We have another case of an alleged horrific injury due to the ever-present delays at emergency rooms in the United States. Malyia Jeffers, 2, was left for hours in the ER at the Methodist Hospital in Sacramento as her Strep A devoured her body. She ultimately lost both of her feet and one of her hands to amputations and she is fighting for her life at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
The family arrived in early December when Malyia had developed a fever and was lethargic. She also had visible bruise-like splotches on her cheeks. They sat there for five hours despite the pleas of the parents.
She was in septic shock from a Streptococcus A infection. She is now on life support.
While Malyia’s parents have medical insurance, many of their bills are not covered, including the $26,000 bill for a helicopter ride from Sacramento to Palo Alto.
I am unclear why the helicopter ride is so expensive or why it would not be covered given the medical emergency. Moreover, I do not understand why Democrats and Republicans cannot agree that the current delays in the emergency room are nothing short of a national scandal. We have all experienced these waits in ER rooms. Putting aside the current debate over the health care program, it remain a national disgrace that citizens routinely wait for hours for care. Yet, these same legislators who refuse to do anything about these lethal days are often those supporting caps on recovery for families in tort cases.
Obviously, there is a tort case in the making here for negligence. However, it could turn on factual causation question of whether Strep A would likely have resulted in the same amputations even if properly diagnosed. It would make for a poor jury case, however, for the hospital if this should go to trial.
Source: SacBee
Jonathan Turley
QFT
“In the end, I am honestly glad you can utter that you wouldn’t want your life to be any different than it is.
But I strongly suspect it’s because you haven’t experienced an appropriate level of pain.” (PatricParamedic)
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Patric,
I suspect you are a busy person with lots of responsibilities on your shoulders and thus have a limited amount of time but, I would strongly suggest that you take some of that limited time to read a few of Dr. Harris’ posts. He has a style of writing that takes some getting used to but once that has clicked … it’s fairly easy sailing.
I don’t think that after you have read more of him you will still maintain that his philosophy has sprung from lesser levels of pain.
Blouise,
“I intend to use that phrase where ever it fits the purpose of the point I am trying to make.”
I think you’ll want to read this before finalizing the adoption. 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny
“To argue “yes” wreaks of manifest destiny.” (PatricParamedic) … I really like that phrase and want to go on record right now saying … “I intend to use that phrase where ever it fits the purpose of the point I am trying to make.”
Genius resides here-in.
Poignant, personal thoughts, and I will taken them as genuine.
I suspect, however, the fact that you did not, over your career, regularly witness unnecessary deaths of innocents, supports your perceptions. I’ve witnessed dozens and investigated over a thousand. I work with people who’ve investigated tens of thousands. And my take is that the exasperation & outrage that follows is righteous. Are we supposed to die? Of course. Are we supposed to die today, at the hands of an egotistical maniac?
To argue “yes” wreaks of manifest destiny.
Of course it is neither possible, nor species preferable, to plot a course stamp out death. But if a child can reasonably expect to live a full, healthy life, then in my view acquiescence to incompetence is cowardice. We see 40 examples of that every week of the year, in what’s known as the ‘white coat conspiracy.’
Death – in the aggregate – is naturally inexorably linked to life – no question. But death in the subjective is often no more than a terrible waste.
I would find it surprising if you were extend your cest la vie outlook toward the 17 citizens who die everyday of the year due to sloppy, undisciplined handwriting.
The term sorrow – as the emotion it represents – is in no form an absolute. It has varying levels, and I submit it is in no way essential to experience every degree of sorrow, in order to recognize that there is no song going on at all.
In the end, I am honestly glad you can utter that you wouldn’t want your life to be any different than it is.
But I strongly suspect it’s because you haven’t experienced an appropriate level of pain.
Well, I first asked ol’ Doc Harris if he was for real. He wrote a long essay and ’bout all I could gather was that he pinched himself, it hurt, ergo, he was for real…
Ol’ Doc Harris is now a treasure at the Turley Blawg.
