Photo by Kathie Obradovich/Iowa Capital Dispatch
Sandy and Scott Van Veldhuizen show a photo of their son Reuben, who died at age 12 of medical complications.

It was a good thing there was a box of tissues on the table in the Iowa House lounge, where Sandy and Scott Van Veldhuizen came to tell the story of how their 12-year-old son died.

Lawmakers, staff, lobbyists and even one reporter were wiping away tears as Sandy Van Veldhuizen talked about the day their son Reuben went in for a routine tonsillectomy and never came home. His heart stopped during the procedure and help was much too far away, she said.

The mother of four surviving children talked in detail about the day her son died in 2016. About the cardiac arrest on the table. About the interminable, 37-minute ambulance trip from a West Des Moines surgery center to Mercy Hospital in Des Moines. How the rescue efforts were frantic, until they suddenly stopped.

“God is good and God is faithful and God has abided with us and I’ll believe that until I die but our loss is so real and raw,” Sandy said.

The Oskaloosa parents were left wondering why they weren’t told that the ambulatory surgery center they had chosen for Reuben’s procedure wasn’t equipped to manage that type of complication – or even have an ambulance on site in case of emergency. “I thought it was a mini-hospital,” Sandy said.

Sandy is a home-school mom and Scott is a corn and soybean farmer. Two of their children, Noah and Lydia, joined their parents at the Capitol on Thursday. Sons Nate and Blake are in college.

“We’re from small-town Oskaloosa, 13,000 people. Going to the surgery center in Des Moines, we made the assumption, it’s bigger, it’s going to be better,” Scott said.

The family pursued legal remedies and their case has been settled. Now, they’re advocating for legislation that would require all physicians who refer patients to an ambulatory surgical center to explain the differences between that type of facility and a hospital, including whether it is equipped to handle complications of the surgery being prescribed.

“We found out they had limitations that they weren’t aware of until it was too late,” Scott said.

House File 2122 would also require referring doctors to disclose how long it would likely take to reach the closest hospital, should complications from the surgery arise. Two lawmakers on the three-member subcommittee approved moving the legislation to the full House Human Resources Committee. The third said she wanted to gather more information.

Rep. Holly Brink, R-Oskaloosa, had good reason for the tears she was trying to force back during the subcommittee meeting. She’s a neighbor of the Van Veldhuizen family and her son played baseball with Reuben on a team that Scott Van Veldhuizen coached.

“I have never cried at a subcommittee. I have been preparing for this for days to make it through that subcommittee,” she said.

Brink introduced House File 2122 and said she had some other bills pending as well. “I remember when Scott called me this morning and I said, ‘How did it go?’ And he said, ‘He didn’t make it … he’s singing with the angels.'”

In that conversation, Brink recalled, “He also said ‘We’re going to praise God through this but we’re not going to let him be forgotten.'”

Brink, who was elected in 2018, calls the legislation “Reuben’s rules.” “The rules of letting people know the difference.”

The Van Veldhuizens say they have learned that people have to ask a lot of questions about be their own advocates when facing a medical procedure. “We didn’t even know what questions to ask. Now we do, unfortunately.”

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