Posted on 02/17/2009 7:41:53 AM PST by TMD
Ask to speak to an interventional radiologist about a vertebroplasty. It is a pretty minor procedure that even some fairly debilitated patients who are not candidates for surgery can have. They insert a needle into the vertebra under X-ray guidance and squirt in a substance like Super Glue to hold the bone fragments together. It can provide immediate pain relief. My mom had it and is now pain free.
Point well taken. It’s a situation to be handled carefully and with professional advise all the way around.
His short term memory isn’t great. It’s hard to pin-point it to a specific incident but, we observed them laying his bed flat to adjust his position (or sittin ghim up straighter than he’s comfortable) when he was crying out in pain on more than one occasion. There were a number of days that they seemed to be handling him rougher than they should have, then, after the fracture occured, they kept telling us he was just being uncooperative when, in fact he was in excruciating pain.
He was told 2 years ago that if he had a lot of pain this procedure could be done. Now, there’s a lot of pain and the word we get second-hand is that this is not ‘amenable’ to vertebroplasty.
Why not? We have no idea since we have yet to speak to a spine doc. Is there any other way to stabilize his spine? We have no idea since we have yet to speak to a spine doc. Is this fracture expected to heal? We have no idea since we have yet to speak to a spine doc. If it’s expected to heal then isn’t rolling him back and forth every two hours going to slow this process? We have no idea since we have yet to speak to a spine doc.
We were told by the hospitalist that IF he were a candidate for surgery/intervention, only then would we have a consult with a spine doc. Like I said we’re chasing our tails and still not getting any satisfactory answers to our questions.
Most of us hate trial lawyers even IF we need one.
99% of lawyers give the other 1% a bad name.
I would INSIST on an interventional radiology consultation. The longer you wait the less likely the procedure is to work.
I hope it all works out for the best, and I wish your dad a speedy recovery.
I just hope you find some answers for your Dad and for you, it is a tough time. Sometimes, some of the medicine they are on, can cause their memory to be bad, that might be a good thing to check on, his medications, and see if they are causing his memory losses.
All I can add is one more sad story -
A friend’s husband went to same Mizer with a K hospital, for an elective surgery. He came out of operation into his room, sleeping nicely. She, exhausted, left to go home and get sleep. His stitches came loose while she was away, and he died. He had rang for nurses, they did not respond and he bled to death. She beats herself up - had she been there, she could have grabbed a nurse.
My dad went into a hospital in 2005 for evaluation of his medications, fell in the hospital and ended up with hip replacement surgery. The hospital did not care for him properly. Moved him out of the surgical ward when he could not walk, then expected him to walk to the bathroom, again he could not walk. They never did the right thing, didn’t care for him, released him to another care facility and didn’t even tell the care facility [where he was before his hospital admission] that he could not walk. He was left in a bed with no food or drink and couldn’t go to the bathroom for a whole weekend. Well, he did go to the bathroom sort of, but we won’t talk about that. Two days plus a little more. I raised a huge stink with the hospital and they told me to stuff it.
With the care facility, I told the charge nurse, and they did nothing to change anything and left him with no care. So Monday I called the administrator and raised a stink. They finally did something I guess so there wouldn’t be a murder charge. This is a midwest state.
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