Guaranteed Healthcare

My husband was a very young and healthy 72 year old with no diseases. He was a non-smoker, non-drinker and besides being very healthy and strong, he had a very good attitude and was such a joy to be around. He was so patient and loving and I had a wonderful 43 years of marriage with him. He was a happy husband, father and grandfather. I was blessed. His problem started in the beginning of 2006. His hip started bothering him and we attributed this to the stress caused by installing tiles in the basement several months prior in 2005.

The painful hip and numbness and tingling in his leg led him to the doctor’s office. He was sent to a specialist who treated him for sciatica. He administered various tests and did a procedure where he stuck needles in his leg and this was supposed to help him. He had physical therapy for several weeks and then he had additional tests done. An MRI was done and they discovered cancer in his spine. We went to an oncologist who predicted prostate cancer but ordered more tests. It should be noted that the process was long and arduous with a lot of delays and careless handling of his case. At times I thought they were just using him to make more claims to the Insurance Company so they could make more money.

They then decided to do a liver biopsy when they discovered lesions in his liver. That led them to believe that the cancer spread there, but there was never any detailed discussion with any of these doctors because they completely avoided details and we were left in the dark. After consuming all of my husband’s time amidst all of the delays they said it was colon cancer that spread to the liver. A colonoscopy was ordered. The colorectal surgeon who was referred by the oncologist said there was one polyp and it should be removed to prevent blockage. He said it was cancerous. He suggested a colon resection where they remove a section and sew it back together. He said a blockage could be very stressful and we should avoid this by doing it immediately.

The oncologist had told us to refuse the operation because he could use chemotherapy to treat the problem. He then later withdrew his statement after speaking with the colorectal surgeon. John had absolutely no symptoms of colon cancer. It was almost Christmas and John did not want to miss the holidays. We went for a second opinion to a supposedly very renowned colorectal surgeon that did laparoscopic surgery with no colostomy. We thought this the best route to go. However, we received no opinion; it was just automatic that he would do this even though he could not find the polyp the other surgeon said was there. The picture of the polyp I brought with me did not look life threatening and another doctor (cardiologist who tested my husband) said he did not think it looked threatening either. I assured John that he would be home for Christmas. (A statement that would later haunt me) John arrived at the hospital in very good health despite the recent cancer diagnosis several months prior. He was healthy to begin with and I made sure he was well taken care of nutritionally.

The operation was supposedly successful according to the surgeon. What followed was solid food administered less than two days after surgery. The colon burst open and leaked poisons from his colon throughout his body and he ended up with peritonitis. The terrible thing about this was that I was pleading with them when I noticed the symptoms but they completed ignored me. The surgeon never came to see him while he was having these symptoms. The one symptom that should have told them what happened was when he was made to wait for over an hour to defecate (I was still home and had not arrived yet that morning) and he had the most severe pain and he told me it was excruciating. This is probably when the colon ruptured and they ignored it. Five days later when his blood pressure was so low and they could not raise it they finally took him into the operating room. This is when we found out about the peritonitis. The surgeon said there was fecal matter all around the incision leaking into his system.

Then it was into the ICU with a ventilator down his throat, excessive narcotic administration that was uncalled for and against our wishes. It was definitely killing him since they had it dripping into his system all day long. After days of complaint and insistence I managed to have the morphine stopped. But they still managed to drug him with other narcotics and whenever I would discover what they were doing, I would have to fight to have them stop it. But I was soon to learn that nurses can do just about anything they want to do and if they want to give narcotics they will find a way to override instructions. When John was on the morphine he was going out of his mind. He was tearing tubes from his arms and was completely uncontrollable.

He did not sleep for a solid two-week period while in the ICU. He would call me at home in the early morning hours and I would rush to his side, driving the 20 miles to get there. It was awful. I felt so helpless because I was not there 24 hours a day. He also ended up with a colostomy bag because of the rupture. When he finally was placed in a room the treatment was so abusive. His body was constantly being controlled with all kinds of drugs that he did not need but they were slowly killing him with them. They even started giving him morphine again because they did not want to answer his pleas to please boost him in bed to relieve the bedsore they did not treat properly. They would drug him without his knowledge and he did not perform well with therapy because of the narcotics. He could not move himself in bed. There was extreme swelling in his lower extremities. Use of steroids and diuretics were excessive. I was there every day and night with some sleepovers and I can tell you it was not pleasant. What I saw happen to my husband as a result of sub-standard care and sheer negligence should not happen to anyone, most of all this sweet tolerant man who was so polite to these people.

I was afraid of what was happening in my absence. I would go home late at night and cry all the way home. I would drive to and from the hospital every day (20 miles each way) and I just could not get there fast enough. I wanted to be with him at all times because whenever I was away things used to happen to him. He once told me he was afraid to go to sleep at night because of what was going on. He missed Christmas and New Years. The one thing that got him through most of this was his family and friends. We all rallied around him and helped him fight. He would whisper to me: “Please, don’t give up on me”. We never did. His Oncologist had long abandoned him because he was mad that we went to another surgeon and he never came to see my husband. We were at a loss with so many doctors called in to treat him now and not one of them wanted to be involved because they were afraid of liability.

