because these hospitals are for profit businesses. Did they
turn a profit? Am I correct?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Yeah, the for profit you know. And I'm a CFO
by trade. So it's accounting one oh one that a
for profit exists to maximize profits for its shareholders. That's
the only reason why they exist. There's no other reason.
That's accounting one o one.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
And do we know what kind of profit this hospital
turns every year?
Speaker 4 (17:07):
I know that they have UHS. The largest portion of
their profit comes from their Nevada hospitals. And again they're
publicly traded, so this information is available online. It's public knowledge.
It's somewhere around the neighborhood of thirty percent of their
profit comes from Nevada.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, all the hospitals here make a great living here
because I know my ex wife works for Saint Rose
and they all turn a great profit. Can can you
give us like an estimate of like though the general
you think they might be turning a year?
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I don't remember all can the actual dollar amount? I
just remember the percentage of their nationwide UHS is Universal
Health Systems.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
That's a huge corporation.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
They own tons of for profit hospitals and to have
thirty percent of your profits come from Nevada.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
That's alarming.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, yeah, Nevada has really bad medical care to begin with,
you know, just compared from New York originally, So when
you compare like just the basic carry you would get
back in New York and you come here, it's just
like the amateur hour.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah. I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I mean I've lived all over because my husband is
a military. I've never seen anything like it ever. And
Nevada it ranks forty seventh in the United States pitching
outcome and safety.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, it's pathetic. Now, so then they only want to
give her an X ray. What happens next when she's
sitting there in this little examining.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Room, she's begging them for something for the pain and
something and an MRI.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Typically that wouldn't be the.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Preferred way of diagnosing a DVT, but that's all she knew.
She knew that an X ray, she knew it wasn't skeletal.
She was in school to be a nurse. She was
already a licensed CNA. Okay, so she knew it wasn't
her bone wasn't broken. And you know something else interesting
is that Slyne already knew what a torn ACL was.
She wasn't asking for them to diagnose to torn ACL.
(19:12):
She knew what an ACL felt like. She'd already been
diagnosed and had follow up treatment, which in their records
they say she had no follow up treatment, which was
also reported on the news.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
But that's that's false.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Shelyne had been only thirty days before this er visit
for a follow up MRI to ascertain the healing of
her knee, so she already knew what that felt like.
Slyne knew something different was happening. She knew something different
was happening in her leg, and she just didn't know
what it was. She kept on telling Mom, it feels
(19:44):
like a Charlie Horse pain in my calf. We have
like a massage chair in our room, and she was
in there every day because the pain in her path
was so intense.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, and with her experience being a CNA, she must
have given them her medical history because there would be
no reason for her not to.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
From what her boyfriend who was there with her, and
from her phone conversation with me, they weren't interested in
taking her medical history. They did not have any of
her medical history in their charts at all.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
So you know, most of us.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
I know every time I've gone to ER, the first
thing ask is what medications are you taking and what
surgeries have you had? None of this was in her chart,
Nothing at all was in her chart. They did not
even ask the bare minimum questions of any for any
our visit.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
So then what happens next?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
They tell her.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Why she's in there, that the only thing that's going
to fix her knee is surgery, elective surgery, not that
it's surgery that's required. Having your ACL terror repaired is
elective surgery. Many people, including my sister who's an RN,
have had for years, eight plus, ten plus years, and
(21:03):
they only require an ACL to be repaired to affect
your mobility. So Shelynne. After she leaves, she's she's frustrated.
I have text messages from her. She's in so much
pain because they didn't even give her a title and
all for an eight out of ten pain.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
They didn't even treat her pain. She's trying to.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Like different clinics in town that DW knee surgery to
prepare for when her insurance kicks in, right, and they
sent her home with a knee brace with the only
instruction is to take it off when she bathes. And
for someone that has a knee injury and it's already
has a blood clot, that's a death sentence.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, that would make it worse.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Yes, it immobilized her knee and made it primed, prime
conditions for her blood clot to continue to grow. And
she was following those instructions. She was wearing a knee
brace NonStop. I even asked her, chelin, why aren't you
taking that off? Maybe you should bend your knee a
little bit. She's like, no, the instructions say take it
(22:13):
off when your bathe.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh boy, So okay. Then what happens next?
Speaker 4 (22:19):
So she keeps on for the next couple of weeks,
complaining of her knee, and we're like okay. I'm like, well,
they told you that they want to net to help
it is surgery.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Well you can't.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
You cannot like get surgery without having insurance. We're waiting
for insurance to kick in.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
And again she doesn't fall on her mind.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
She was able to get a president in Las Vegas,
so she doesn't fall on her last Vegas yet. And
in Missouri there's no Medicaid expansion. It doesn't the ACA
doesn't really apply in Missouri.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
She was able to start working though with the with
the knee brace on.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
She was working through the pain. She was so such
a responsible young woman.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
She was like, I need to continue working because I
need my insurance in order to get my knee fixed.
And her main concern was I need to schedule this
in this knee surgery so that I can still go
to school when I'm supposed to start and work. And
she was so concerned about finances and saving and I
was like, slin, don't worry. If you're a little short,
(23:22):
I'm going to help you. You know, we'll figure it out.
I mean, if you need the surgery, you need surgery.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
So, so how long does this go on?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Two and a half to three weeks?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
And as it goes on, she's like starting when she's
climbing stairs, I remember she's telling me, Mom, I'm starting
to get out of breath.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
I'm really out of breath.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
This is like a week and a half or she left,
So a week and a half after the incident, she's
telling me I'm out of breath. Well, Shelyn had pcos
this makes you gain weight, so she was overweight, and
I was thinking, I told her, well, sheeline, when you
when you get your napter, your knee surgery field, we'll
start working out together and that should help you with
(24:08):
your breathlessness. That's what I thought I attributed it to.
You know, I'm an accountant, I don't I don't know
medical you know things. So I'm thinking, Okay, she's overweight
and set a breath so she just needs to work out,
you know. And she knew she was overweight, So it
(24:28):
was no like you know, mystery does that she was overweight,
And that's what we all attributed it to, including sheelin.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Okay, So about two or three weeks go by, and
then then what happens next?
Speaker 4 (24:43):
So sheline goes back to Kansas City and she needs
to close out in the middle of a divorce. She
got buried really young, and she had been separated for
over a year and they were finally divorced, was finally
going through. She was smart, she didn't stay in something
that wasn't working, and she knew she was young and
(25:05):
that she had made a mistake, and she decided, you know,
I'm just I'm not going to like live for this.
I'm going to make the right choice and you know,
break it off. And so she was going out there
for the final court eight.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
This was also important because she needed to get financial
aid through school. She needed to be able to get
a subsidized loan, and she couldn't do it without without
being divorced. So Shelynne went out to Kansas City to
finalize it. She flew out there and immediately I got
a phone call from her father, lives in Kansas City.
(25:42):
He sounds frantic and he's like, Shelyine's really at a
breath and she's weating, and he's like, you know, Amy,
she really needs to lose some weight. I'm really concerned
that she's having like she can't even breathe right now. Well,
you know, I don't know if it's a change in
the altitude. And I'm like, well, Ross, we have to
(26:05):
get that knee fixed first before we start, you know,
talking to her about her awake control. And again, pcos
that's polycystic ovarian syndrome. That's the number one side effect.
Your hormones are off, and anybody that's had hormones or
steroids or anything of that sort, it's the same kind
of effect. It makes you balloon up right, So we
(26:30):
thought it was a side effect again of the PCs.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
And what did it turn out to be?
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Well, the next that night, I get a phone call
from Shelin and she's panicked. And I've never heard her
like this. Shelyn, my daughter was a very strong woman.
She was exemplary I even at forty two, my daughter,
which in some ways was much wiser and stronger than
I ever have been. But I heard her panicked and
(27:03):
she was crying, and she's like, I just want to
come home, and I just I'm so.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Glad mommy that you're.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
That's your letting me be there with my siblings, and
that I'm going to continue school and I can't wait
to get home and start my life.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
And I'm like, Shelyn, you know this is the last step, honey.
Just hang in there.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
You know you're going to be home tomorrow, I mean
a few days, you know, And just hang in there.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
You know your whole life's ahead of you.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
I know it sucks to have made a bad decision
and you're divorcing, but you're young. You know your whole
life's ahead of you. And it's a learning experience. And
the last thing she says, she's like, I love you, Mom.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
I was like, I love you too.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Then the next morning, I get a call from her father,
which in itself would not be unusual, as we're good friends, okay,
but his voice sounded panicked, and it was like four
thirty in the morning, and I'm thinking, Okay, usually doesn't
call me at four thirty in the morning. And he
was confused and mind you like, she had such a
(28:10):
close relationship with her father. Many people don't hear about him,
but he lives in Kansas City. He was an excellent
father to her. She was a daddy's girl. They had
a special relationship. He had gotten up that morning and
took to her favorite meal and forced her to eat.
