The Blood

The Medical Story of Russell H. Bingaman Part 7: "The Blood"

Before they took his freedom, before they took his wife, before they pumped him full of 22 simultaneous medications and watched him die the morning of a hearing that would have exposed all of it -- before any of that -- something else happened to Russell Bingaman.

He went in for surgery.

I am going to tell you what the medical records show happened to Russell's body and brain between January 3, 2019, and January 29, 2025. Every date, every lab value, every imaging report I reference is from his Grande Ronde Hospital chart, MRN 60001991449, printed March 7, 2025. These are not my interpretations. They are the hospital's own records.

By the time you finish reading this, you will understand that the man they called "terminal" -- the man they enrolled in hospice three separate times, isolated from his wife of 58 years, and drugged into silence -- was not dying of old age. He was dying of what a routine surgery did to his brain, and what the people who were supposed to protect him did with the result.

I. THE SURGERY

On January 3, 2019, Russell Bingaman was 71 years old. He was a rancher in Eastern Oregon. He owned nearly 2,000 acres of debt-free property. He could tell you the name of every cow on the place. He read the Wall Street Journal every morning.

That afternoon, he presented to the emergency department at Grande Ronde Hospital with abdominal pain. A CT scan confirmed a small bowel obstruction caused by an incarcerated left inguinal hernia. Dr. Andrew Clinton Pearson, a general surgeon, took him to the operating room.

What Pearson found when he opened Russell up was worse than expected. The hernia had strangulated a section of small bowel. The tissue was necrotic -- dead. It had to come out.

The operation performed was a left femoral hernia repair with diagnostic laparoscopy and small bowel resection. In plain language: they cut out the dead section of his intestines and repaired the hole in his abdominal wall. The estimated blood loss was recorded as 50 mL. That number matters because what happened next does not match it.

II. THE CRASH

Russell's hemoglobin before surgery was 15.5 g/dL. That is a perfectly healthy number for a 71-year-old man. It means his blood was carrying oxygen to every organ in his body the way it was supposed to.

By January 4, his hemoglobin was 12.5. By January 5, it was 8.3. By January 7, it had fallen to 7.0.

Fifteen-point-five to seven. Less than half.

For context: a hemoglobin below 7.0 is a medical emergency. It is the threshold where most guidelines recommend an immediate blood transfusion because the body's organs -- including the brain -- are being starved of oxygen. Russell's brain had been running on roughly half the oxygen supply it needed for days.

On January 7, Dr. Pearson noted in his progress report: "Anemia -- despite his low hemoglobin level, he is entirely asymptomatic with regard to mentation, urine output, and heart rate." He ordered a repeat hemoglobin at noon and held off on transfusing.

I want you to read that again. A 71-year-old post-surgical patient whose hemoglobin has crashed from 15.5 to 7.0, and the physician's documented plan is to wait and see.

Russell was transfused. His hemoglobin climbed to 7.7, then 8.4 at discharge on January 9. He went home.

But the damage was already done. When your brain goes without adequate oxygen for days, it does not send you a notification. It does not hurt. The cells just start dying, quietly, in the deep white matter where the wiring runs.

III. THE FIRST SCAN

On June 19, 2019, five and a half months after the surgery, Russell saw Dr. Stephen Bump for a follow-up. Bump administered a standard cognitive screening.

Russell scored 0 out of 3 on recall.

Zero. Out of three. The test gives you three words, waits a few minutes, and asks you to repeat them. Russell could not remember a single one.

Dr. Bump noted: "Short term memory was demonstrably abnormal on 6/19/19 with 0/3 objects recalled on MMSE-type question."

Two weeks later, on July 2, 2019, Russell had a head CT at Grande Ronde Hospital. The radiologist's findings were clinical and precise:

"Mild central volume loss, and moderate white matter changes typically associated with small-vessel post-ischemic process."

Post-ischemic. That word means "after a period of insufficient blood flow." The radiologist was documenting brain damage consistent with oxygen deprivation. Six months after a surgery where Russell's hemoglobin crashed to 7.0 and stayed dangerously low for days, the scan was showing exactly what you would expect: the small vessels in his brain had been starved, and the white matter -- the insulation on the brain's wiring -- was degrading.

Nobody connected the dots. Not in the chart. Not in any follow-up. Not once.

IV. THE MRI

In May 2020, Russell was admitted to Grande Ronde Hospital again with nausea, vomiting, and confusion. An MRI was performed. The findings read like a damage report:

"Severe white matter disease. Global volume loss. Remote cerebellar and right thalamic microhemorrhages. Remote right thalamic lacunar infarct."

