I Watched My Dad Die at MD Anderson Cancer Center

My Dad died on a Tuesday morning.

It was sudden and unexpected.

I was with him when he died.

We were at the hospital. He just had surgery the previous evening which the doctor said “went great.” They told him to walk to the chair and sit as many times as he could that morning. The chair was two steps away.

At 7:58am, two nurses helped him out of bed to walk to the chair. I stood nearby offering verbal support, a couple arms lengths away.

At 7:59am my Dad collapsed. It was awful to witness.

At 8:00am he was losing consciousness.

At 8:01am I called my brother, Kamran, who is a cardiologist. I told him it wasn’t good, and asked what I should do. He said to let the professionals do their job. He was right, because I didn’t know what to do. But I still wish I had pushed them aside and put my hands on my Dad’s face and tried to talk him into coming back. Maybe he would have listened to me. He wasn’t listening to the nurses. I was calling out to him. “It’s OK, Dad!” “Dad! It’s OK!”

At 8:04am we started to lose him. I called out to Dad several times from the edge of the hospital bed as the nurses tried to revive him. Just mostly telling him it would be ok and letting him know I/we/they were here. Don’t know if he heard me. I really, really hope he did.

The nurses looked panicked and uncertain. I asked them if he’s breathing. “Does Dad have a pulse?” They yelled for the “family member to leave.” I did not leave.

The response (“code blue”) team took way too long. They should have been there in 90-120 seconds. It had been 420 seconds.

I texted my mom, brothers, and wife that things were bad at the hospital. Couldn’t really get my fingers to work properly so just was able to type “bad here had”. Typo.

I yelled for staff members and nurses to find help. “Someone please help!” “Who’s supposed to be coming?!” “Where are they?!” No one moved. One lady said “we already let them know” in a stale, unconcerned voice.

Who? Where? When?

One of the nurses inside my Dad’s room yelled “Where is MERIT?!” – I learned that’s the name of the response team for when someone is “coding” at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

It is supposed to be their “Medical Emergency Rapid Intervention Team.”

Another lady yelled, “We called them”.

The nurse yelled back, “Well they aren’t getting here fast enough!”

At that point I knew.

It had been about 500 seconds since Dad collapsed.

I called mom and told her it’s not good. I cried so hard and so did my sweet mom. She told me to have him/them/us wait and make sure dad was not gone, she was on her way. In traffic. She’s usually there very early, but we had all been at the hospital all day for many days, and he was supposed to be good that day. It was a recovery day. Things were supposed to be good. That was the hardest phone call of my life.

The “MERIT” team arrived after 10 minutes. Those were the worst, most helpless 10 minutes of my life. They did not run to my Dad. They were not rushing to his side. They walked down the hallway casually, like a stroll through the park. With a look of confidence mixed with arrogance mixed with boredom. It was not like in the movies. They DID NOT RUN to my Dad. I yelled “please hurry!”

I asked one of the doctors (his surgery doctor who was supposed to come that morning to talk about post-opp care and recovery, and just arrived), what happened. She didn’t know.

I called my older brother, Kamran, again. Updated him as best I could. He was crying at this point too. He knew.

He told me to find a doctor he could speak to. Only could find a nurse. She explained a bit. Not enough.

Then I found his surgery doctor. Had her speak with my brother. She told him what was happening. He knew. But he asked her to please have them keep trying. It had been about 25 minutes since Dad collapsed. 15 minutes with the “response team.”

Eventually, Dad’s hospital room filled up with about 20 people. They tried chest compressions, oxygen, epinephrine, and some other basic things per protocol. Nothing was working. I kept hearing “PEA.”

Later I asked my brother what PEA meant. I learned that PEA is not a good thing.

The hospital sent a chaplain as I watched everything outside from the doorway of my Dad’s hospital room. She asked me if I wanted to go to the waiting room instead of watching my Dad. She said it’s not a good thing to watch. She was right. It wasn’t a good thing to watch. It was the worst thing to watch. But I didn’t want to leave Dad. I stood at the edge of the door and prayed.

I asked Dad’s surgery doctor if she could find a space for me in the midst of all those “rapid response” people where I could go hold dad’s hand. She did.

I went and kneeled by Dad’s bedside and prayed hard. Told him it’s ok and that I loved him. I cried a lot. It was about 8:20am.

I called my brother, Rick, to see if he was close, and he was just getting off the elevator. He ran over to see Dad.

We cried so hard together. Most ever. Never seen my twin brother cry like that.

I called Kamran and told him to hurry. He was hurrying. Traffic wasn’t moving.