He's like, Amy, she wasn't eating and I was like, no,
you have to eat something. And so she her favorite
(28:35):
meal that he cooked for her, and he's like, all
of a sudden, Amy, she's calling out to me, daddy.
Daddy called nine one one, and she's like she looked
so panicked, Amy and scared and pain. He calls nine
one one and he's like, I didn't know what to do.
She's slumped on the floor holding her chest and it
(28:55):
hurt her to lay her down it heard her sit up,
and he was just he said, I didn't know what
to do. I froze and the ambulance came and they
took her in there, and he said that before she left,
she slightly raised her hand and waved goodbye to him,
and he was on the way to the hospital. He
called me and he said that I don't know what's
(29:17):
going on, Amy, I don't know what's going on. They're
talking about coding. Her heart's restarted. I don't know what's
going on. I'm like, well, what do you mean her
heart's coded? Like she's twenty two? Like what are you
talking about? Like her, she's what I remember looking.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
At my husband.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I was like, should I go, Like she must just
be having a panic attack, maybe from last night. She's upset,
and like, you know, she's twenty two, Like what twenty
two year old has a heart attack, you know? And uh,
He's like no, And I said, then I called my sister,
who happened to be a critical care nurse at this hospital.
(29:54):
That him that, So my sister's an RN and I
call her and she's like but she's like hold on.
I can hear her calling over there, and she's like
this is Ellie and they're like they know who she is.
She's like, I know about you know, you can't tell
me because of hippa. How quick does a need to
get there? And they're like, get her here right away.
(30:15):
And they were asking, my sister has been to the er.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
We don't know. She's twenty two.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
She's coding, Ellie, she's coding and this is her niece.
And they're like, Ellie's like, this is my niece, this
is my niece. She's panicked. I can hear her on
the other line, and they're like, she has she been
to the R. And Ellie's like, amy the R. And
I'm like, well, just for her knee. And immediately my
sister screams into the phone pulmonary embolism, pulmonary embolism, and
(30:42):
the nurses she said I could, She said that she
could hear on the other end the nurse in there
that was in there she was coding, was screaming out
pulmonary embolism, pulmonary embolism. They knew immediately, I mean immediately,
my daughter because of a pulmonary embolism, which is an
effect of a blood clot breaking off going to her
(31:04):
lungs and then they knew, and then they started to blood.
They have what called clock flusters. They started pumpting her
body full of cocklisters.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
How long was she there in the er?
Speaker 4 (31:26):
She codd, She codd for fifty nine minutes before they
could get her heart started again on a continuous basis.
They had her own max pressors. I know that they
did everything they could. This is one of their own
sneeze sitting in there. They were trying everything they could
(31:50):
to person went back when I flew out. Immediately there after,
Ellie told me, actually, my son was driving me at
the time. She Lend's full brother. His name is Josiah.
He was driving me, and he was actually in his pajamas,
and I looked at him, I said, you're getting on
a plane. He went in flip flops in the pajamas,
(32:14):
and we both spoke the plane flights and got out
there as soon as we could. When I walked into
her room, I remember the whole entire flight out there.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I was like, I was.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
On Facebook through the internet on the plane. I was
flying Southwest, thankfully, and they were like the best. They
were getting me off the plane as quick as they could.
They were accommodating me and trying to get me as
quick as they could out there. And when I got
in there to the room, I the whole room smelled
(32:46):
of blood. And I looked over to my daughter, and
every time she breathed, her eyes would flutter open, her
head would fly back a little bit, and then her
eyes would close. And I remember going up to her
and I just held her hand and I was like, Shellin, fight, fight, Chelin,
(33:10):
Fight as much as you can fight this.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Your whole life's a hitting your baby. Fight. That's the
hardest thing in the world to see your kid dying.
And there's nothing that you can do. Nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
And I looked over my other kids.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
They were in there, the two older ones, the younger
ones were at home, and they're bawling, laying over her body.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
If everybody she was so.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Loved, it's just nothing but tears, just everybody telling her
to fight, Chilin. We're here with you. Fight, Please fight
for us, you know, find as hard as you can.
(34:10):
And I'd have to take breaks, I'd have to go
outside because to watch your child die is too much
for your brain to even comprehend. And I'll go in
the parking lot. And then I've been screaming God, please.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
No, no, not her.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
You know I want to God to take me instead,
keep on saying, even if she was dying, God, please
take me, Please take me.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
You know I've lived my life, Just take take me.
It wasn't to be.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Her pupils blue and mind you, my sisters are it.
And then I have to really thought her bravery. She's
watching all this, No this isn't great, but she's not
telling me. She's just sitting back, watching and observing. And
she helped Rachelin, her daughter and mine rolling a few
(35:14):
months apart, and they were like sisters. Shely didn't even
live with her for a few years because when I
had to move from the military, she didn't want to
leave her school. So Ellie helped Rachelin, and I can
see Ashley, her.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Daughter, who was Sheln's age, like a sister to her.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
She's falling, and Ellie takes her phone and goes over
to her eyes with the light on her phone and
opens her eyes and scans her phone over her eyes.
Ellie almost passes out. She has to have to come
help her. She knows that Chland's God and Celein's father
(35:56):
and I just look at each other. Frost is so
aybe no, please know Amy, and I'm like CRUs, I
don't know what to say. He's like, can we just
keep her alive for a little bit more from your
travel carts? So we're friends. I was telling me whatever
(36:17):
we need to do. Shelynn was an organ donor. She
always has been since she was young. She knew she
wanted to go to medicine and it was on her
driver's license. So she actually died on the twenty seventh.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Kept her alive.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
Getting her organs ready for donation, and her main organs
couldn't be saved. So we decided at four point thirty
that we weren't going to put her through anymore. And
they said, ma'am, you know you might want to step out,
(36:59):
and I said, no, she's not gonna be a load.
So I stayed with them as they took her breathing.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Tobat, holding her head. She wouldn't be a load. And
then I climbed into bed her and.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
I held her and sang to her and played her
fabite music. You know, it was so real because I
had held her like that since she was a baby.
It felt so good and I know that sounds so weird,
but I had held her like that since she was
an infant, and I was holding my baby shellin again.
(37:44):
And then her body started to sense up and I
almost thought there. I was like, wait, she's alive. She's alive.
And my sisters on our end looked at me and
sugar Head no, but she was hugging me. When she died,
her body tensed up like she was hiking me, and
(38:07):
then she took her last breath, and I remember I
had like a break at that moment. I just didn't
want to live anymore. I was like, God, Please, Please,
God take me. And her father was crying for simply.
(38:29):
That's how we said feeling. They took her look at
an hour because they harvested her about herselves, and they've
harvested bones and ligaments and tissue and anything they could.
I wouldn't let them touch her face because she wouldn't
open casket before she was cremated. But her donations helped
(38:57):
thirty five people. But that was how chill In left
this world, and it's so unnecessary. That's the most enraging.
She died in this country for no reason at all
(39:19):
except for money.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
That's hard. That's hard. I was one of those people
that thought, you know, I was safe. I'm an executive,
my husband pilot for the Air Force. Were set. We're
up a middle class.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
This stuff can't touch us, right. That's the false safeness
you feel in this country, and that's what luws many
Americans into this false sense of security. And it's a
hard lesson to learn, if you have to learn it
the way I did. And it's also has a part
(40:05):
of it that's shape that it took this before you
start opening your eyes to how many other people around
you are sufferings too.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
You've devoted your life now full time to lobbying for
some kind of a reasonable medical system. Now, yes, how
long did you have to grieve though, before you threw
yourself into that.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
You know, I sat in bed for a year for
Chelin died. I didn't even get out of bed except
to go to work. That's the only thing that kept
me going. My husband talk about he was sitting there
every day, bringing me meals in bed. I gained like
sixty pounds. I was just I wanted to die. I
(40:56):
didn't want to live anymore. And then I was on
a phone call with my sister and she started crying
and I was like, why are you crying? She was
like gut wrenching crying, you know. And she looked at
me and she's like, on, it's your skype. And she's like,
I've lost Scholin and now I'm losing you too. You're
(41:18):
killing yourself. And she's like, are you going to fight
for Scholin? Or are you going to kill yourself? And
I thought, you know what, I'm Shelin's legacy, I'm her voice.
And then you know something that Martin Luther King always
said came to mind that to see evil and not
(41:38):
do anything about it is to be an accomplice. And
I thought, I have to fight. I have to fight.
