long dang holiday weekend............

[rattler]

short version..........Christmas day had a flood at the movie theater my wife co-manages on a part time basis due to a frozen pipe that burst in the ceiling over the concession stand, luckily we were there when it happened doing film work......other than ruining some candy and popcorn it wasnt a huge disaster though we couldnt have a movie that night.....

Saturday, due to an ER docs incompetence my wife almost died.....went up saturday at about 10am due to severe lower abdominal pain, doc said it was 'honeymoon cystitis' and kicked her out the door 4 hours later after just giving her 1 liter of IV fluid(the IV was very difficult to put in) and a urine test to check for a urinary tract infection......thats it, no basic blood tests, nothing....kicked us out the door with her still doubled over in pain with recommendation of taking a hot bath....he had spent a grand total of 90 seconds with my wife in those 4 hours, the ER was dead, we were the only ones in there for the first hour and a half......we sat and listened to him joke with the nurses for that first hour and a half...

an hour or so later she was still in great amounts of pain so i hauled her back to an ER, this time in a town 50 miles down the road.......after a very complete round of tests and scans it turns out she had a mass on the left ovary that appeared to be bleeding as there was a whole lot of extra fluid floating around in her abdominal cavity.....gynecologist was called in at midnight after the final scan, he looked over the scans and called in the OR team and my wife was in surgery by 1 am........it was an ovarian cyst that had ruptured and had bled heavily......the surgeon removed the cyst and cleaned up all the blood he could......other than being weak from blood loss she is doing fine now.....

so far i have had words with the top gal at the local hospital, we will not see the charge for the 4 hours we spent in there, she is going to pull the ER reports and review them than get back to us.......we will be nice and give here that time but one way or another that SOB is going to be reported to the state medical board.....all he had to do was order a CBC, a $20 test, a standard test when someone is complaining of internal problems, and he would have seen that here red blood cell count had tanked.....and would explain why they had problem getting an IV in, as she was loosing blood into her belly.....

 

[feedme]

Wow! I am glad to here your wife is ok now. What a terrible job by the first doctor. He should lose his license.

Hopefully the new year will bring better fortunes.

 

[Grey Moss]

That sucks, hope you get that doc good.

 

[herenorthere]

I'm glad one ER Dr. remembered what their job is supposed to be. I hope she feels better as soon as possible. If you want to have a positive effect on healthcare, sue the Dr. and hospital. That gets more attention from a Dr., hopital or insurance company than anything else.

 

[rattler]

dont see how suing the hospital is going to do much but raise what i pay to see my regular doc.......so long as they play ball i dont see a reason to go after them......this particular doctor however......i plan on having that SOB's head on a stick by the time im done......

 

[droseraguy]

Not to make light of a serious situation but.. I think what that's called is a "doc-sicle" ! Glad to hear she is doing better. We'll keep you both in our prayers.

 

[herenorthere]

Lawsuits get administration attention and can lead to more thorough protocols and better oversight and so on. Unforyunately, they also result in over-testing and defensive medicine, which are the other side of the same coin. What happened to your wife shows why it can seem better to miss on the side of over-caution.

 

[rattler]

yeah and that would be part of the reason health care costs are so high.......as far as i can see this is the screw up of an individual.......i know what the basic standard practice is for hitting the ER with severe abdominal pain, have checked with alot of docs....this doc was a rent-a-doc the hospital hired to come in and cover the ER over the holiday weekend while the small regular staff of regular docs and nurse practitioners had a break......this guy decided to be lazy and not even bother to do the basic stuff.....regardless of what policy is, this slacker would likely have done the same thing......so one way or another this SOB is going to be defending his actions infront of the state medical board.....so long as the hospital does not get in the way of me taking on this idiot i dont have a particular beef with them....

 

[nightsky]

Very sorry to here about your ordeal - but it sounds like your wife is going to be ok. What an absolute nightmare that first visit was. It is very fortunate you found a good medical team to actually help! One shouldn't become a doctor if one doesn't want to actually help people!

To get a little more personal, I can very much relate to your situation. My wife was having horrible cramping in her belly for over a year. We went from the general practitioner to an ambulance ride to an ER when she passed out from the pain and hit her head, to a gastroenterologist who ran months worth of tests, scopes, you name it. Over a year later and several doctors later we had no answer and she had to quit work from the debilitating pain. She ended up getting her yearly female exam, with a new doc, and this guy was good. He suspected it was caused by those female organs. He did a laparoscopy (little camera throught the belly button) and lo and behold she was a complete disaster inside. She had endometriosis so bad it was binding her organs together and constricting her bowels. The doctor said her life was in danger due to the damage her organs were taking by being distorted and constricted.

A VERY long story short, she went through one surgery to remove it all. She didn't recover well, and by the fourth day was barely alive, literally. Her blood was poisoned and no amount of antibiotics was reversing it. An emergency exploratory was done. Her bowel was so weakened by the original condition, that upon being freed, it couldn't handle its job. It had ruptured sometime during her early recovery and had infected her abdominal cavity and even her blood. So during the exploratory they had to clean out her entire abdomen of infection, and perform bowel surgery to fix the problem, which required working in the area of her first surgery from days earlier. The doctor said afterword she was so badly infected that she had less than 24 hours to live had they not found the problem. Scared the hell outta me.

In the end, she spent 6 weeks in ICU to recover from 2 major surgeries, but came out ok and is much better still. It's tragic how such a simple thing as stomach cramps could progress into such a long, drawn out and nearly fatal mess. A good doctor is worth their weight in gold; one that will listen, won't rest until the source is found, is skilled and knowledgeable and actually wants to heal people. That gyn saved her life.

 

[Trapper7]

So sorry to hear about your wife, rattler. I'm glad to hear she's doing better now.

Same to you, nightsky.

 

[herenorthere]

Rattler, it was the hospital that was responsible for a seemingly unmotivate or untrained or whatever Dr. overseeing the ER. They might be even even more at fault than the Dr. because people in the community have to trust the hospital to have qualified staff. That's a huge problem in rural communities and there's no simple solution, but the hospital needs to show it used due diligence in putting the community in that guy's hands. Otherwise they can feel secure in cutting corners when staffing the place. The only thing that holds their feet to the fire is the threat of a lawsuit.