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“My name's John Krantz. I'm an insurance broker living in Carrollton, Texas. I'm married to Tracy, and am the father of three kids, McKenzie, Kristin, and Brooks.
“You know, Brooks has never met a stranger, and he's always in a good mood. He loves playing sports, he loves being with his buddies, and so of course playing football is a great experience for him. And that's where this whole thing happened.
“Brooks was playing in a flag football game. He ate a piece of cheese pizza and ran back onto the field to play defense. While he was out there, he felt like he was choking on the pizza a little bit. Later on that night, he still complained about having a little bit of that feeling in his throat. He said it just didn't seem right. It felt like something was kind of stuck in there.
“So Tracy and I thought maybe we ought to just give him a throat lozenge and let him go to bed, and we’ll see tomorrow how he feels and maybe take him to a doctor. And we talked to a bunch of parents, and that’s kind of the same they would have taken. Well, what we decided was before we do that, let’s call the NurseLine with UnitedHealthcare. Since Brooks was asleep, the idea popped into my head – why don’t I let Carrie, the nurse from NurseLine at UnitedHealthcare, listen over the phone to Brooks. And so I put the phone up to Brooks and sure enough, she heard what she heard, and when we put the phone back up to our ears, she said in a very calm voice, ‘Why don’t you take Brooks to the emergency room and just make sure everything’s okay.’
“So, grudgingly, we get dressed and get down to the emergency room, and they start taking a look at Brooks, and they find out really quickly that there is something in his throat, but they can’t tell quite what it is. They took X-rays, they took soft tissue X-rays, and they looked down his throat, and there’s something, but they don’t know what it is.
“It turns out Brooks had a bacterial infection in his trachea and when the pus and the phlegm collapsed in his throat, it completely blocked his airway. So they rushed him out of there, they put a tube into his throat to restore his airway, and that’s when the doctor came out and gave us some pretty disturbing news. He said ‘Listen. He’s in critical condition. He’s not breathing on his own any more and we had to prepare an airway. But you’re in an adult hospital, and we can’t really give him the best care. We need to get him to Children’s Hospital. And so the air ambulance is going to be here in 12 minutes.
“Ultimately, Brooks was in the hospital until Saturday, in critical condition, on life support, in intensive care at Children’s Hospital, and out of the hospital and back to school on Monday. But it wouldn’t have happened if we had not had some amazing people in some amazing places. For example, Carrie the nurse from UnitedHealthcare.
“She saved Brooks’ life. We would have sent him to bed with a throat lozenge, and the ear, nose and throat doctor told us that if we had done that, the airway probably would have closed up that night, and he would have been too weak to call out for us, and too weak to walk.
“People get upset with insurance companies, and they’re upset with things that insurance companies do. They think they try to make money by saying no. And I know because I sell insurance that that’s not the case. What I can tell you is that the amount of money that UnitedHealthcare spends on the NurseLine – how do you say it’s not worth it? Brooks is alive today because of it.
“My experience with UnitedHealthcare has been everything that I’m proud to recommend to clients, because I know how they worked for me – not from the professional side, but from the personal side.
“My name’s John Krantz, and this is my health care success story.”