And I went to a single payer conference in New
York City in January of twenty and sixteen, and I
met Nina Turner. Yeah, and she was talking and she
(42:00):
heard Schlein's story. We actually met her by chance. I
think it was predestined, really, And we're in the elevator
and she says, you can't have a testimony without a
test Well, she always says, but she said it directly
to me. She's like, you have a test and I thought,
(42:21):
you know what, you know this is throughout the night
that she said this, and I was like, you.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Know what, You're right.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
You can't testify about something without a test. And I
don't want anybody else to have to deal with this
and have this test. I have to do something about it.
No one's safe, no matter how wealthy you are, when
you're a military, whether you're Republican Democrat, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
You're not safe. You're not safe.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, you know, in a just world there would be
criminal charges or something like this, you know, and even
this concept that we could just turn her eyes and
look away while people are suffering.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
Yeah, you know, I had a choice when I did this,
you know, whether it's to all of the medical staff
or not.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
I let the nurse go. She's under orders.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
The nurse practitioner and the hospital are, in my opinion,
they have blood guilt. They have blood on their hands.
In my opinion, they could have stopped this and they didn't.
And especially the nurse practitioner was especially hostile towards Scholin,
and Shelynn was telling me how frustrated she was that
(43:46):
she wasn't listening and telling her that they're not a
doctor's office. They specifically told her when she begged for
something for the paint, for an MRI to goro get
insurance and see a specialist. They're not a doctor's office,
and unfortunately for them, I was.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
On the phone when that happened, so I.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Heard this and I was like, you know, shelyin and
I didn't know anything was deadly wrong. And I thought, well,
they treated me really well when I was there, so
if there was something there, I thought, you know, it's crappy.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
And I said to man, even after Shelynn, before she died,
even after this incident, I'm like, well, none of us
will ever go to a centennially ten, but I surely
would have thought they would have done the bare minimum
to assess if there was something wrong with her.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
That's the case.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
I didn't know how little they had actually done until
I got their own records.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
How was that? Moving along with the are they ready
to settle or.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
No?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
No, they are asserting that it is she'll Len's fault.
We are right now in federal court and we are waiting. See,
in federal court, we could have gone state when we
went federal. In federal court, you have to wait until
the judge approves it to go forward. So we've been
four months waiting for that. This is normal procedure for
(45:22):
a court case because they're so expensive. A judge has
to decide whether there's enough litigating circumstances there that that
it can actually proceed forward. So we're waiting for that
go forward. We should be hearing any day.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Now, what do you think, because I know you're working
with with healthcare, Now, what do you what kind of
a healthcare system do we need to prevent this kind
of thing from happening? Like, I don't understand why we
allow profit in hospitals to begin with.
Speaker 4 (45:59):
Like exactly, I mean if you look at it as
an accountant. What's more furiating as I started researching the
you know, our healthcare system as it stands now, is
that I understand fully how how companies work.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Right, I mean, this is what I do for a living.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
I started looking and I'm like, you know, forty percent,
up to forty percent of the money each dollar you
pay into a health insurance company goes for lobbying, advertising.
Some of it even goes for them to hire people
to deny your claims.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Right, it goes for the.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
CFOs and CEOs, bonuses and then there's also dividends to
their shareholders. Again, the only reason why a for profit
company exists is to make their shareholders wealthy. I mean,
you can pick up any accounting book and this is
accounting one oh one. This doesn't belong on our healthcare system.
(47:00):
And we keep on trying. They have so much lobbyist
and if you look, I mean, you can do any
kind of search on most of our politicians. They're receiving huge,
huge contributions for their campaigns.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
From the insurance lobbyists, the insurance industries.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
We are the only well court you know, country that
is this size and this profitable that does not ensure
that all their citizens have some form of health care.
We are the one of the richest nations, and we
still our citizens their lives depend on how much ready
(47:38):
they have, you know. And then I started looking at
the Constitution and I'm like, you know, the Constitution says
that our government's put in place to ensure our life, liberty,
and pursuit of happiness. I would say that having health
care that ensures our life would fall under that.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
I'm surprised that we do not have some former universal healthcare.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
And it's a basic human right.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
In my opinion, yes, yes, but somehow we're just walk by.
Speaker 4 (48:11):
Someone on the street and like they're dying, Say no,
do you have one hundred bucks for me to perform
CPR on you?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Right?
Speaker 4 (48:17):
I mean, you know that's essentially what we're doing in
the hospitals. I implore all my fellow Americans, this is
not the America that I think I thought I grew
up under. I grew up in that we won't leave
an American behind, right? Is that not what we've all
been taught. We don't leave Dot one behind, We go back.
We fight for Americans, but we're okay with letting them
(48:39):
die in the hospitals because they're not part of the wealthy.
I have a real problem with that.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, what I always say is, you know, living here
in Vegas, you know if someone gets lost out in
Red Rock, they send helicopters and dogs. I got one
hundred cops over there looking for the guy in the
fire department. Everybody rescue teape, we have all rescue part
you know. But you're right, you're walk into an er
and not when I can help this guy, you know, right,
(49:06):
So what is what is the solution? You don't support
the Obamacare either, do you.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
I don't support repealing it without something else in effect,
because I realize I am compassionate and I understand there
are millions that will lose insurance immediately.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Yeah, but insurance. You know, we need medical care, not
insurance exactly.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
You know, I just feel like it will make it
a little bit worse. But I am not a proponent
of the AC. Now they say to not help Shalan Again,
there's in a state that did not have the ACA
Medicaid expansion.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
And how many states do we have are like that?
Speaker 4 (49:42):
I mean, we only have I think it's thirty some
that did the Medicaid expansion. And even then we still
have no twenty two year old thinks I'm going to
have a pulmonary embolism and die. I mean, you know
they always talk about it here. Then well, people who
are younger don't need insurance, And I say, bull crap,
because if you're taking if you're a female and you're
(50:03):
young and you're taking birth control, you're at a seventy
five percent more chance of dying from a blood clot
than anybody else up to the age of thirty five.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Really, yes, and so.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
These girls, what does a blood clot look like. How
many girls do you think Shellin's ah know with what
the symptoms of a blood clot are and what they
would if they would even know that they were experiencing
symptoms of a blood clot. Most of them don't. I
would say the majority of them don't. And this is
a major I was, you know, one of the one
of the organizations working on blood clots. Her daughter, who
(50:38):
was in school to become a dentist, twenty three years old,
she pull She killed over from a pulmonary embolism and
same thing.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
She just got a.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
Little injury on her leg when she was playing sports,
had no idea what a blood clot looked like, went
to the ar and she died.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
We weren't at a time ten and it's left then
then then what is what is our path to a
solution to all this?
Speaker 3 (51:08):
To me?
Speaker 4 (51:08):
We need to this country needs to ensure that every
citizen has health care.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
We need universal health care.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
Anything less than that, we're saying that we're willing to
sacrifice some of our citizens for the sake of money
and for the sake of profits for our insurance corporations.
That's what we're saying. And I don't care how you
word it or how you say it, or free market
or whatever else you want to say.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
You're talking about people.
Speaker 4 (51:37):
There will always be as long as we do not
have universal health care, there will always be there will
always be gaps in insurance, always sure.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
But where we are now, we don't even have a
proposal for this. We have a proposal, a crazy proposal.
Give us less, give us less to that care.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
And you have six seven six in the House right now. Okay,
universal health care. I know that Bernie Sanders also just
to announce he's Bernie.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
He's getting ready.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
To present something that offers a public option that's somewhat
better than what we have now, but it's not the same.
We need to have citizens out here like that. My
healthcare ally, a healthcare rallies across the United States demanding
from their government that we get we make our for
(52:27):
profit hospitals, force them to become nonprofit. The HR six
seven six does that. It also reimburses them for costs
for transforming into a nonprofit. We need to take the
profit out of healthcare and naked about saving human lives,
which is.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
What it was meant to do, right, Because if they're
making these obscene profits. That money could go to pay
these premiums. You know, everyone complains about the deductibles so
high and the premium so high. They wouldn't be if
they weren't making all this money.
Speaker 4 (53:02):
You know, not only that, are we paying more for
health care than any other country and we get the
least amount because we're paying for each CEO's huge, huge bonuses.
We're paying for the dividends to their shareholders, we're paying
for their advertising, we're paying for all kinds of things
that do not include healthcare. Our government would actually save
(53:24):
money and the average citizen, except for the top two
percent of the United States, would save money every year,
and we would have free health care.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, it's a no brainer. It's a no brainer. Now,
there is a rally coming up on April eighth at
the Lloyd Federal Courthouse over here in Las Vegas. Yes, Now,
it seems that a lot of these people protesting their
congressmen and their centers and stuff like that outside of
their offices, demanding these town halls. It seems like we
(53:54):
are getting some kind of action when the media acknowledges us.