In human terms: Russell's brain was riddled with damage. The white matter disease had gone from "moderate" to "severe" in ten months. He had tiny hemorrhages scattered through his cerebellum and thalamus. He had a dead spot -- a lacunar infarct -- where a small vessel in his thalamus had blocked and killed the surrounding tissue.

Dr. Rodrigo Lim, a neurologist at Grande Ronde Hospital, saw Russell on June 3, 2020. He administered the Mini-Mental State Examination. Russell scored 24 out of 30. Mild to moderate. He could still carry a conversation. His wife Patricia told Dr. Lim that Russell was an avid reader, that he was in charge of their farm, and that he did not have behavioral issues. She said they had been talking about things they had not discussed in years. He had been helping her with chores in the yard.

Dr. Lim noted the MRI findings and wrote: "Chronic microscopic hemorrhagic events and global atrophy of the brain. This is consistent with cerebral amyloidosis and/or chronic EtOH abuse."

He diagnosed Russell with late-onset Alzheimer's disease, mild to moderate, without behavioral changes.

But here is what matters and what nobody in that chart ever said plainly: the pattern on that MRI -- severe white matter disease plus microhemorrhages plus lacunar infarcts in the deep brain structures -- is the textbook presentation of vascular dementia. Damage caused by blood vessels failing to deliver oxygen to the brain. The kind of damage that follows a catastrophic drop in hemoglobin.

Russell's family history told the same story. His mother had dementia. His mother had a stroke. The vascular vulnerability was already there, written into his bloodline. The surgery did not create the risk. It pulled the trigger.

V. THE DUAL DIAGNOSIS

They eventually gave Russell both labels. His medical chart carries two ICD codes:

G30.1 -- Alzheimer's disease with late onset F01.518 -- Vascular dementia with behavioral disturbance

Both. At the same time. His hospice records list his comorbidities as "DEMENTIA, VASCULAR DEMENTIA."

The Alzheimer's diagnosis came first and carries the most clinical authority in his chart. But the vascular dementia diagnosis is the one the medical records actually support with physical evidence: the white matter disease, the microhemorrhages, the lacunar infarcts, the post-ischemic changes documented six months after the blood crash.

Whether Russell also had Alzheimer's is a question that can only be answered with certainty at autopsy. What is certain -- what is documented in black and white across four years of imaging and lab work -- is that his brain suffered massive vascular damage that began after January 3, 2019, and accelerated from there.

The MMSE tells the rest:

May 2020 (hospital): 26/30 -- Mild June 3, 2020: 24/30 -- Mild to Moderate (Dr. Lim neurology evaluation) October 5, 2021: "Mild to Moderate" (Dr. Lim follow-up) December 27, 2021: ~18-20 -- Moderate (Dr. Lim follow-up) February 2022: FAST 7a claimed (hospice enrollment) January 2023: FAST 7a "leaning towards 7b" (Dr. Ruden hospice face-to-face)

By June 2021, they started him on Aricept -- the drug used to slow Alzheimer's progression. By December 2021, Dr. Lim assessed him in the "moderate range." Then in February 2022, seven weeks later, the hospice paperwork claimed Russell had reached FAST 7a: speech limited to five words or fewer, dependent on others for five or six basic activities of daily living.

Seven weeks from "moderate" to "terminal stage."

Dr. Lim's own December 27, 2021, assessment -- the last clinical evaluation before the hospice enrollment -- does not support FAST 7a. The December 21, 2021, MRI does not support a sudden seven-week plunge to end-stage dementia. No documentation in his chart explains that drop.

But FAST 7a is what Medicare requires for hospice eligibility in dementia patients. Without that score, there is no enrollment. Without enrollment, there is no billing. Without billing, the pipeline does not run.

VI. THE PIPELINE

This is the part of the story where the surgery stops being a medical event and starts being a business opportunity.

Russell Bingaman was enrolled in Heart n Home Hospice three separate times. The first enrollment came in November 2022. Dr. Bryan Conklin -- who simultaneously owned the referring clinic and served as the hospice's Medical Director -- provided verbal certification of terminal illness.

Russell was not dying. He gained weight. He went from 169 to 174 pounds. The hospice eventually had to discharge him with the notation: "NO LONGER TERMINALLY ILL."

That first episode still billed Medicare an estimated $50,000 at over $170 per day.

The second enrollment was triggered in June-July 2024 after a telehealth visit on June 27 assigned a fraudulent six-month terminal prognosis without a physical examination. Seven days before that telehealth visit, on June 23, 2024, a 50-minute audio recording captured Russell speaking in full sentences, making jokes, and planning a trip to Pendleton. He told his wife: "Call Craig. Tell him we're going."

