"Protocol" victim: 71-year-old musician experienced arrest in hospital backroom

The former concert director spent several hours there in the damp, cold, without water and toilet. The “medical arrest” administrators of the emergency room could not explain anything except references to mysterious regulations.

Yulia Suntsova

The episode with a strange confinement within the walls of the 67th Moscow City Hospital became the apogee of the entire previous difficult year, during which Valery Minyailo fought against the coronavirus and its devastating consequences.

The 71-year-old musician, a former concert director of the stars of the domestic show business, was in excellent physical shape before the collision with the virus - he played tennis, starred for magazine covers, and in general led a rather active life for his age.

In the fall of 2020, a planned operation was scheduled (enlargement of a vein in the left leg). The operation did not promise to be difficult, the patient himself perceived it as an insignificant sore. For hospitalization, a standard X-ray and PCR test was required, and according to the then established regulations, everyone was quarantined in a covidarium before entering the hospital. After the incubation period, Valery was transferred from overexposure to the surgical unit. At this moment, he is diagnosed with a coronavirus, the operation is canceled, and he is transferred to treatment for COVID-19. At the same time, they are treated in as many as five different hospitals, and with each transfer, computed tomography (CT) is prescribed. As a result, 5 CT in 2 weeks, 7 CT in a month. Relatives believe that such a number of X-ray examinations in such a short period dealt a serious blow to the already weakened immune system.

Almost immediately after being discharged, he again goes to the ambulance with a covid: they did not finish the treatment. The condition worsens, during the second hospitalization he is admitted to intensive care. Valery tried to convince doctors that CT was redundant in his case - after all, the diagnosis is clear ("bilateral pneumonia"), treatment tactics are also under control, saturation is under control. The answer was simple: if you don’t do a CT scan, we will not treat you. In response to complaints, the Ministry of Health wrote that medical assistance was provided according to the protocol.

Valery is chosen from a series of hospitals by a completely different person. In a healthy and fit man, the heart and immune system are covered.

Only the other day he was discharged from another two-week hospitalization, during which 20 liters of fluid were pumped out of his lungs. 12 drugs were prescribed for permanent admission.

There are practically no forces. Even shaving is difficult. An unopened vein rots, the leg swells and does not fit into the shoes. Valery took a cane and sat down on a carriage.

Every other day, he goes to his district polyclinic in Krylatskoye - he meets with a therapist to control his condition, makes dressings.

September 14 in this sense began as an ordinary day. He took a taxi to the hospital, where he met with the attending physician, they once again adjusted the plan for further therapy. There was no free appointment with the surgeon who prescribes the dressings. Then the doctor suggested "Plan B": call an ambulance and go to the nearby 67th city hospital - they will bandage your leg in the emergency room.

The man-paramedic of the ambulance helped Valery from the wheelchair to load into the ambulance and unload in the new hospital, in the official wheelchair he rolled him into the emergency room, wished him good luck and left.

- About 20 hours, I think I was in the emergency room. They took my passport, SNILS, rewrote the data, asked me to wait, and then something started ... mysterious, ”Valery Minyaylo tells“ NI ”.

According to him, he was approached by a lush, exuding life in all its manifestations, a young lady who was strong at the word of Soviet ferment.

"Well, drank the apartment ?!" - she turned to Valery.

- She spoke not with humor, but with anger. I didn’t really understand what was happening, I thought again - well, maybe it’s accepted by them that way. During the day I was very tired, so I just shook my head: "Uh-huh." I was absolutely sober (I don't drink alcohol at all). Decently dressed, it seems to me. She told me - sleep, they say, we have until morning, and then, as the sun rises, "go to your own" and rolled down the corridor to the door. Then some kind of absurdity began.

According to Valery, he was locked in a small room of about 15 square meters. The room looked like either a morgue, or a septic tank for homeless people, or a sobering-up station. There are tiles on the floor, two hoses, two iron couches covered in leatherette - it's hard to call them beds, since there are no bed linen, pillows and blankets, there is nothing to wrap up in. It's cold inside, 17 degrees, high humidity. There is water on the floor. There is no toilet. There is no drinking water.