So this could be something that it's in the news
right now. This crazy Trump plan, this Ryan Trump plan
to make us even worse. Uh, that we could take
to the streets and take to our feet and get
down in front of these congressmen and call your congressman. Now, now,
(54:15):
what is this bill we're supposed to be promoting a.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
An it's Hr six seven six.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
And since the Trump plan that didn't go through the House,
you know, everyone's feeling a little law of safety right now.
But I have no misunderstanding there will be around two
we need to be out rallying. This is this this
this is a local part of the rally. It's a
nationwide rally on April eighth. There's a whole coalition of
(54:45):
different organization and unions that we are fighting for healthcare
for all and if anybody needs any information on it,
you know to healthcare dashnew dot org. And we are
fighting tooth and nail to try to get this to
go through. And we have to have the support of
all of our citizens and making a ruckus just like
(55:07):
we've been doing, and that is what's going to make
them listen that we won't accept anything less.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
And the website you set up for your daughter, Shlyin
is Shlyin DVT. Dot org Can you spell that out
for us.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Though, Yes, it's s h A L y n n
E d v T dot org.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Amy. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
And I know it wasn't easy, and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (55:36):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
And I think it was important to let you get
that out and let the people hear it and really
and I think this could make an impact. I can't
thank you enough for going through that form.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (55:49):
You know, worst thing for a parent is not only
to have their child have them die, but have them
die in vain.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
I couldn't agree with you more. And I want you
to promise me that if anything comes up, you need
any kind of promotion thing, you just call me up.
I'll put you right on the air.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Okay, we'll do.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
Thank you mean, God, bless you, thank you. Okay, I
was you know, listen, you know I can't take this
stuff anymore. To tell you, God bless this woman and
there this Challan's father and stepfather and the brothers and
sisters and stuff like that. I'm just askually keep you
(56:24):
keep them in your prayers. But we can't let this
kid die in vain.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
You know. And so.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
April eighth, you know, down there at the Federal Courthouse Building,
I'll be promoting the event coming up. And but it's just,
you know, I just did a whole show on this
col opperaman care. You know, where these obscene profits that
these hospitals are making, and this whole idea that we
give money to a middleman, these to these insurance companies
so that they can pay their CEOs and they can
(56:54):
pay for advertising, and they can pay for people to
turn you down. You know, it's just insane. We have
to come to our senses and stop all this foolishness
and stop being taken for suckers here. Otherwise, this this
what you heard happen to this woman could happen to
any one of us, and we could be in this position,
(57:15):
heartbroken and lying in bed for a year. So God
bless Amy Vallila and her daughter Shalin. It's a shalindbt
dot org. I'll have all the links and the descriptions
and stuff like that. Thank you so much, guys, And
don't forget the Opera Report dot com member section. Keep
us supported there. There's a lot of more content, new
shows in there. You know, we gotta get this stuff
(57:37):
out of here.
It's the Opperman Report. Join digital forensic Investigator and PI
at Opperman for an in depth discussion of conspiracy theories,
strategy of New World Order resistance, hi profile court cases
in the news, and interviews with expert guests and authors
on these topics and more. It's the Opperman Report. And
(00:35):
now here is Investigator Ed Opperman.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Okay, welcome to the Opperman Report. I'm your host, priud
Investigator at Opperman and this show is brought to you
by pscoco dot com. Pscoco dot com is Phoebe sads
chocolate website. It's the Cocoa Exchange. Phoebe Soid is an
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trademark of Mars Incorporated. TCE is formerly known as Dove
(01:10):
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TCE offers not just premium chocolate's put anything from sauces
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com and then click on the shop now button and
you can also go into the cocoa business. You can
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your own website and your own access to these great
(01:55):
chocolate cocoa deals. Okay, uh, we have on the phone
with us Amy Valella and she's the mother of a
young woman named Shalin, and you can go to Shalin
dvt dot org where you could find some more details
on this story. This is one of these really horrific stories.
(02:18):
And Amy Velela now she lost her daughter due to
incompetent and heartless medical system that we have here in
this country, and she's devoted her life to her daughter's
memory and to getting this story out of Amy.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Are you there, Yes, I am you are.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I'm so sorry about your loss. You know, like I said,
you know, I have my own seventeen year old daughter
and so God forbid you know anything like this could happen.
Before you tell us about what happened to Shalin, Can
you tell us about yourself? Who is Amy Valela?
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Well, I can tell you that I fought my way up.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I came from a life of poverty and.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Abuse of every type that you can think of, and
I fought my way up as a single mother with
my children and try to teach them the importance of
education and making a name for yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
How did you wind up here in Vegas?
Speaker 4 (03:23):
So my husband is in the military and Chillin's stepfather,
and we got reassigned here in Vegas about three years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And so yeah, so Amy Velella is a local Vegas
and all the activists you hear that come on the
show all the time. Everybody knows her. She's involved in
the all the stuff here locally. Now, tell us what happened.
Why did Shalen have to go to the ear in
the first place?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well, when shelyn she called me up, I think it
was in March of two thousand and sixteen, and she
said she wanted to come out and be close to
her siblings and and her family. She was living in
Kansas City, which I'm originally from.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I lived there for about eighteen.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Years, and Shelynn decided she wanted to come out to
Las Vegas and finish her schooling to become a nurse.
And she I have two younger children who are four
and five now, but she wanted to be close to
her siblings. That was important to her. Family was really important.
So when she came out here, she had just driven
(04:32):
twenty two hours from Kansas City to Las Vegas. The
first thing she said was mo by me, it's swollen,
and look it's red. Her leg was red and swollen.
As a matter of fact, she said it so much
that I was starting to get irritated. I was like,
I get it chilin your leg. Yes, you know, like
(04:54):
we get it your leg swollen. It's probably just for
you traveling. She had had a previous injury on her knee.
She a torn acl and she had been to the
emergency room in December of twenty fourteen, and she had
also gone in April of twenty and fifteen for a
follow up and they had told her, you know, at
(05:15):
your age, we should wait and see if it will
resolve itself. Before you do, you explore the option of surgery.
A lot of times at your age you know, you'll
get enough mobility that you won't want it to need surgery.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
What was sorry?
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
What was her age?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
She was twenty two, just turned twenty.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Two, okay, so, and she took like a twenty hour
car rid.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes, she drove from there.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
She had our belongings, she'd sold everything from her home.
She had what she hadn't sold in her car, and
she wanted to start a new life around her family.
We moved quite a bit because of the military, but
she knew this would be where her oldest, the second
oldest of my children, her brother would be settling and
(06:04):
starting his life. So she really wanted to connect with
the family again.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay, And she was going to live with you here
in Vegas, so shouldn't get her own place.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
She was gonna live with me Initially. At the time
of her death, she was looking places with her brother.
They were planning his twenty first birthday. They were so excited.
They were taught. They were looking around at the apartments,
gotten two jobs out here. My son was finishing his schooling,
and they were getting ready to start life as brother
(06:36):
and sister as adults.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And when was this in, Like, what year did this happen?
What month?
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So this was in May of twenty fifteen and Gina
twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
May twenty fifteen. Okay, and then okay, so then she's
complaining about the knee. What did you gutsk calf?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I'm sorry, it was a knee and calf. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Right, So is this like that kind of thing where
they warn you about when you're taking a long plane
flight that you could get like a clot.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Yes, now that now that I've looked back, yes, this
is something they complain about.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
There was a lot of external factors.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Shellin had a lot of symptoms and risk factors that
should have been a red flag for any any physician.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, because if I know about it, you'd think that
someone worked in a new or would know about this.
So okay, So then then what happened that day? How
did you finally get her? H she was complaining about
the knee in the caf.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, so she kept on complaining.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
It was like, you know, and and the main thing
that stopped Shelyn from going was was she felt her
insurance had stopped her last day of work. Shellin had
always been insured and she had just started a new job.
So she's like, you know, it's probably just with the knee.
I'll wait till my new insurance starts, my new job, right,
and then I'll check it out. It's probably just something
that I need to do, like some physical therapy, you know.
