Posted on 05/25/2016 2:19:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
And yet we want them to behave as Gods..........will never happen. They're human just like you and I.
I say that from a standpoint that I have a number of family members who are in the medical profession........
Precisely.
Unless someone has crumped cases like this can be tough
Yep. My experience was in February 1982. Never again.
And this is why, under no circumstances, you should get involved in any way with the medical-industrial complex. The thought alone keeps me healthy (I actually believe this to be true).
Hospitals are the most dangerous place on earth.
” under no circumstances, you should get involved in any way with the medical-industrial complex. “
That makea absolutely no sense.
.
I am confused. He said he injured his ankle during a run but then was puzzled about it being swollen and red a day later? That’s not really unusual for a bad sprain or even from something like tendonitis.
I once took a hard fall in my rather steep driveway, sort of falling forward and sideways at the same time and turning my ankle in the process. I heard and felt a popping and as I was lying face first, the wind knocked out of me, my first thought was that I had broken it. When I finally got up, my ankle felt OK, no real pain, just a bit sore and stiff, but I was able to put weight on it and figured it was fine. It wasn’t until about 12 hours later that the pain started and another 12 hours before it started swelling, swelling big time, my ankle swelled to the size of a softball and with now a lot of visible redness and bruising and I could no longer put any weight on it.
I got in to see my doctor the next morning and she thought it was sprained but couldn’t rule out a fracture without an x-ray. No fractures that she could see on the x-ray but she still sent me to an orthopedic because of the extreme swelling, redness and bruising and concerns that I might have torn a muscle and or some ligaments. The Ortho diagnosed it as a severe sprain, telling me that the recovery time was sometimes longer for such a bad sprain than would be for a break. I was on crutches for over a month and it took almost a year before it was completely back to normal – got back full range of motion and completely free of any stiffness and soreness.
According to this Daily Mail article, after going back to the hospital three days later he was diagnosed with the bacterial infection Streptococcus Pyogenes that I assume turned into necrotizing fasciitis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptococcus_pyogenes
I can understand why the doctor(s) may not have picked up on that diagnosis initially if his main complaint when going to the ER was an ankle injury, likely related to his running and also with some perhaps vague symptoms consistent with the flu – fever and perhaps a sore throat? But if there were no obvious signs of a rash consistent with a bacterial infection or signs of a wound, a break in the skin or something like insect bite, particularly a spider bite, the doctor would not necessarily have a reason to suspect Streptococcus Pyogenes and probably saw it (the ankle and the flu like symptoms) as two separate and unrelated issues.
His wife believes this could have been avoided if doctors had offered him a blood test, which costs just $30.
A diagnosis of an ankle injury and the flu wouldn’t indicate a blood test. Seriously, on one hand, many people complain about doctors and hospitals ordering unnecessary tests as to inflate medical bills but then in hind sight (hind sight is always 20/20), after the correct diagnosis, anyone can come up with any number of tests or treatments that might have been done earlier.
While very unfortunate and so very sad that the delay in diagnosis “perhaps” caused his very bad outcome, it doesn’t necessarily rise to being a case of malpractice. And it appears that when he returned to the hospital that they did diagnose the actual problem very quickly and treated it very aggressively – unfortunately that eventually involved amputations, but amputations that FWIW saved his life.
There is also no guarantee that he might not have faced a similar outcome even if diagnosed with Streptococcus Pyogenes on his first visit. This type of bacterial infection can be very aggressive and hard to treat even with anti-biotics.
My older brother was visiting with his son here in PA Thanksgiving two years ago and on the Saturday before he left to go back NJ, he started complaining about pain and some redness and swelling in his ring finger, an achy pain in his right hand. It got worse after he got home that Sunday and first thing Monday morning he saw his primary care doctor. By now his hand was not only very swollen and red and painful, but there also were several lines of redness going up his arm, nearly up to his elbow. His doctor seeing this sent him straight to the ER, called ahead and my brother was very quickly admitted to the hospital, his doctor telling him this was a life threatening situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulitis
He was diagnosed with having cellulitis resulting from a Streptococcus infection causing necrotizing fasciitis and sepsis. He was immediately put on intravenous anti-biotics and they had to cut open his finger and several places on his hand and arm to debride the wounds (remove the necrotized – i.e. dead tissues) and drain the infection and they had to do this more than once. He also received hydrotherapy.
But even with his quick diagnosis, he spent well over a month in the hospital, was on a constant IV antibiotics and still came very close to needing the amputation of his finger or of his entire hand (for several days it was a close call, at one point he was even prepped for surgery) and had to stay on an IV drip at home for several weeks after his hospital discharge. His ring finger is now severely deformed and he has little feeling or motion in it or use of it, but as his doctors told him, it could have been much worse - he could have not only lost his finger or his hand, he could have died.
While they couldn’t be 100% sure, the infectious disease specialist thought that it was possible if not likely that my brother’s infection was the result of a spider bite, perhaps from a something like brown recluse spider. A few days prior to having any symptoms, he’d been doing yard work, raking leaves, clearing twigs and small branches that had fallen on his wooded property after a storm and wasn’t wearing work gloves as he usually wore. He had noticed a very small red spot on his ring finger but he didn’t recognize as it perhaps being a spider bite, thinking it was just an abrasion or a small cut from not using gloves while doing the yard work.
Almost thought too long to read. Glad I took the time. Happy your brother is doing better
You hit the nail on the head.
Diagnosing is tricky under good circumstances.
The tell for me is when it said he went in three days later in full sepsis While sepsis is fast moving he would have felt and looked like crap during tha time. He should have gone back sooner and pounded on the table.
It has always been true that the patient must be proactive in their own care
I recently had lunch with my niece who is an emergency room doctor. When I showed her a photo of a huge spider a friend had taken in Rochester Michigan, she told me one of the things she had to learn was how to identify poisonous spiders and their bites since the bite symptoms vary with each spider and thus the respective treatments.....
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