My mom kept calling me. I picked up. She cried to me, and begged me to make Dad wait for her.

I couldn’t. He couldn’t.

We had the “response team” try to bring Dad back for about 31 minutes total. Longer than they normally do because my brother asked them to.

Official last try was at 8:41am.

My mother and older brother got there shortly afterward. Watching them see my Dad there, but gone, was another memory I would like to forget. It was awful.

I watched my Dad die. Most awful, most worthless, and most helpless feeling in the world. I am not sure if I did the right things. I know I could have done more. Not sure if “more” would have been “right.”

But I was with my dad the whole time. My wife and Kamran said Dad chose me to be there because he knew I could handle it. He did not want mom to see that. And he and Kamran had such a differently close bond, and that, even as a doctor – or, especially as a doctor – he felt it would be too hard for him to witness.

Rick got to be there for the last few minutes. Dad wanted it that way too.

I wish I wasn’t there. But I’m glad I was there. I’m grateful Dad allowed me to be there.

My only consolations in the moment were my phone calls with my family and the hope that Dad heard my voice and felt my spirit.

I’m angry the “response team” took too long. I’m shocked the nurses were panicked and unprepared. I’m disheartened that the majority of people my Dad and our family met with during his grueling fight with cancer were not very caring or sweet. They did not have good “bedside manner.” At best, they had become desensitized to people’s suffering. At worst, they simply did not care if people lived or died.

In some ways I can see how this happens to people in these types of hospital environments. But great leaders and great leadership makes sure that an organization’s culture is constructed in such a way that this doesn’t happen. I’ve been building and assessing and enhancing organizational cultures for 20 years. This should not happen at “great organizations” who tout themselves as “the #1 Cancer Center in the World”, like MD Anderson does. The majority of their people SHOULD CARE.

We thought we were taking Dad to the best possible place at MD Anderson. That was not the case.

My Dad received more care, insight, and responsiveness from ChatGPT in the last several months of his life than he did from MD Anderson.  Waiting for slow or nonexistent responses on Dad’s medical MyChart app was an emotionally and physically agonizing way for Dad to spend his final months. He was in pain and they were not moving. Everyone and everything was like that slow “response” team.

Slow. Casual. Indifferent.

Late.

In addition to the lack of care, compassion, and pace, I’m livid at the many mistakes and misdiagnoses and delays MD Anderson made during my Dad’s case. My family and I have documented them all. We will share them soon. I’m going to hold them accountable for those unacceptable actions. It’s not right to have people’s lives in your hands and call yourself the “best cancer center in the world” and then make those mistakes.

It’s important to remember that hospitals like MD Anderson receive their top rankings mostly based on their research or publishing papers. They are lauded for their science and elevated within academia. But there is no focus on how they treat people. Those rankings are not based on the quality and empathy of care. They have people who did well in school, and people who didn’t do well in school. They have people with experience, and people with hunches. They aren’t necessarily smarter than you or me. They just picked a different career path. They are not gods or demigods. They are not all knowing, no matter what they tell you or push you to believe.

And they most certainly do not care about your loved ones like you do. So always trust your gut. Always fight for yourself and your loved ones. You can be both respectful and stern. You can courteously call people out. And can bang on doors, shake down walls, and breathe fire if necessary. The “system” will not make it easy for you to do that. But you should do it anyway. If I’ve learned anything on my own personal journey, it is that you have to fight.

I also work in an industry that employs the best professionals in the world at their particular craft. Professional sports demands people to be elite daily. I know the standard. I understand the expectations. I help create the bar.

Even as the best in the world, you win some, you lose some, you have good days and bad days. But you do not make that many unforced errors at the elite professional level. You do not walk when you should run.

I will hold MD Anderson accountable for those actions and inactions. We will name names. It won’t bring my Dad back. But I hope it may save yours.

These are the bad things that happened to my Dad and my family. Some could have been prevented. Some could not. In my culture, we believe that the only two times that are “written” are your time of birth and your time of death. The “when” is written. But the “how” is affected by many things. We will fight for Dad and others based on the “how” in his case. While also slowly accepting that it was, indeed, Dad’s time.

There was also so much good around Dad. We have shared some. I will share much more of that soon. The good does not involve hospitals, and is far away from uncaring people. The good is rooted in love and peace and family. The good is found in so many beautiful moments, even some that came in the few short hours after we lost Dad. I am grateful for those.

You can be grateful but also know what is right and wrong.

Thank you for your inspiring fight Dad. We will keep fighting for you. I will fight for you.

Love you.