(08:01):
But then she was playing horsing around. She had found
love again, and she had found she had a boyfriend
here in Vegas, and he was a wonderful gentleman, very
hard working, great guy. And they were playing around, horsing
around at the pool and he picked her up a
thrower into the pool and he dropped on both her knees,
(08:23):
and but the one knee that she'd already been experiencing
pain in became excruciatingly painful, to the point that she
was screaming out of pain that it was the worst
pain she ever felt.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I was in Phoenix at the time for business.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
I'm an executive and I was down there in front
of business trip and I fielded a call for my
husband and he was like, you know, Shelynne saying it's
the worst pain she's ever felt in her life. I
could hear her screaming in the background. I'm like, why
are you calling me?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Take her to the er?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
And so Silin being the person that she was. She
was very conscious of finances and stuff, and they're like, well,
we're not sure if insurance has started or not. And
I'm like, that's we'll deal. Well, we'll handle it, you know,
just tell her we'll pay for just take her to
the er. My husband is a pilot and Air Force
I'm an executive. We surely can feeled a payment to
(09:22):
the er for in our visit.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So she goes.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
So they went to the R and again it was
just in the one knee. Even though she had fallen
on both, the one knee was excruciatingly painful.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
And so she went to the R.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
She went in there and the first thing that happened
was they asked her about insurance and sillin. They said,
do you have insurance, and she replied no. They had
then had my husband following up Trycare, which is military insurance.
It's the UH, it's the insurance that all military active
(10:00):
military members kid.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Which hospital was this?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
This was Centennial.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Hills Centennial Hills, Okay. And that was the closest one to.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
You, closest one to us. We live up in Providence
in Las Vegas, Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So you get in there and right away they want
to find out how they're going to get paid.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
The thing that most people don't realize is that everyone's saying, well,
you know, why wasn't she on your insurance. Military insurance
does not have to abide by the ACA.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
She did not.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
They do not cover adult children unless they meet very
specific criteria, one of which is currently enrolled full time
in college. Again, she was just moving and she hadn't
started the college out here. She was in the midst
of getting enrolled and waiting for the next period to
start where she could start going full time. So she
(10:56):
went in there and they had him calling. They had
him calling from the waiting room to try care, which
is documented that calling up to see if they couldn't
get her roll.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
This is before she's even seen.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
She says, I don't have insurance, and the woman at
the desk says, well, it's going to be very expensive.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
There's the door.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
If you leave now, it won't cost anything, and Shelen's like, no,
it's there's something really wrong with my leg.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
So at this time she's still with my husband and
with her boyfriend at the time, and they're sitting in
the waiting room.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
He has to leave. Eventually, he's tried calling.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
They've called me again at my job, and I'm like,
to be honest with you, it's getting irritated. I'm like,
why do you guys keep calling me? This is an emergency.
We'll deal with the insurance and the bills later on.
Just just find out what's wrong.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
You know. I've never dealt with that myself.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I've never had anyone question when I was an emergency
room before I go in about my insurance. That's usually
something that is done after you've already been seen and assisted.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, okay, how long did it take before she finally
got to see a doctor or even a nurse?
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So the timing I think is about like an hour
and then she was taken to the back. I then
feeled another call from Sellin, and to be honest with you,
I mean, I'm getting frustrated because I'm thinking, this is simple.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
You're at an er. All you need to do is
tell them that you need to be seen.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
I mean, I've never I can understand why people question
this case because I've never experienced this myself. Either, I
get another call and she's like crying, Mommy, they're not
helping me, and that's really hard and I was. I remember,
I was irritated with I'm shellin you're just not telling
them what you neat then, and she's like, I'm telling them.
(12:58):
All they want to do is an extra ray, and
I keep telling them, you know, there's something really wrong
with my leg and I don't know what it is,
and they won't give me anything else.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Oh, because they didn't think she could be able to
pay for it, so they didn't want to give her
like a full examination.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
That is what I think.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yes, oh my god.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
You know it's interesting that I went to the same hospital.
I'm dual insured, right, and I had a I have
what's called a handle hernia over my esophagus doesn't close
all the way, and so once in a while I
get a really bad case indigestion, like to the point
where I need to have them give me some prescription
strength anti acids. I went to the same hospital and
(13:43):
I was given an MRI in EKG interveningence pain medication
and held for observation. So I had no reason to
doubt that this hospital wouldn't give her every test that
they possibly could to ascertain what was wrong with her.
The only difference is I was dual insured.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right now. Did they ask all those questions like when
you as soon as you mentioned to me that she
had taken that long car ride, you know, like right away,
that's the first thing I thought of. Did they ask
those kind of questions.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
No. As a matter of fact, her medical records, which
I have a print out from Centennial, they even have
her race wrong. My daughter was African American and Caucasian.
They have her listed as Hispanic. She absolutely had no
Hispanic in her whatsoever. They said that she had no
(14:37):
previous surgeries. My daughter had a metal water in her
arm from a break when she was nine, and she
had a huge scard ton arms. She hated that scar.
I mean, it was not something she would have forgotten.
She also had They said, ye had no chronic medical conditions.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
My daughter had pcos.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
She had just filled her prescription for metamorphine just a
few days before for this visit, and she was They
said no medication. So not only was she on that medication,
but she was also on birth control and she had
sickle cell trait. What she knew of everything that I
just mentioned to you, with the exception of the arm
(15:17):
injury is a risk factor for a blood clot.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh my god, What about what time of the day
was this when she was at the air Was it
like in the middle of the night they had like
a skeleton staff or something there.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
No, it was I was still in a meeting, so
it was around four o'clock, three o'clock, maybe close to
five actually, now to think.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
About it, was it a five?
Speaker 2 (15:41):
And what day of the week?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
To be honest, I don't remember exactly what day, but
it would have been a weekday because I was in
a business meeting, so it was in the weekday.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Okay. And does this hospital have a reputation for doing
this kind of shoddy kind of no, because when you
went in there, everything was fine.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
When I went everything was fine.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
But after I had this experience with Slynn, I did
look online and it's it's you know, it's public knowledge.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
You can look up.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Online and there are tons of horror stories on their reviews.
And then if you go to UHS, which the mother hospital.
You know, their corporation, so they have like an umbrella
over a bunch of sub corporations what we call an
accounting world, you know, sister corporations. Centennial falls under h UHS,
(16:33):
and there is a ton of information about UHS online.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Right, because these hospitals are for profit businesses. Did they
turn a profit? Am I correct?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Yeah, the for profit you know. And I'm a CFO
by trade. So it's accounting one oh one that a
for profit exists to maximize profits for its shareholders. That's
the only reason why they exist. There's no other reason.
That's accounting one o one.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
And do we know what kind of profit this hospital
turns every year?
Speaker 4 (17:07):
I know that they have UHS. The largest portion of
their profit comes from their Nevada hospitals. And again they're
publicly traded, so this information is available online. It's public knowledge.
It's somewhere around the neighborhood of thirty percent of their
profit comes from Nevada.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, all the hospitals here make a great living here
because I know my ex wife works for Saint Rose
and they all turn a great profit. Can can you
give us like an estimate of like though the general
you think they might be turning a year?
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I don't remember all can the actual dollar amount? I
just remember the percentage of their nationwide UHS is Universal
Health Systems.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
That's a huge corporation.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
They own tons of for profit hospitals and to have
thirty percent of your profits come from Nevada.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
That's alarming.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, yeah, Nevada has really bad medical care to begin with,
you know, just compared from New York originally, So when
you compare like just the basic carry you would get
back in New York and you come here, it's just
like the amateur hour.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah. I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I mean I've lived all over because my husband is
a military. I've never seen anything like it ever. And
Nevada it ranks forty seventh in the United States pitching
outcome and safety.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, it's pathetic. Now, so then they only want to
give her an X ray. What happens next when she's
sitting there in this little examining.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Room, she's begging them for something for the pain and
something and an MRI.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Typically that wouldn't be the.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Preferred way of diagnosing a DVT, but that's all she knew.
She knew that an X ray, she knew it wasn't skeletal.
She was in school to be a nurse. She was
already a licensed CNA. Okay, so she knew it wasn't
her bone wasn't broken. And you know something else interesting
is that Slyne already knew what a torn ACL was.
She wasn't asking for them to diagnose to torn ACL.
(19:12):
She knew what an ACL felt like. She'd already been
diagnosed and had follow up treatment, which in their records
they say she had no follow up treatment, which was
also reported on the news.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
But that's that's false.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Shelyne had been only thirty days before this er visit
for a follow up MRI to ascertain the healing of
her knee, so she already knew what that felt like.
Slyne knew something different was happening. She knew something different
was happening in her leg, and she just didn't know
what it was. She kept on telling Mom, it feels
(19:44):
like a Charlie Horse pain in my calf. We have
like a massage chair in our room, and she was
in there every day because the pain in her path
was so intense.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, and with her experience being a CNA, she must
have given them her medical history because there would be
no reason for her not to.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
From what her boyfriend who was there with her, and
from her phone conversation with me, they weren't interested in
taking her medical history. They did not have any of
her medical history in their charts at all.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
So you know, most of us.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
I know every time I've gone to ER, the first
thing ask is what medications are you taking and what
surgeries have you had? None of this was in her chart,
Nothing at all was in her chart. They did not
even ask the bare minimum questions of any for any
our visit.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
So then what happens next?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
They tell her.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Why she's in there, that the only thing that's going
to fix her knee is surgery, elective surgery, not that
it's surgery that's required. Having your ACL terror repaired is
elective surgery. Many people, including my sister who's an RN,
have had for years, eight plus, ten plus years, and
(21:03):
they only require an ACL to be repaired to affect
your mobility. So Shelynne. After she leaves, she's she's frustrated.