Brian,
When you first started posting here I told you that I enjoyed reading what you write. How was I to know that it would continue to get better?
Thank you for sharing.
For more than twenty years, I worked at Cook County Hospital and the Hektoen Institute for Medical Research and the University of Illinois at the Medical Center, much of the time concurrently because of funding limitations.
Mistake were made. People died. Never once did I observe a mistake made by a person who was not doing the best the person was actually able to do. Never did I once observe a death which actually could have been prevented.
Medical care blunders, and my dad died, in 1972. More medical care blunders, and my brother died, in 1987.
Medical care blunders are not the only reason people die younger than they might have died in the absence of blunders.
Welding blunders, highway department black-ice prevention blunders, my, and my wife’s son and daughter-in-law died.
I am not sorry that people die. I am not sorry that blunders happen. I am not sorry that blunders sometimes lead to people dying. Death is inseparable from life, and I am not sorry that life exists.
Yet I am acquainted with grief, sorrow, and an emptiness that never seems to fill. I did not lose my dad, my brother, my son and his wife, nor, shortly before I learned that I would get the Ph.D. thing, did I lose my mother when she died.
I made plans involving my dad, my brother, my son and his wife, and my mother, and many of those plans became impossible when each of them died. The future I had planned, I did not lose, because it had not happened, it did not exist to be lost.
Knew I not the anguish of deep sorrow and agonizing sudden grief, how could I care for my life and the lives of others who are alive?
Perhaps there is a way to describe how it is that I find my life, as it happens, to be both necessary and sufficient, such that I never want my life to be different than it is, nor can I want my life to be as though different than it has been nor different than it will be…
Moment by moment, as my life is given to me, of my life up to the moment before the present moment, were the present moment not to be, of what had been given, dayeinu!
I recall reading a Yoruba proverb:
When the man
who knows no sorrow
hears weeping,
he thinks it is a song.
To life: as it has been before now, even without now, it would have been sufficient. As I cry with joy, so I jump for sorrow.
Buckeye: My mother went into cardiac arrest because of the improper treatment she received in the ER. She died a couple days later.
eniobob and swarthmore mom
I’ve lost many family members, but none in an emergency room. That must be a particularly traumatic loss. I sympathize.
Eniobob, I’m sorry to hear about your mother.
That was my “bittersweet” moment 12/23/75
Thanks raff.
eniobob,
I am sorry to hear about your mother’s loss.
Swarthmore mom 1, January 3, 2011 at 10:46 am
My mother did not receive the proper treatment at an ER and died as a result.
I too know that pain and anger and disbelief.
Swarthmore Mom, my condolences on your mother’s sad situation. I hope the hospital wasn’t in McHenry County where I live!
Flinging Poo can be dangerous to your health, especially the kind comng from rectal orifices! I don’t think I could have used a more appropriate or more flowery description as “flung poo”! Great job Gyges.
Blouise, I don’t know about “a woose” but as often as not “doozy” comes to mind in a good way 🙂
Swarthmore Mom, I too am sorry to hear about your mother. It is infuriating to me that ER’s face short-staffing problems and less than good care on a weekend while even a small retail or service business can manage to avoid those pitfalls.
I have never seen a lifeboat with a poop deck,
But I’d rather see, than be, one?
Only, would not a life boat with a poop deck
give its helmsperson a better view of the surrounding sea,
the better more suvivors in the rough water to see?
Oh, are my words becoming another shipwreck?
Why be I so puny, medical blunders be not funny… (Crying, softly…)
Blouise
1, January 3, 2011 at 2:52 pm
“Kung Fu Nurse and Sherlockian Lottakatz … I’m beginning to get a complex for Breezy Blouise sounds like a woose”
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Blouise,
You, of course, know that you are a top-notch blawg feminine phenomena favorite forevermore (BFPFF).