Keisha Marie White: North Carolina Woman, 26, Died Mysteriously In Hospital
Keisha Marie White of Weldon, North Carolina, was a bright and energetic person who loved people, her mother Cynthia Bunch Avens told BlackGirlTragic.com in an email interview.
“Keisha was also everybody's best friend though she did not have many friends,” Avens said. “She was my best friend, my road dog, my spades partner, and my TV & movie buddy. It was heartbreaking when she was diagnosed with lupus at the age of 14 and having to watch her as the rheumatoid arthritis and other lupus related-health issues got the best of her.”
Through her adolescent years, Keisha’s vibrancy began to be dulled and marred by pain; especially when blood clots in her toes caused her to get a partial foot amputation in 2013.
In April 2014, she was admitted to a hospital in Greenville, North Carolina, due to experiencing some serious lupus complications. Her kidneys failed and she was in acute renal failure.
The hospital was named Vidant Medical Center, formerly Pitt Memorial Hospital, and now, currently, it is named ECU Health Medical Center.
Black Girl Tragic reached out to ECU for comment repeatedly but has not heard back.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding her death have raised questions among her family members as to how Keisha died under the care of a medical facility where she had been admitted several times before.
According to the family, medical personnel failed to live up to their Hippocratic Oath concerning Keisha’s health.
While she was struggling for her life in Vidant Medical Center, Keisha’s condition took a turn for the worse.
What is documented is that White complained about being hot and displayed signs of confusion.
“Keisha had been pulling at her cardiac leads and was complaining of being excessively hot and was trying to lay on the cool floor,” her mother said.
Keisha was subsequently restrained by medical personnel purportedly for ripping out her catheter, although what actually happened may never become known.
“The restraints were applied for non-violent reasons,” Avens said. “These and other symptoms she was noted to be having (confusion and agitation) were all signs of lack of oxygen. She had the nasal cannula at her nose but was not getting any oxygen. Keisha had also complained of difficulty breathing while she was able to do so according to a CNA.”
Soon, White fell asleep, but in the middle of the night, her condition worsened.
With White still restrained in a hospital bed fighting for her life, medical personnel on the scene allegedly failed to inform the nurse practitioner or the doctor on duty of her worsening condition. Inexplicably, the monitor which tells medical personnel how the patient is doing was silenced while White lay strapped to the bed in the midst of a heart attack.
“The nurse did not re-check the oxygen and did not install the prescribed oxygen for which she obtained a verbal order for prior to the 2:00 a.m. reading,” Avens said.
“Keisha Marie White died from anoxic brain injury (lack of oxygen to the brain),” her mother said.
“Her second cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest (cardiac arrest).”
According to Avens, code was called about 5:51 a.m. on May 10, 2014. Keisha's oxygen level was only 62% at 2 a.m.
“[The nurse] did not inform the nurse practitioner on call or the physician on call. She did not provide any treatment whatsoever and did not check the oxygen or any other vital signs for the rest of the shift that ended at 7 a.m,” Avens said.
In a Change.org petition, Keisha’s aunt says that the hospital is responsible for her death and justice has yet to be served.
“Keisha died under the care of a white nurse who purposely caused her death! How is it not MURDER?! I cannot say race did not play a factor. I do not believe a white patient would have been mistreated as such to cause their death! This nurse, whose duty was to serve and protect, placed Keisha in restraints because the nurse was agitated according to witness statements, by Keisha's responses to hypoxia. Her job was to have patience and render care!”
Hypoxia is characterized by low levels of oxygen in the body’s tissues. It can present in patients as confusion, restlessness and difficulty breathing. When someone suffers from an anoxic brain injury, it means there is a complete lack of oxygen that leads to the death of brain cells due to oxygen deprivation.
According to the aunt, a nurse on duty refused to give White oxygen even when confronted by other staff members.
“As if that wasn't enough, [the nurse] refused to put Keisha on her life-saving monitors in spite of being told to do so by the monitoring dept. and REFUSED to help her as she laid there and died!”
“Keisha died in restraints that were applied about midnight and had to be cut off when the ERT team arrived after code blue was called. She had been found lifeless, cold and slumped over by a CNA (care partner),” her mother said.
“Why do I say that my daughter was a victim of patient abuse and neglect?” White’s mother, Cynthia Bunch Avens, says in a video posted on Reddit. “When you see that somebody has gone into medical records and falsified information about my daughter’s oxygen results after she died, after code blue was called, I’ve got a problem with that.”
Did the Hospital Try To Settle With Keisha’s Mother?
“There was a civil suit that they underhandedly sabotaged,” Avens said. Yes, there was a settlement.” But the way things went, Avens was left feeling like her attorney acquiesed more than saw that justice was met. “Civil cases settled out of court means the accused will give you some money without admitting fault or guilt,” she said.
Keisha went to Halifax County public schools until declining health forced her to be home-schooled by her mother, according to her obituary. White also studied cosmetology briefly at Halifax Community College.
One month after Keisha’s death, her mother received a personal visit from a risk manager and two other employees from the hospital. They went on to tell her the different apparatuses that White was hooked up to and how the readings stopped being detected.
“I really wasn’t clear on what she was saying to me,” she says in a video posted on Reddit. “My husband was in the meeting and he picked up on everything. He didn’t tell me at the time though.”
Were the hospital employees implying that Keisha’s death was a deliberate act. That’s what her mother, Avens, now believes.
Why Do So Many Black Women Die Under Medical Care?
Keisha Marie White died under strange, and purportedly cruel circumstances at a North Carolina hospital in 2014. The 26-year-old was strapped with restraints when she went into cardiac arrest.
“Why do I say that my daughter was a victim of patient abuse and neglect?” White’s mother, Cynthia Bunch Avens, says in a video posted on Reddit. “When you see that somebody has gone into medical records and falsified information about my daughter’s oxygen results after she died, after code blue was called, I’ve got a problem with that.”
Studies show that black women have some very real barriers when it comes to receiving adequate medical care.
The lack of treatment transcends class and socioeconomic status. In 2017, tennis star Serena Williams said she was still in the hospital after giving birth when she noticed the signs of a potential blood clot. Despite being repeatedly dismissed by her health care provider, Williams said she could have died from a pulmonary embolism had she not demanded a cat scan.
"No one was really listening to what I was saying," she wrote of the incident. ““When I woke up from that surgery, in the hospital room with my parents and my in-laws, I felt like I was dying. They were trying to talk to me, and all I could think was, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying. Oh my God.’”
As a result, black women also have to contend with physicians’ bias toward them, which can endanger their health as it often leads to misdiagnosis and/or downplayed symptoms.
While it should be noted that some medical facilities and schools have implemented implicit bias training to counteract the lack of treatment many patients of color receive, for the overwhelming majority of patients, this is not their experience.
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