I have text messages from her. She's in so much
pain because they didn't even give her a title and
all for an eight out of ten pain.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
They didn't even treat her pain. She's trying to.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Like different clinics in town that DW knee surgery to
prepare for when her insurance kicks in, right, and they
sent her home with a knee brace with the only
instruction is to take it off when she bathes. And
for someone that has a knee injury and it's already
has a blood clot, that's a death sentence.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, that would make it worse.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Yes, it immobilized her knee and made it primed, prime
conditions for her blood clot to continue to grow. And
she was following those instructions. She was wearing a knee
brace NonStop. I even asked her, chelin, why aren't you
taking that off? Maybe you should bend your knee a
little bit. She's like, no, the instructions say take it
(22:13):
off when your bathe.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh boy, So okay. Then what happens next?
Speaker 4 (22:19):
So she keeps on for the next couple of weeks,
complaining of her knee, and we're like okay. I'm like, well,
they told you that they want to net to help
it is surgery.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Well you can't.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
You cannot like get surgery without having insurance. We're waiting
for insurance to kick in.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
And again she doesn't fall on her mind.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
She was able to get a president in Las Vegas,
so she doesn't fall on her last Vegas yet. And
in Missouri there's no Medicaid expansion. It doesn't the ACA
doesn't really apply in Missouri.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
She was able to start working though with the with
the knee brace on.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
She was working through the pain. She was so such
a responsible young woman.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
She was like, I need to continue working because I
need my insurance in order to get my knee fixed.
And her main concern was I need to schedule this
in this knee surgery so that I can still go
to school when I'm supposed to start and work. And
she was so concerned about finances and saving and I
was like, slin, don't worry. If you're a little short,
(23:22):
I'm going to help you. You know, we'll figure it out.
I mean, if you need the surgery, you need surgery.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
So, so how long does this go on?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Two and a half to three weeks?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
And as it goes on, she's like starting when she's
climbing stairs, I remember she's telling me, Mom, I'm starting
to get out of breath.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
I'm really out of breath.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
This is like a week and a half or she left,
So a week and a half after the incident, she's
telling me I'm out of breath. Well, Shelyn had pcos
this makes you gain weight, so she was overweight, and
I was thinking, I told her, well, sheeline, when you
when you get your napter, your knee surgery field, we'll
start working out together and that should help you with
(24:08):
your breathlessness. That's what I thought I attributed it to.
You know, I'm an accountant, I don't I don't know
medical you know things. So I'm thinking, Okay, she's overweight
and set a breath so she just needs to work out,
you know. And she knew she was overweight, So it
(24:28):
was no like you know, mystery does that she was overweight,
And that's what we all attributed it to, including sheelin.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Okay, So about two or three weeks go by, and
then then what happens next?
Speaker 4 (24:43):
So sheline goes back to Kansas City and she needs
to close out in the middle of a divorce. She
got buried really young, and she had been separated for
over a year and they were finally divorced, was finally
going through. She was smart, she didn't stay in something
that wasn't working, and she knew she was young and
(25:05):
that she had made a mistake, and she decided, you know,
I'm just I'm not going to like live for this.
I'm going to make the right choice and you know,
break it off. And so she was going out there
for the final court eight.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
This was also important because she needed to get financial
aid through school. She needed to be able to get
a subsidized loan, and she couldn't do it without without
being divorced. So Shelynne went out to Kansas City to
finalize it. She flew out there and immediately I got
a phone call from her father, lives in Kansas City.
(25:42):
He sounds frantic and he's like, Shelyine's really at a
breath and she's weating, and he's like, you know, Amy,
she really needs to lose some weight. I'm really concerned
that she's having like she can't even breathe right now. Well,
you know, I don't know if it's a change in
the altitude. And I'm like, well, Ross, we have to
(26:05):
get that knee fixed first before we start, you know,
talking to her about her awake control. And again, pcos
that's polycystic ovarian syndrome. That's the number one side effect.
Your hormones are off, and anybody that's had hormones or
steroids or anything of that sort, it's the same kind
of effect. It makes you balloon up right, So we
(26:30):
thought it was a side effect again of the PCs.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
And what did it turn out to be?
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Well, the next that night, I get a phone call
from Shelin and she's panicked. And I've never heard her
like this. Shelyn, my daughter was a very strong woman.
She was exemplary I even at forty two, my daughter,
which in some ways was much wiser and stronger than
I ever have been. But I heard her panicked and
(27:03):
she was crying, and she's like, I just want to
come home, and I just I'm so.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Glad mommy that you're.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
That's your letting me be there with my siblings, and
that I'm going to continue school and I can't wait
to get home and start my life.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
And I'm like, Shelyn, you know this is the last step, honey.
Just hang in there.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
You know you're going to be home tomorrow, I mean
a few days, you know, And just hang in there.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
You know your whole life's ahead of you.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
I know it sucks to have made a bad decision
and you're divorcing, but you're young. You know your whole
life's ahead of you. And it's a learning experience. And
the last thing she says, she's like, I love you, Mom.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
I was like, I love you too.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Then the next morning, I get a call from her father,
which in itself would not be unusual, as we're good friends, okay,
but his voice sounded panicked, and it was like four
thirty in the morning, and I'm thinking, Okay, usually doesn't
call me at four thirty in the morning. And he
was confused and mind you like, she had such a
(28:10):
close relationship with her father. Many people don't hear about him,
but he lives in Kansas City. He was an excellent
father to her. She was a daddy's girl. They had
a special relationship. He had gotten up that morning and
took to her favorite meal and forced her to eat.
He's like, Amy, she wasn't eating and I was like, no,
you have to eat something. And so she her favorite
(28:35):
meal that he cooked for her, and he's like, all
of a sudden, Amy, she's calling out to me, daddy.
Daddy called nine one one, and she's like she looked
so panicked, Amy and scared and pain. He calls nine
one one and he's like, I didn't know what to do.
She's slumped on the floor holding her chest and it
(28:55):
hurt her to lay her down it heard her sit up,
and he was just he said, I didn't know what
to do. I froze and the ambulance came and they
took her in there, and he said that before she left,
she slightly raised her hand and waved goodbye to him,
and he was on the way to the hospital. He
called me and he said that I don't know what's
(29:17):
going on, Amy, I don't know what's going on. They're
talking about coding. Her heart's restarted. I don't know what's
going on. I'm like, well, what do you mean her
heart's coded? Like she's twenty two? Like what are you
talking about? Like her, she's what I remember looking.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
At my husband.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I was like, should I go, Like she must just
be having a panic attack, maybe from last night. She's upset,
and like, you know, she's twenty two, Like what twenty
two year old has a heart attack, you know? And uh,
He's like no, And I said, then I called my sister,
who happened to be a critical care nurse at this hospital.
(29:54):
That him that, So my sister's an RN and I
call her and she's like but she's like hold on.
I can hear her calling over there, and she's like
this is Ellie and they're like they know who she is.
She's like, I know about you know, you can't tell
me because of hippa. How quick does a need to
get there? And they're like, get her here right away.
(30:15):
And they were asking, my sister has been to the er.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
We don't know. She's twenty two.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
She's coding, Ellie, she's coding and this is her niece.
And they're like, Ellie's like, this is my niece, this
is my niece. She's panicked. I can hear her on
the other line, and they're like, she has she been
to the R. And Ellie's like, amy the R. And
I'm like, well, just for her knee. And immediately my
sister screams into the phone pulmonary embolism, pulmonary embolism, and
(30:42):
the nurses she said I could, She said that she
could hear on the other end the nurse in there
that was in there she was coding, was screaming out
pulmonary embolism, pulmonary embolism. They knew immediately, I mean immediately,
my daughter because of a pulmonary embolism, which is an
effect of a blood clot breaking off going to her
(31:04):
lungs and then they knew, and then they started to blood.
They have what called clock flusters. They started pumpting her
body full of cocklisters.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
How long was she there in the er?
Speaker 4 (31:26):
She codd, She codd for fifty nine minutes before they
could get her heart started again on a continuous basis.
They had her own max pressors. I know that they
did everything they could. This is one of their own
sneeze sitting in there. They were trying everything they could
(31:50):
to person went back when I flew out. Immediately there after,
Ellie told me, actually, my son was driving me at
the time. She Lend's full brother. His name is Josiah.
