Choose your Dr. carefully

[DanaC]

This post has gotten me thinking about some stuff i havent thought about in a while. I have a raft of bad medicine stories. Three members of my family have met their deaths due to incompetence or negligence on the parts of the medical staff who were supposedly caring for them.

The most dramtic was my Uncle Dave. My mum's favourite brother.

A week and a half before his 44th birthday he began to experience appalling headaches, they went on for a few hours and then he collapsed in agony. He was rushed to hospital where a battery of tests and scans revealed an aneurism. This would have to be operated upon they said. Unfortunately the surgeon who would deal with this was just about to go on holiday ( he was about to leave for London the next day and had already left the hospital) But.....we shouldnt worry because the aneurism wasnt bleeding. No blood on the brain they said. The operation would have to wait until the following week or, if the situation became critical sooner than that a locum surgeon would have to do emergency surgery.

A few hours later he got worse. He was in terrible pain. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. Doctors came and checked him, and again said he would be fine. This was normal , nothing to worry about. He then slipped into a coma. His son who had gained compassionate leave from the navy arrived too late, his father never regained consciousness. 2 days before his 44th birthday Dave died of a massive brain haemorage (sp).

His eldest son's boyfriend was a Psychiatrist who worked on the Psych ward at that hospital. He was able to gain access to Dave's records and discovered that the records showed blood present on the brain on day one. Under no circumstances should the operation have been delayed. He could have survived it, if the operation had been carried out. Unfortunately the hospital staff on duty had not wanted to call the sugeon back in.

.........Many years later, Dave's eldest brother Allan, an agoraphobic epeleptic became ill. He was admitted into hospital and underwent various invasive procedures and tests but they werent sure what was wrong. A decision was made that the problem lay in his bowel and they opened him......and then having done something in there they closed him back up again......He then began to get worse. His organs began to fail one at a time. He was given a full transfusion which lifted him for a short while but then he started slipping again. He eventually died. The autopsy revealed that he had bled to death after the surgeon who'd operated on his bowel had accidentally cut into his spleen.

What was so tragic about Allan, was that during his brief seeming recovery he began to sit up , and all he wanted was a cup of tea. He asked my mum to get him a cup of tea. She went off to try and sort that out but before she was able to things got critical again. He never did get his cup of tea.

We're not wholly sure what happened to Nana. We comfort ourselves that maybe the nurses took pity on her plight ( alzheimers) and deliberately hastened her end. If it wasnt an act of mercy it was negligence to the nth degree. Left with no clothes in a cold side ward she caught pneumonia and died.

[Brigliadore]

Originally Posted by DanaC

He eventually died. The autopsy revealed that he had bled to death after the surgeon who'd operated on his bowel had accidentally cut into his spleen.

I recently had something similar happen to my grandma. She went into the hospital for a routine surgery on her stomach. It was suppose to be an out patient proceeder with her home that evening. Instead of being home that night she was in the ICU in critical condition. Something had gone wrong with the surgery and she started to bleed internally. They took her back to the OR and opened her up again to try and find the source of the bleeding. They though it was a kidney that was causing it so they removed it and stitched her back up. 4 hours later she was still bleeding internally and no one seemed willing to do anything more for her. They kept pumping blood into her (5 liters) but none of it was coming out, and because they had put so much blood in her, it was putting pressure on her chest and making it so the respirator couldn't breath for her any more. Doctors said she was now in danger of heart failure because of the pressure on her chest but they still weren't doing anything to fix the problem. They just kept pumping more blood in and telling us "not to worry she will be ok" while the nurses standing behind them are shaking their heads no. My dad called a friend who is a head nurse at a large hospital 20 miles away and asked her what she thought he should do. She told him to take the risk and move her. She said to get her out of that hospital and over to hers, because if she stayed where she was she would die. They moved her and his friend called the head of surgery and asked him to come on his day off and operate. When he opened her up he found her spleen had been nicked and was the cause of all the internal bleeding. He ended up removing half of it as he couldn't fix the hole. She did recover, but it was a touchy few days.

Stupid doctors at the first hospital were the ones who cause the whole problem to start with and they all just stood around watching her get worse. I am convinced she would have died if she stayed in that hospital, and the only reason we were able to save her is because we knew the right person at a better hospital who pulled some strings for us. Not everyone is that lucky, and it really shouldn't be that way.