A young man involved in a motorcycle accident

Last Wednesday, Carmen Foucault got the news no mother wants to hear, that her son was hit by a car while riding his motorcycle. After the police gave her the news, they took her to Mercy Hospital to see her son James. James, 23, enjoyed being on his Harley motorcycle. His mom feared something like this would happen and tried to convince her son to get rid of the bike but he refused, and now she is looking at him lying unconscious in a hospital bed unsure what is going to happen. Carmen asked the doctor if they were going to be able to help her son. The doctor told her he has brain damage with a serious head injury and would not regain consciousness. Carmen was given so much information that she could not take it all in. The hospital staff convinced her to keep her son alive a little longer so they could donate his organs. Carmen said “James was always helping people and I believe this is what he would have wanted.” His organs were donated and helped save the lives of five other people. James was pronounced dead around noon on Thursday.

Days later while Carmen was grieving the loss of her son and setting up funeral arrangements, she received an unpleasant registered letter in the mail stating she owed $41,000 because they kept James alive an extra day to be able to donate his organs. Carmen was upset she was never told donating her son’s organs would cost her out of pocket money and she saw her son after they removed his organs and could not believe how they butchered his body. Nobody told her it was going to be like this and then send her a bill for it. Carmen couldn’t use James’s insurance money due to a lien that was placed on his estate by the hospital. She didn’t have the money to

cover funeral expenses or buy a nice headstone for her son. Christina Snyder, a spokeswoman for the hospital said “a lien is a standard procedure to ensure the bills get paid. Legally we have to file a lien ten days after a person’s death or discharged from the hospital. 50% of all trauma patients who come into this hospital do not have insurance so this is all standard procedure.” Irwin Greenhouse, the chief hospital administrator stated, “the bill was sent out to Mrs. Foucault in error and we apologize dearly.” The lien has been taken off her house and the bill will go directly to the Division of Transplantation. Mrs. Foucault will be responsible for the emergency care that was given to her son but the rest of the bill will be taken care of by the donor bank. We are checking our billing procedures to make sure this does not happen again.”

Carmen said losing her son is not easy and the situation that happened with the hospital is very frustrating. She would like to meet the people who received her son’s organs to see what good things came from this tragic accident.