He was driving me, and he was actually in his pajamas,
and I looked at him, I said, you're getting on
a plane. He went in flip flops in the pajamas,
(32:14):
and we both spoke the plane flights and got out
there as soon as we could. When I walked into
her room, I remember the whole entire flight out there.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I was like, I was.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
On Facebook through the internet on the plane. I was
flying Southwest, thankfully, and they were like the best. They
were getting me off the plane as quick as they could.
They were accommodating me and trying to get me as
quick as they could out there. And when I got
in there to the room, I the whole room smelled
(32:46):
of blood. And I looked over to my daughter, and
every time she breathed, her eyes would flutter open, her
head would fly back a little bit, and then her
eyes would close. And I remember going up to her
and I just held her hand and I was like, Shellin, fight, fight, Chelin,
(33:10):
Fight as much as you can fight this.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Your whole life's a hitting your baby. Fight. That's the
hardest thing in the world to see your kid dying.
And there's nothing that you can do. Nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
And I looked over my other kids.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
They were in there, the two older ones, the younger
ones were at home, and they're bawling, laying over her body.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
If everybody she was so.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Loved, it's just nothing but tears, just everybody telling her
to fight, Chilin. We're here with you. Fight, Please fight
for us, you know, find as hard as you can.
(34:10):
And I'd have to take breaks, I'd have to go
outside because to watch your child die is too much
for your brain to even comprehend. And I'll go in
the parking lot. And then I've been screaming God, please.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
No, no, not her.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
You know I want to God to take me instead,
keep on saying, even if she was dying, God, please
take me, Please take me.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
You know I've lived my life, Just take take me.
It wasn't to be.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Her pupils blue and mind you, my sisters are it.
And then I have to really thought her bravery. She's
watching all this, No this isn't great, but she's not
telling me. She's just sitting back, watching and observing. And
she helped Rachelin, her daughter and mine rolling a few
(35:14):
months apart, and they were like sisters. Shely didn't even
live with her for a few years because when I
had to move from the military, she didn't want to
leave her school. So Ellie helped Rachelin, and I can
see Ashley, her.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Daughter, who was Sheln's age, like a sister to her.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
She's falling, and Ellie takes her phone and goes over
to her eyes with the light on her phone and
opens her eyes and scans her phone over her eyes.
Ellie almost passes out. She has to have to come
help her. She knows that Chland's God and Celein's father
(35:56):
and I just look at each other. Frost is so
aybe no, please know Amy, and I'm like CRUs, I
don't know what to say. He's like, can we just
keep her alive for a little bit more from your
travel carts? So we're friends. I was telling me whatever
(36:17):
we need to do. Shelynn was an organ donor. She
always has been since she was young. She knew she
wanted to go to medicine and it was on her
driver's license. So she actually died on the twenty seventh.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Kept her alive.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
Getting her organs ready for donation, and her main organs
couldn't be saved. So we decided at four point thirty
that we weren't going to put her through anymore. And
they said, ma'am, you know you might want to step out,
(36:59):
and I said, no, she's not gonna be a load.
So I stayed with them as they took her breathing.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Tobat, holding her head. She wouldn't be a load. And
then I climbed into bed her and.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
I held her and sang to her and played her
fabite music. You know, it was so real because I
had held her like that since she was a baby.
It felt so good and I know that sounds so weird,
but I had held her like that since she was
an infant, and I was holding my baby shellin again.
(37:44):
And then her body started to sense up and I
almost thought there. I was like, wait, she's alive. She's alive.
And my sisters on our end looked at me and
sugar Head no, but she was hugging me. When she died,
her body tensed up like she was hiking me, and
(38:07):
then she took her last breath, and I remember I
had like a break at that moment. I just didn't
want to live anymore. I was like, God, Please, Please,
God take me. And her father was crying for simply.
(38:29):
That's how we said feeling. They took her look at
an hour because they harvested her about herselves, and they've
harvested bones and ligaments and tissue and anything they could.
I wouldn't let them touch her face because she wouldn't
open casket before she was cremated. But her donations helped
(38:57):
thirty five people. But that was how chill In left
this world, and it's so unnecessary. That's the most enraging.
She died in this country for no reason at all
(39:19):
except for money.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
That's hard. That's hard. I was one of those people
that thought, you know, I was safe. I'm an executive,
my husband pilot for the Air Force. Were set. We're
up a middle class.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
This stuff can't touch us, right. That's the false safeness
you feel in this country, and that's what luws many
Americans into this false sense of security. And it's a
hard lesson to learn, if you have to learn it
the way I did. And it's also has a part
(40:05):
of it that's shape that it took this before you
start opening your eyes to how many other people around
you are sufferings too.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
You've devoted your life now full time to lobbying for
some kind of a reasonable medical system. Now, yes, how
long did you have to grieve though, before you threw
yourself into that.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
You know, I sat in bed for a year for
Chelin died. I didn't even get out of bed except
to go to work. That's the only thing that kept
me going. My husband talk about he was sitting there
every day, bringing me meals in bed. I gained like
sixty pounds. I was just I wanted to die. I
(40:56):
didn't want to live anymore. And then I was on
a phone call with my sister and she started crying
and I was like, why are you crying? She was
like gut wrenching crying, you know. And she looked at
me and she's like, on, it's your skype. And she's like,
I've lost Scholin and now I'm losing you too. You're
(41:18):
killing yourself. And she's like, are you going to fight
for Scholin? Or are you going to kill yourself? And
I thought, you know what, I'm Shelin's legacy, I'm her voice.
And then you know something that Martin Luther King always
said came to mind that to see evil and not
(41:38):
do anything about it is to be an accomplice. And
I thought, I have to fight. I have to fight.
And I went to a single payer conference in New
York City in January of twenty and sixteen, and I
met Nina Turner. Yeah, and she was talking and she
(42:00):
heard Schlein's story. We actually met her by chance. I
think it was predestined, really, And we're in the elevator
and she says, you can't have a testimony without a
test Well, she always says, but she said it directly
to me. She's like, you have a test and I thought,
(42:21):
you know what, you know this is throughout the night
that she said this, and I was like, you.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Know what, You're right.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
You can't testify about something without a test. And I
don't want anybody else to have to deal with this
and have this test. I have to do something about it.
No one's safe, no matter how wealthy you are, when
you're a military, whether you're Republican Democrat, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
You're not safe. You're not safe.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, you know, in a just world there would be
criminal charges or something like this, you know, and even
this concept that we could just turn her eyes and
look away while people are suffering.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
Yeah, you know, I had a choice when I did this,
you know, whether it's to all of the medical staff
or not.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
I let the nurse go. She's under orders.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
The nurse practitioner and the hospital are, in my opinion,
they have blood guilt. They have blood on their hands.
In my opinion, they could have stopped this and they didn't.
And especially the nurse practitioner was especially hostile towards Scholin,
and Shelynn was telling me how frustrated she was that
(43:46):
she wasn't listening and telling her that they're not a
doctor's office. They specifically told her when she begged for
something for the paint, for an MRI to goro get
insurance and see a specialist. They're not a doctor's office,
and unfortunately for them, I was.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
On the phone when that happened, so I.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Heard this and I was like, you know, shelyin and
I didn't know anything was deadly wrong. And I thought, well,
they treated me really well when I was there, so
if there was something there, I thought, you know, it's crappy.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
And I said to man, even after Shelynn, before she died,
even after this incident, I'm like, well, none of us
will ever go to a centennially ten, but I surely
would have thought they would have done the bare minimum
to assess if there was something wrong with her.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
That's the case.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
I didn't know how little they had actually done until
I got their own records.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
How was that? Moving along with the are they ready
to settle or.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
No?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
No, they are asserting that it is she'll Len's fault.
We are right now in federal court and we are waiting. See,
in federal court, we could have gone state when we
went federal. In federal court, you have to wait until
the judge approves it to go forward. So we've been
four months waiting for that. This is normal procedure for
(45:22):
a court case because they're so expensive. A judge has
to decide whether there's enough litigating circumstances there that that
it can actually proceed forward. So we're waiting for that
go forward. We should be hearing any day.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Now, what do you think, because I know you're working
with with healthcare, Now, what do you what kind of
a healthcare system do we need to prevent this kind
of thing from happening? Like, I don't understand why we
allow profit in hospitals to begin with.
Speaker 4 (45:59):
Like exactly, I mean if you look at it as
an accountant. What's more furiating as I started researching the
you know, our healthcare system as it stands now, is
that I understand fully how how companies work.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Right, I mean, this is what I do for a living.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
I started looking and I'm like, you know, forty percent,
up to forty percent of the money each dollar you
pay into a health insurance company goes for lobbying, advertising.
