This stinks!

Do you remember when I posted about my friend Judy who came out of gall bladder surgery with the top wire of her braces pulled over her upper lip?

 

She's been dealing with an attorney in Austin who was pretty gun-ho about her case when he strated working on it and just the other day she contacted him to find out what was going on with it.  He all of a sudden told her that he wasn't taking the case because after her medical bills were paid there wouldn't be any money left after he took his cut of $25K.  She was pretty upset yesterday and called another attorney in our town that supposedly did medical malpractice.  This guy refused to even talk to her and his secretary hung up on her today!

 

So she called the attorney I used to work with and he took her call.  Her secretary remembered when I called him to get a referral to the guy in Austin and Max talked to Judy.   He explained that there was a law in Texas that was passed a couple years ago that basically protects doctors and hospitals from medical malpractice suits and it's nearly impossible to get a suit even filed anymore because there's very little chance of winning it.

 

This explains why this attorney wouldn't take the case, but he didn't tell her that the other day.  In the meantime, the hospital has offered to pay her bills, but so far nothing for pain and suffering, which she deserves.  So she decided she needs to contact the hospital patient advocacy deparment and go that route, without legal representation.  

 

This is really the pits.  The doctors and hospitals are protected from medical malpractice suits, but the patient apprently doesn't have any recourse if they're injured as a result of it.

 

We need a patient bill of rights, not just in Texas, but nationwide. 

 

I never read this before, PLL.

So pain and suffering and who had to pay to get the braces fixed?????

Did this happen as a result of having to put her under anesthesia?

Doubt very much that is the whole story. If that was the case doctors wouldn't need to pay mal-practice insurance. Your friend isnt asking the right questions or not telling the whole story.

Remember when on the R's were crankin' up the Wurlitzer and spreading the propaganda about "tort reform" to put those ambulance chasing attorneys out of business so the poor insurance companies wouldn't have to pay off all these "frivolous" lawsuits?

 

The politicians ran that scam on We the People, protecting the corporate profits of those companies who bought their votes, and the shortsighted, knee-jerkers who put them in office bought it all.

 

Did you catch Dennis Quaid's harrowing testimony in the House about how his newborn twins who got a massive overdose of a blood thinner last year? Every R on the panel was crying about the dangers of patient litigation with regard to possibly stifling the bottom line of some mega-billion dollar multinational corporate giant. It was sick!

 

The only hope we have is to get the Dems in Congress.

 

 

Wow that is the pits. I don't know anything about the laws on malpractice or anything, but I will certainly keep your friend in my prayers.

Nobody will tell her what actually happened in the OR for her to end up that way, but the only conclusion we can come to is that  the anestiesiologist yanked on the endotracheal tube (the tube that goes into your mouth to allow anesthesia) after her surgery.  The doctor came and talked to me and her husband about it but didn't offer any explanations as to how it occurred.  He just said that she had a small mouth and because of the braces she was hard to intubate, which I find ridiculous since she'd had more than one surgery in that hospital and never been told that.

 

Judy has had braces for a while now, but after the surgery, her orthodontist actually came to her hospital room to see if she could get the upper wire back in place, which she did.  The anesthesiologist was had made Judy an appointment with the orthodontist for the next Monday (the surgery was on a Thursday, when Judy would have been much worse off).  Her orthodontist brought her camera with her and took several pictures of what had happened.  The orthodontist isn't charging Judy for this because she knows Judy was going to contact an attorney about it and that those charges would be included in any suit that was filed.

 

 She's also had to have some dental work done.  Her underside of her upper lip was cut and had to be stitched back to the gum where it belongs.  She's also root canals done on two front teeth and the nerves are dead in the other two, so she'll need to have crowns put on them.  Furthermore, her front teeth were pushed forward, like she had buck teeth.  It was truly awful.

 

And that's not all.  She was still under anesthesia when she got back to the room.  Apparently they'd only kept her in the recovery room for about 10 minutes.  It took her about an hour to become awake enough to figure out something was wrong.  Nobody every said they were sorry, especially the anesthesiologist, and they pretty much hurried her out of there after she woke up.

 

I was a witness to her condition when she came back to her room, and I was shocked.  The more I thought about it the more disgusted I got.  Now we're trying to figure out how much she should ask for beyond having her bills paid for what she's had to go through because she's missed work for dental appointments, etc. and has had to take Xanax because of the anxiety caused by the entire thing.  I have no idea where to start with that.

 

The whole thing has both of us angry. 

 

 

Let this story be a warning to those of us who still live in blue states where ordinary people still have rights. The neo-cons gotta go.

My health was ruined thanks to a doc and a drug company. Four years ago now. I have a stack of rejection letters from lawyers hundreds in number. Never would I have believed what the medical profession can get away with and how hard it is to make them accountable if I hadn't been forced to live it. My statute of limitations is up now, I will never have justice or compensation and what I learned about how things are done when a person has been harmed will keep me from sleeping well for the rest of my life. It's beyond awful. Best wishes to your friend.

That's one of the reasons I'm urging her to get this settled, Maggy.  I don't want her waiting until all her dental and orthodontic work has been done (that could be a year or two) and then have the statute of limitations run out on her before that.  I've encouraged her to include her present bills as well as any future bills in the amount she asks for.

(((maggymae)))

 

This is a semi-serious suggestion, but you should e-mail Michael Moore. Maybe he'll do "Sicko II."