Posted on 03/11/2005 12:23:10 PM PST by crushelits
Nicole DeHuff, an actress who played Teri Polo's sister in Meet the Parents, has died of causes related to pneumonia. She was 30.
The actress died Feb. 16 in Hollywood, four days after she reportedly checked into a Los Angeles hospital, was misdiagnosed and sent home with orders to take Tylenol.
When her condition worsened, she returned to the hospital and was prescribed antibiotics for bronchitis and again sent home. Two days later, paramedics were called to her home after she collapsed, gasping for breath. By the time she reached the hospital, she was unconscious and passed away soon after.
Meet the Parents marked DeHuff's feature-film debut. She played Deborah Byrnes, the sister whose wedding prompts Gaylord "Greg" Focker's (Ben Stiller) visit to girlfriend Pam Byrne's (Polo) childhood home to attend the ceremony and, as suggested by the title, meet the parents. Hilarity ensues.
In one of the movie's most memorable scenes, a Speedo-clad Stiller spikes a volleyball into DeHuff's face, breaking the bride-to-be's nose and cementing his own unpopularity.
DeHuff also appeared in 2004's Suspect Zero with Ben Kingsley and in an independent film called Killing Cinderella.
She also starred in the as yet unreleased independent film Unbeatable Harold, directed by her husband, Ari Palitz, and costarring Dylan McDermott and Gordon Michaels.
On the small screen, DeHuff had roles in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Court, The Practice, Dragnet, Without a Trace and Monk. She also appeared in the TV movie See Arnold Run.
A native of Oklahoma, DeHuff graduated from the Carnegie Mellon University acting program.
She is survived by Palitz, her husband of four years, as well as her sister, her mother and her father.
take the same symptoms, place them with a senior citizen, and they are admitted.....
shameful!.....
They said it could be a blood clot, lung cancer or phnemonia. 24 hours later - after treating her for the more urgent blood clot - they diagnosed phnemonia.
DANG! But at least they kept her there, did not send her home - thank God!
That's a heck of a thing to say to someone who's had an MD tacked to his name for over 25 years. I'm sure you know much more about it, 'tho.
Not to get in a flame war, but, besides having been sued myself I do legal review of potential malpractice cases, so I do have some experience on the subject. I prefer to review cases for the defense, but I have given an opinion that a case represented malpractice and should be pursued. It happens.
It's just that with all the breathless comdemnation of the medical system I've just witnessed here, I've yet to see a CONVINCING fact that this indeed represented malpractice. It certainly isn't a res ipsa loquitor case.
Frankly, you all are behaving like a bunch of, well, liberals.
Honest to goodness, I got to go to the ER, so if I don't repond for awhile its not because I'm ignoring you.
I just hope I don't get sued.
For the *billions* of people around the world who can not afford a doctor it is a life saver.
Furthermore, given the majority of the world's population has direct access to medicine without government permission, it is rather pointless to restrict the affluent minority's access to drugs on the grounds of "superbugs".
One of the reason's asthma rates are increasing in the West is the reluctance to prescribe antibiotics is resulting in permanent lung damage (as in my case).
Given the overregulation of medicine in the states, the doctor/patient relationship is no longer one of employee/patient but rather government agent/subject.
I've got bronchial asthma, and at times (blessedly only once in a blue moon) I can develop a respiratory infection that leads to severe bronchitis. On top of asthma, it can be a killer. In those cases I always go to my allergist, who prescribes, in addition to antibiotics, a regimen of prednisone, to reduce the inflammation. Antibiotics may or may not be helpful, depending on the nature of the pathogen that's doing the damage. Something to treat the symptoms, I would imagine, is always required.
fact is, she could have gone from being pretty sick to critically sick in a matter of hours, and all the tests in the world wouldn't have shown a thing from the start....
but I do still say, the least the doctor should have done is have her come back to the hospital in 12 hours or the next day,to check on her....
again, I say this is so shameful....so sad....
LOL. I can see him channeling the victim during his closing arguments!
Just think, if John Kerry had been elected, he could have raised her from the dead, and Christopher Reeve would be walking around even now!
he lived, after a lengthly hospital stay including the ICU.....
IIRC...Jim Henson had a rare staph infection....
Terrible about this poor girl. Never should've happened.
they didn't get her xrays the second time she was back.wtf?
I feel strongly that investigating those statistics would prove them meaningless...
I bet a large number of these 400,000 are the chronically ill, frail elderly, or just the chronically ill, period...
often just because a patient such as that dies, its not the result of bad care or bad choices, its just that there probably were no other choices to be made.....
are there actual negligent acts?....I am sure of it..............but they are in the small minority, IMO....
he was over 92?.....listen to what you are saying......you didn't think he would ever die of something?
btw....I think I read somewhere that something like 75% of pulmonary embolisms go undetected......
Very sad. Prayers for her and the family.
I was getting at least one bout of bronchitis every winter. Sometimes the coughing was so bad I would just break down and cry. Eventually I was diagnosed with asthma at age 47. I was put on all sorts of asthma medications and found I was becoming very dependant on my rescue inhaler. Enter a terrific allergist. He has virtually returned my lung function to near normal. He prescribed a drug called Pulmicort which to me has been a miracle. No more bronchitis, no more trips to the emergency room and I can even shovel snow when it's 10 degrees without gasping for air.
Hmmm. You better get your observations published in the NEJM -- ASAP -- those are vital statistics which are grossly abnormal.
I agree with your overall assessment. How do you know the doctor didn't tell her to see her very own doctor the next day?
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