They did not want to help him and the HMO plan we had definitely had a hand in my husbands death. The hospital and doctors ran up the bills with enough tests and drugs to kill my husband but he hung on. He wanted to live. They even gave him a drug called Procrit, which is not intended for patients that are not on Chemo. It is supposed to build up their blood but I read where it did nothing for most patients. An alert came out while he was on this drug that said it definitely increased the size of tumors and it was not intended for people in my husband’s situation. They told me a tumor in his liver had doubled in size during the time he was taking this drug. I really got the impression they wanted to increase the tumor in his liver so they could just write him off. He could not receive any chemo treatments because of his severe weakness. His legs were atrophied. His immune system was destroyed. He was on a whole array of antibiotics during the whole 4 months in a hospital and a rehab nursing facility. I was at his side through all of this.

I helped him with his meals, bathed him, changed his ostomy bags, constantly refreshed his bedding, washed his hair, shaved him, gave him massages, sterilized his room and comforted him through it all. He never lost any of his faculties; he fought them all the way. However, he became depressed, something that was so foreign to him. I did everything in my power to make him happy. I wanted him home with me so that I could protect him from all the abuse. I saw so many violations from nurses, doctors, techs, aides, etc. The system is broken. I did not sleep very well during the sleepovers. One night I woke up to find a tech standing over me and staring at me. I almost had a panic attack. Another night, they thought I was sleeping when they came in to take readings from my husband and a tech tiptoed in and when she saw him asleep, she turned around and left. I thought she was being compassionate by not waking him up but what happened next proved me wrong. The nurse on duty came in and scanned his wrist tag. So she faked the readings and the reason she did not wake him up was because she was afraid he would ask to be boosted in the bed because he needed to be moved to relieve the discomfort from the bedsore. I was awake and watched. They did not know I was awake. This same nurse tried to give my husband a narcotic when she came on her shift. If I was not there I know she would have given it to him.

This happened many times during the night because the nurses do not want to be bothered and they do not take into consideration the patients condition. John had to be rushed into emergency several times because of narcotics being administered. I really think they intentionally did this and did not care about getting my husband better. I saw doctors and nurses not wash their hands when touching my husband’s incisions; nurses dropping pillows on the floor and trying to put them back under his head; intravenous bags leaking on the floor; catheter bags leaking on the floor; nurses who used the same gloves room to room on every patient; nurses who were sick and treating my husband and others; patient calls being ignored; patients crying to me for help because they could not get a nurse to answer their calls; and it goes on and on.

What was supposed to be a simple operation so that my husband could be with his family on the holidays, turned out to be a nightmare with two trips to the ICU because of medical mistakes; both times with a ventilator down his throat, a nursing home for rehab that did nothing but make him worse; insensitive remarks from many people attending to my husband; and a colostomy bag had to be added because of a surgeon mistake, etc. I would change his colostomy bag many times because nurses and aides did not want to do this and they would purposely ignore his requests to have it changed before it burst. I even stopped a nurse who was washing his colostomy bag in the toilet. I was John’s advocate. I stood in and did everything I could possibly do for him. I made sure he was attended to while I was there. Many times during the night they would remove his phone from his bedside so he could not call me.

He used to call me for reassurance and just to have someone to talk to. If I could have, I would have spent every night but I hardly slept when I stayed over. I needed my strength to care for my husband but I did sleep there about 2 nights a week. As I look back, I wish I could have stayed every night. He needed me there. The final blow came when hospice was pushed on him and without my permission they tried to drive him into a coma by giving him enough morphine to kill him. As he was losing consciousness, he fought it by telling me to get him a pencil and paper by motioning that he wanted to write. He was writing feverishly but it was not legible. That was when they told me to leave the room. They were very forceful and insistent and refused to let me stay.

When I returned, his heart was racing and went to 180 beats a minute. They chased me out again. My whole family and many friends were there to witness this. They then came and called me from the waiting room and said he was dying. I panicked. I ran to the room and his heartbeat was declining at a fast rate. He was trying to talk to me as I squeezed his hand and I told him to hang on. His heartbeat went down to zero and stopped. He died squeezing my hand. I am sure that the HMO had a hand in ending his life. It is going on and people should be aware because they are ending lives in people that are meant to live. I will never rest or recover from this horrible experience. I went to three lawyers who turned me down because they say the case is too difficult. I even had one lawyer say to me outright that his age and the fact that he had cancer meant he was going to die anyway.

They do not know the complete details so they automatically think that way. There is no respect for life. The main thing I would like is a complete investigation because I am convinced there was medical malpractice. If there were a settlement, I would donate the money to the charities of my choice. But the main thing I want done is to have a complete Investigation in this matter. It is sad to say but I have come to trust no one after what has happened. John went through scores of nurses, techs and doctors because of the length of time spent in these facilities and I could count very few that were competent and compassionate. It is so sad. I want justice for my husband. He suffered at the hands of people who did not care about his life. There is a terrible void in my life and I can’t stop thinking about what he went through. It has severely depressed me to the point where I will go nowhere near a doctor or hospital. Ellen