Some of it even goes for them to hire people
to deny your claims.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Right, it goes for the.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
CFOs and CEOs, bonuses and then there's also dividends to
their shareholders. Again, the only reason why a for profit
company exists is to make their shareholders wealthy. I mean,
you can pick up any accounting book and this is
accounting one oh one. This doesn't belong on our healthcare system.
(47:00):
And we keep on trying. They have so much lobbyist
and if you look, I mean, you can do any
kind of search on most of our politicians. They're receiving huge,
huge contributions for their campaigns.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
From the insurance lobbyists, the insurance industries.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
We are the only well court you know, country that
is this size and this profitable that does not ensure
that all their citizens have some form of health care.
We are the one of the richest nations, and we
still our citizens their lives depend on how much ready
(47:38):
they have, you know. And then I started looking at
the Constitution and I'm like, you know, the Constitution says
that our government's put in place to ensure our life, liberty,
and pursuit of happiness. I would say that having health
care that ensures our life would fall under that.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
I'm surprised that we do not have some former universal healthcare.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
And it's a basic human right.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
In my opinion, yes, yes, but somehow we're just walk by.
Speaker 4 (48:11):
Someone on the street and like they're dying, Say no,
do you have one hundred bucks for me to perform
CPR on you?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Right?
Speaker 4 (48:17):
I mean, you know that's essentially what we're doing in
the hospitals. I implore all my fellow Americans, this is
not the America that I think I thought I grew
up under. I grew up in that we won't leave
an American behind, right? Is that not what we've all
been taught. We don't leave Dot one behind, We go back.
We fight for Americans, but we're okay with letting them
(48:39):
die in the hospitals because they're not part of the wealthy.
I have a real problem with that.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, what I always say is, you know, living here
in Vegas, you know if someone gets lost out in
Red Rock, they send helicopters and dogs. I got one
hundred cops over there looking for the guy in the
fire department. Everybody rescue teape, we have all rescue part
you know. But you're right, you're walk into an er
and not when I can help this guy, you know, right,
(49:06):
So what is what is the solution? You don't support
the Obamacare either, do you.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
I don't support repealing it without something else in effect,
because I realize I am compassionate and I understand there
are millions that will lose insurance immediately.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Yeah, but insurance. You know, we need medical care, not
insurance exactly.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
You know, I just feel like it will make it
a little bit worse. But I am not a proponent
of the AC. Now they say to not help Shalan Again,
there's in a state that did not have the ACA
Medicaid expansion.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
And how many states do we have are like that?
Speaker 4 (49:42):
I mean, we only have I think it's thirty some
that did the Medicaid expansion. And even then we still
have no twenty two year old thinks I'm going to
have a pulmonary embolism and die. I mean, you know
they always talk about it here. Then well, people who
are younger don't need insurance, And I say, bull crap,
because if you're taking if you're a female and you're
(50:03):
young and you're taking birth control, you're at a seventy
five percent more chance of dying from a blood clot
than anybody else up to the age of thirty five.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
Really, yes, and so.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
These girls, what does a blood clot look like. How
many girls do you think Shellin's ah know with what
the symptoms of a blood clot are and what they
would if they would even know that they were experiencing
symptoms of a blood clot. Most of them don't. I
would say the majority of them don't. And this is
a major I was, you know, one of the one
of the organizations working on blood clots. Her daughter, who
(50:38):
was in school to become a dentist, twenty three years old,
she pull She killed over from a pulmonary embolism and
same thing.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
She just got a.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
Little injury on her leg when she was playing sports,
had no idea what a blood clot looked like, went
to the ar and she died.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
We weren't at a time ten and it's left then
then then what is what is our path to a
solution to all this?
Speaker 3 (51:08):
To me?
Speaker 4 (51:08):
We need to this country needs to ensure that every
citizen has health care.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
We need universal health care.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
Anything less than that, we're saying that we're willing to
sacrifice some of our citizens for the sake of money
and for the sake of profits for our insurance corporations.
That's what we're saying. And I don't care how you
word it or how you say it, or free market
or whatever else you want to say.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
You're talking about people.
Speaker 4 (51:37):
There will always be as long as we do not
have universal health care, there will always be there will
always be gaps in insurance, always sure.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
But where we are now, we don't even have a
proposal for this. We have a proposal, a crazy proposal.
Give us less, give us less to that care.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
And you have six seven six in the House right now. Okay,
universal health care. I know that Bernie Sanders also just
to announce he's Bernie.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
He's getting ready.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
To present something that offers a public option that's somewhat
better than what we have now, but it's not the same.
We need to have citizens out here like that. My
healthcare ally, a healthcare rallies across the United States demanding
from their government that we get we make our for
(52:27):
profit hospitals, force them to become nonprofit. The HR six
seven six does that. It also reimburses them for costs
for transforming into a nonprofit. We need to take the
profit out of healthcare and naked about saving human lives,
which is.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
What it was meant to do, right, Because if they're
making these obscene profits. That money could go to pay
these premiums. You know, everyone complains about the deductibles so
high and the premium so high. They wouldn't be if
they weren't making all this money.
Speaker 4 (53:02):
You know, not only that, are we paying more for
health care than any other country and we get the
least amount because we're paying for each CEO's huge, huge bonuses.
We're paying for the dividends to their shareholders, we're paying
for their advertising, we're paying for all kinds of things
that do not include healthcare. Our government would actually save
(53:24):
money and the average citizen, except for the top two
percent of the United States, would save money every year,
and we would have free health care.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, it's a no brainer. It's a no brainer. Now,
there is a rally coming up on April eighth at
the Lloyd Federal Courthouse over here in Las Vegas. Yes, Now,
it seems that a lot of these people protesting their
congressmen and their centers and stuff like that outside of
their offices, demanding these town halls. It seems like we
(53:54):
are getting some kind of action when the media acknowledges us.
So this could be something that it's in the news
right now. This crazy Trump plan, this Ryan Trump plan
to make us even worse. Uh, that we could take
to the streets and take to our feet and get
down in front of these congressmen and call your congressman. Now, now,
(54:15):
what is this bill we're supposed to be promoting a.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
An it's Hr six seven six.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
And since the Trump plan that didn't go through the House,
you know, everyone's feeling a little law of safety right now.
But I have no misunderstanding there will be around two
we need to be out rallying. This is this this
this is a local part of the rally. It's a
nationwide rally on April eighth. There's a whole coalition of
(54:45):
different organization and unions that we are fighting for healthcare
for all and if anybody needs any information on it,
you know to healthcare dashnew dot org. And we are
fighting tooth and nail to try to get this to
go through. And we have to have the support of
all of our citizens and making a ruckus just like
(55:07):
we've been doing, and that is what's going to make
them listen that we won't accept anything less.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
And the website you set up for your daughter, Shlyin
is Shlyin DVT. Dot org Can you spell that out
for us.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Though, Yes, it's s h A L y n n
E d v T dot org.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Amy. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
And I know it wasn't easy, and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (55:36):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
And I think it was important to let you get
that out and let the people hear it and really
and I think this could make an impact. I can't
thank you enough for going through that form.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (55:49):
You know, worst thing for a parent is not only
to have their child have them die, but have them
die in vain.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
I couldn't agree with you more. And I want you
to promise me that if anything comes up, you need
any kind of promotion thing, you just call me up.
I'll put you right on the air.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
Okay, we'll do.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
Thank you mean, God, bless you, thank you. Okay, I
was you know, listen, you know I can't take this
stuff anymore. To tell you, God bless this woman and
there this Challan's father and stepfather and the brothers and
sisters and stuff like that. I'm just askually keep you
(56:24):
keep them in your prayers. But we can't let this
kid die in vain.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
You know. And so.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
April eighth, you know, down there at the Federal Courthouse Building,
I'll be promoting the event coming up. And but it's just,
you know, I just did a whole show on this
col opperaman care. You know, where these obscene profits that
these hospitals are making, and this whole idea that we
give money to a middleman, these to these insurance companies
so that they can pay their CEOs and they can
(56:54):
pay for advertising, and they can pay for people to
turn you down. You know, it's just insane. We have
to come to our senses and stop all this foolishness
and stop being taken for suckers here. Otherwise, this this
what you heard happen to this woman could happen to
any one of us, and we could be in this position,
(57:15):
heartbroken and lying in bed for a year. So God
bless Amy Vallila and her daughter Shalin. It's a shalindbt
dot org. I'll have all the links and the descriptions
and stuff like that. Thank you so much, guys, And
don't forget the Opera Report dot com member section. Keep
us supported there. There's a lot of more content, new
shows in there. You know, we gotta get this stuff
(57:37):
out of here.
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