So, some of you may recall the health disaster my mom went through about two years ago... in a nut shell, the doctor was going to check for internal bleeding as a possible cause for anemia, and this would involve a colonoscopy. the colonoscopy discovered some polyps that were to be cauterized. one of these cauterization attempts did not so much cauterize a sight of potential bleeding as burn through the intestinal wall. queue septic shock, and mom gets rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery just before christmas. grace and i went out to visit her at that point, and grace did a fantastic job of helping mom change the dressing on her wounds until we discovered a secondary infection had set into the incission site. so, after a few more madcap laughs in this wild ride we call the american health care system, mom was receiving daily visits from a nurse to change her dressings... one of these nurses was an older chinese gent who, despite being married himself, tells mom that he loves her and wants her to be his woman. mom does not report this guy to the appropriate authorities, as he was willing to continue changing the dressing beyond the time the hospital and/or insurance companies were paying for. but, that's another issue. suffice it to say, words were had, and it's never easy trying to raise a parent in this day and age. anyway, so flash forward a year and a half or whatever it's been, and today mom told me she's got an incisional hernia, or some such. stomach or neighboring guts are poking through the abdominal muscles, and this is possibly gonna require yet more surgery to fix. and yes, it stems from the previous emergency surgery that was necessary to save her life after a botched cauterization... and yet, curiously enough, lawyers won't touch this one, feeling it would be too complicated a case. where's an ambulance chaser when ya need one, eh?
garnrag (4:58:33 PM): you are now a discussion topic. ellenbgarner (4:58:44 PM): oh my god... garnrag (4:59:00 PM): what? ellenbgarner (5:01:30 PM): well, except they weren't polyps, they were AVMS, arteriovenous malformations, that had to be cauterized...
If it wasn't a seriously bad pun and possible lack of respect towards the mother of the Great God (although of course not intended to be), I would probably say something along the lines of "Gee, what a bummer." As it is, I will just express my sympathy, as my mum had polyp problems down there too, and as they are a hereditary risk, it's my duty to be sympathetic, even if Garner doesn't know a polyp from an AVM when he doesn't see one. She has also had a lot of bad luck with both british and french health services, as have I so far. What else is there to be said ? Illness of any kind is a pain in the... neck, but when it's due to someone's incompetence, especially when they were meant to be curing something in the first place, it's even more annoying and frustrating. Good luck and best wishes to Mrs Great God Senior. **prepares for smiting**
That sucks man. I am surprised that a lawyer won't touch it. It's pretty easy to get hospitals to setlle nowadays. At least to cover the cost of the new surgeries.
How bad is the risk of her just adding the cost of a lawyer to it all if she tried to sue? Brad is right, they should at least pay the following operations that wouldn't have been necessary if they hadn't messed it up. Apart from that, I hope it goes smoothly this time, and that she soon recovers, and this time fully. Going through pain knowing it could have been avoided if other people had done their job properly is a frustrating thing.
This sounds like a bugger... I recently watched a doco on the failures of the health system and how everyone in it is so afraid of getting sued, no one will admit responsibility so that the systematic problem can be identified and fixed. I think the problem here is that in the botched cautorisation did the person actually stuff up or make a mistake or was it an unavoidable complication or risk in the procedure. If they didn't actually make a mistake but was a risk of the procedure then whose responsible? You can't sue the machine... That may be why the lawyers don't want it, but it'll be tough to get the medical people to tell you because of that admission of responsibility I mentioned earlier... Good luck to your mother and I hope she gets better and this round of operations is the last.