Seven days later, he was classified as FAST 7a. A man who cannot speak more than five words.

The third episode ran from January 2025 until Russell died on January 29, 2025, at 2:13 PM -- hours after a hearing was scheduled to appoint an independent third-party guardian who would have investigated his care and finances.

Total Medicare billing across three hospice episodes: over $300,000 for a single patient.

VII. THE ARITHMETIC OF DECLINE

I want to lay out the math one more time, because the math is the story.

January 3, 2019: Hemoglobin 15.5. Healthy man walks into surgery.

January 7, 2019: Hemoglobin 7.0. Brain has been oxygen-starved for days.

June 19, 2019: Recall 0/3. Five months later, cannot remember three words.

July 2, 2019: Head CT shows "post-ischemic" white matter damage.

May 2020: MRI shows "severe white matter disease," microhemorrhages, lacunar infarct.

June 3, 2020: MMSE 24/30. Still talking, still reading, still helping Patty in the yard.

December 2021: "Moderate range." Aricept prescribed.

December 2021: The children receive $8 million in property. Drew Martin comes to the house. Russell does not say one word.

February 2022: Enrolled in hospice. FAST 7a claimed. Placed in Nadine's Nest under Tempie Bartell.

November 2022: First hospice enrollment. Discharged as "not terminally ill."

June 23, 2024: Audio recording. Russell speaks in full sentences. Plans a trip.

June 30, 2024: FAST 7a again. Hospice re-enrollment. Medicare billing resumes.

July 10, 2024: Baum's billing records document a coordination call to "lock door to keep Patty out."

September 12, 2024: Court limits Patty to one 30-minute visit per week.

January 6-21, 2025: Ashley Batten prescribes 622 tablets, 20 patches, and 16 sprays in 15 days. No examination documented. 41 tablets per day for a 77-year-old hospice patient with dementia.

January 28, 2025: 11:11 AM, Russell is fed applesauce. 12:34 PM, he is "unresponsive to touch." 83 minutes.

January 29, 2025: Russell H. Bingaman is dead. He is 77 years old. He has been married for 58 years to a woman who spent the last three of them trying to save him.

VIII. WHAT THE BLOOD TELLS YOU

Every system that touched Russell Bingaman after January 3, 2019, used the same thing to justify what they did to him: his decline.

The guardianship used it. The hospice used it. The attorneys used it. The facility used it. DHS used it to close the investigation. The court used it to limit his wife's visits to 30 minutes a week. Every single one of them pointed to the same deteriorating man and said: this is why we need control.

None of them asked how he got there.

The medical record answers that question. A healthy rancher walks into a hospital on January 3, 2019, with a hemoglobin of 15.5. Six days later, he leaves with a hemoglobin of 8.4, a brain that has been running on half its oxygen supply, and a future that has already been decided. Six months later, the first scan shows the damage. A year after that, the MRI confirms it is severe. The white matter is shredded. The small vessels have failed. The microhemorrhages are scattered across his cerebellum and thalamus like shrapnel.

What followed was not a rescue. It was an industry.

They enrolled a man with documented vascular brain damage in a hospice program designed for terminal illness. They billed Medicare $300,000 across three separate episodes. They discharged him once because he was not dying, then re-enrolled him under the same diagnosis they already knew was wrong. They used his cognitive decline, the decline they were accelerating with 22 simultaneous medications, to justify isolating him from the only person who had ever fought for him.

And when the court was finally about to look, Russell died.

His blood tells the story they never wanted told. Not a gentle fading. Not the natural arc of an old man's mind. A catastrophic medical event, a predictable neurological consequence, and a system full of people who saw the vulnerability and fed on it.

WHAT COMES NEXT

This is Part 7 of the Bingaman Case. It tells you what happened before anyone with a law degree got involved. Before the hospice billing. Before the guardianship. Before the $8 million property transfer. Before the isolation, the medication avalanche, and the death.

The blood came first. Everything else followed.

In the Bingaman Case series, I have shown you the isolation, the manipulation, the watchdog who looked away, the numbers that do not add up, the anatomy of how a family is turned against itself, and the judge who dismissed the evidence. Now you know what started it all.

Russell Bingaman did not just have Alzheimer's. He had brain damage from a surgery that went wrong, and every institution in his life used the result to take what they wanted from him.

The records prove it. The imaging proves it. The lab values prove it. The timeline proves it.

Nobody connected the dots until now.