- The nurse came, took off the bandage, said: "Yes, nothing special." A couple of times I slightly wrapped my leg with a new bandage, in a childish way, I would say, and grinned: “At home, then you will properly dress it up, study, study ..."

After the nurse left, he sat alone in the room for a quarter of an hour, began to freeze, pushed the door open and found that it was locked with a key. Not on his part.

- I started shouting: "Open the doors, what are you doing!" Nobody opened me. I started knocking on the door with my cane to be heard, but no one reacted. In about 2 hours and 45 minutes, three nurses came to me, asked for my last name and left. I don’t know how long I would have sat like that if I had not been able to get through to my relatives. At about 23.00 o'clock my son arrived with a friend and released me. They wrapped me in warm clothes, gave me sandwiches, and carried me to the car.

The hospital staff could not formulate a clear reason for the actual arrest of the patient. The relatives were told about some alleged internal situation, according to which "people from the street" should be isolated from another stream of patients. In other words, Valery, despite the fact that he entered the emergency room with an ambulance from a nearby clinic, was mistaken for a homeless person.

The trigger was the absence of a Moscow residence permit in the passport (?!), As the administrators later explained ... And this despite the fact that this "bum" actually has two citizenships, including American. And there are no complaints about the documents either.

- To be honest, I thought I was in some kind of theatrical performance. I waited until the last moment that the doctor would come. But the doctor did not come. In my opinion, everything that happened is beyond the bounds. I have never met such an attitude in my entire life. I still cannot answer the question: what was so special about me that I deserve this attitude towards myself? No one apologized to me at the moment when they came for me, or later. They said there are complaints - write complaints, - says Valery.

- We were told that the patient came from the street, without a registration, looked homeless, according to some protocol, "people posing a social danger" should be kept in this room UNTIL MORNING. We still do not understand the meaning of sitting in it. Do the hospital staff themselves understand? This we are not yet touching on the legal aspect - in fact, in fact, a person was simply, absolutely unlawfully deprived of liberty. Even when taken to the police station, the amount of time spent by a person in captivity is strictly monitored. But the father is not even guilty of anything, he has no psychiatric diagnoses. All he needed was medical attention. Since when have patients who seek help have been arrested in our hospitals? - tell the relatives of Valery Minyaylo.

- On the phone and when we arrived at the emergency room we were told to the stop that the patient Minyaylo was discharged and he was not in the hospital. We say: "Why not, if he now calls us and says that he is locked in your morgue." We were told that we were crazy. Well, you don't want to heal, so let go! Not only has nothing been done from the point of view of providing assistance, but we are afraid that it will not get worse. In a person, fluid is pumped out of the lungs in liters, the heart and kidneys cannot cope with their work, after the coronavirus he cannot recover in any way. Well, let's say, the doctors apparently could not imagine this. Let's say that the medical history available by the SNILS number was too lazy to read. But it’s too bad to walk a person with a swollen foot that does not fit into shoes for almost three hours in the cold, in water, a bare foot in a slipper is soaked all this time in some kind of half-toilet slurry from the floor - what kind of people, specialists you need to be in order not to understand that this is definitely not about health?

According to relatives, the administrator, explaining herself, added that the room does not seem cold to her: “It's like in an ordinary bath”, - she said. In addition, the room is equipped with cameras, and if something went wrong, the patient would be released.

To the correspondent of "Novyye Izvestia" in the information office of the Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 67 named after L.A. Vorokhobov, ”the Moscow Health Department reported that the patient, Valery Borisovich Minyaylo, was “discharged on September 14 due to refusal to be hospitalized (?)”.

The administrator Olga from the emergency room of the same hospital replied that she knew nothing about the “special room”.

“We do not contact patients, they only bring them to us. I can't tell you anything about this room. Probably underwent an outpatient examination and, based on the results of the examination, the question of treatment was already being decided, ”she said.

The editorial board of "NI" sent a request to the Moscow Department of Health with a request to provide information on the rules of action established in the "Moscow City Clinical Hospital No. 67 named after L.A. Vorokhobov DZM", which provide for limiting the freedom of patients by placing them in a special room.