Help Get Madison Home and Medical Support

My name is Elizabeth Turner- Tracie was my PTA professor and since then has been like a big sister to me. Her daughter, Madison Thornton, a Tulane medical student was studying abroad when she passed out and had to be hospitalized. Below you will find her current situation. Please consider donating to help get Madison home from Italy and cover travel and medical expenses that have resulted from her dire situation. Global is currently giving her the run around and delaying her getting home and quicker options are VERY costly.

I wanted to give an update on Madison. We are still stuck here in Italy. The conditions at the hospital are so bad that this mama’s heart has cried a lot. No infection control. No hand washing. No gloves. No standard protocols for cleaning or sterilizing products. The nurses go from one patient to another without washing their hands. One nurse put in a central line on a patient without gloves and then tried to change Madison’s electrodes without hand washing or donning gloves. They only feed them one meal a day and sometimes not even that. No IV fluids. No pressure stockings. No vital signs taken regularly. No cardiac precautions. They don’t allow me to stay with her- they have one hour of visitation per day. I have to walk up seven flights of stairs on the fire escape to leave her things she needs outside the door to her hallway. And the latest testing shows she is in possible heart failure due to decreased left ventricular ejection fraction and high troponin levels indicating heart muscle damage. We still don’t know what is causing this. So we have been coordinating with Global Rescue as well as Tulane School of Medicine and Public Health. At first they would not agree to transport her due to her grave condition until I started sending pictures of the horrid conditions here. She has burns and welps all over her body because she is allergic to latex, and they have no latex free products. They haven’t changed her bloody sheets in a week and have never cleaned her wounds from her fall- I did it. So they are going to attempt an air ambulance rescue using the shortest track possible over the Atlantic- flying over Iceland and then over Newfoundland. There will still be a four hour window when no landing is possible. We have agonized over this, but the conditions here are so bad that she could die here. She is in a room with others- and many on her wing have Covid. The nurses smoke on the hallway outside the rooms. Nobody speaks English, and they have not provided any translator for her. They do not explain the medications they are giving or the procedures being done. There is no informed consent or basic patient rights. We don’t realize how blessed we are in the USA with the healthcare we have access to. My husband and father and boss have worked 24/7 on that end to arrange a bed at FGH and to have a cardiologist ready to take on her care upon landing. Continued prayers are much appreciated- especially in the four hour window with no place to land. I will update when we have her departure time. Thank you so much.

Update- Global Rescue now telling us they can’t secure a plane to evacuate her for another week or more. Please help us Congressman Steven Palazzo, Senator Roger Wicker, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. I am begging.