Seeing your loved ones at their weakest and most vulnerable is one of the hardest things anyone has ever had to go through. However, finding out that the place that person is being cared for allegedly isn’t doing their due diligence is even worse. A Michigan woman was visiting her mother in the hospital when she discovered that her teeth had reportedly not been brushed in days, despite being intubated.
It also appears that after the woman tried to make this known to the nurse on duty, a response couldn’t be given as to the last time her mother’s teeth had been brushed. Even the comments are in an uproar about the situation and what steps should be taken next.
The above video was posted to the TikTok account @heyits.dessa, belonging to a woman named Aidessa Allen. She doesn’t post very often, but this particular one needed to be shared to spread awareness of her situation. The camera is pointed at her mother, who is intubated at a hospital for an unknown reason, unable to move or advocate for herself.
Aidessa shares the state of her mother’s oral health, which looks as though it hasn’t been taken care of in a long time. She notes that her lips were stuck to her teeth and showed signs of intense oral decay. She questions the nurse who arrived to brush her mother’s teeth, but she wasn’t able to answer whether or not this procedure had been done at all in the last three days.
Because she was being filmed, the nurse left the room, leaving Aidessa’s mother still without a proper teeth brushing. Aidessa asked if someone else would be coming in to complete the procedure, but she wasn’t met with a concrete answer.
According to one commenter, “Oral care should be performed every 2 hours on intubated patients.” Aidessa replied to this particular comment, saying, “They literally said they’ve been doing it every 2 hours. Yea okay.” A commenter claiming to be a healthcare worker also chimed in and said, “As a current health care worker they haven’t touched her.“
Michigan Hospital Reportedly Forgets to Brush Intubated Patient’s Teeth, Daughter Furious
Other commenters jumped into the replies to suggest next steps, with one person simply saying, “this is negligence. please hire a lawyer.” Another person focused specifically on Aidessa’s tone throughout the interaction, noting, “she wasn’t even aggressive talking to her, she is stating facts. the fact that she is advocating on what her mother needs. She has a right to record it’s her mother’s needs.“
The video ends without resolution, but it’s hoped that Aidessa’s mother ended up having her teeth brushed and had more cleanings scheduled for the future. These reported actions are unacceptable, and I’m glad she was able to advocate for her mother.
