[DanaC]

This post has gotten me thinking about some stuff i havent thought about in a while. I have a raft of bad medicine stories. Three members of my family have met their deaths due to incompetence or negligence on the parts of the medical staff who were supposedly caring for them.

The most dramtic was my Uncle Dave. My mum's favourite brother.

A week and a half before his 44th birthday he began to experience appalling headaches, they went on for a few hours and then he collapsed in agony. He was rushed to hospital where a battery of tests and scans revealed an aneurism. This would have to be operated upon they said. Unfortunately the surgeon who would deal with this was just about to go on holiday ( he was about to leave for London the next day and had already left the hospital) But.....we shouldnt worry because the aneurism wasnt bleeding. No blood on the brain they said. The operation would have to wait until the following week or, if the situation became critical sooner than that a locum surgeon would have to do emergency surgery.

A few hours later he got worse. He was in terrible pain. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. Doctors came and checked him, and again said he would be fine. This was normal , nothing to worry about. He then slipped into a coma. His son who had gained compassionate leave from the navy arrived too late, his father never regained consciousness. 2 days before his 44th birthday Dave died of a massive brain haemorage (sp).

His eldest son's boyfriend was a Psychiatrist who worked on the Psych ward at that hospital. He was able to gain access to Dave's records and discovered that the records showed blood present on the brain on day one. Under no circumstances should the operation have been delayed. He could have survived it, if the operation had been carried out. Unfortunately the hospital staff on duty had not wanted to call the sugeon back in.

.........Many years later, Dave's eldest brother Allan, an agoraphobic epeleptic became ill. He was admitted into hospital and underwent various invasive procedures and tests but they werent sure what was wrong. A decision was made that the problem lay in his bowel and they opened him......and then having done something in there they closed him back up again......He then began to get worse. His organs began to fail one at a time. He was given a full transfusion which lifted him for a short while but then he started slipping again. He eventually died. The autopsy revealed that he had bled to death after the surgeon who'd operated on his bowel had accidentally cut into his spleen.

What was so tragic about Allan, was that during his brief seeming recovery he began to sit up , and all he wanted was a cup of tea. He asked my mum to get him a cup of tea. She went off to try and sort that out but before she was able to things got critical again. He never did get his cup of tea.

We're not wholly sure what happened to Nana. We comfort ourselves that maybe the nurses took pity on her plight ( alzheimers) and deliberately hastened her end. If it wasnt an act of mercy it was negligence to the nth degree. Left with no clothes in a cold side ward she caught pneumonia and died.