So I went to my great grandmother's funeral this weekend.

Hadn't really talked to anybody about it because of the crazy hours I work, mom just left me a message and told me when the funeral was.

So after the funeral we are sitting around talking and I find out that my 81 year old grandmother was in a car accident, and the airbag broke her sternum.

The hospital did x-rays, gave her pain medication, and sent her home.

less than an hour later she was dead, her sternum stabbed into her aorta when it broke and she was internally bleeding.

Why the H&ll wouldn't they have kept her overnight to watch her, she was 81 years old?

Also the doctor told her daughter that her blood was REALLY thin because of a new med she was taking. Didn't they take her blood pressure more than once and notice a drop between the time she came in and right before she left?

81 years old, full of life, did volunteer work EVERY day, she pretty much still worked a 40 hour week at the two places she did volunteer work for.

what a shame, a life could have been saved if they had paid a little more attention.

 

That's sad. I'm sorry to hear that. It's a shame something which might have been prevented, ended your grandma's life. You must miss her very much.

 

That's very sad to hear, my condolences. Particularly sad that it might have been prevented.

It seems today that good hospital care, like airline tickets and phone plans, are now almost completely the responsibility of the patient. My mother is getting older (she's 85 now) and I've watched my wife, who is an RN, help her get good care by accompanying her through everything, care that she wouldn't have gotten without someone like my wife who understands the system and procedures advocating for her.

It shouldn't have to be that way.

Again, my condolences...

 

So sorry for your loss. Unfortunately health care today is a hit or miss proposition...I think as a result of HMNos...doctors in many settings actually get paid for not performing tests and procedures

About 6 years ago my mother was the victim of the medical community...a careless doctor made an error in her medication...she was dead within 10 days. The doctor is still practicing medicine today...an interesting phrase..."practicing medicine".

Once again...condolences on your loss.

 

My sympathy for your loss. I treasured my mom's parents and my dad's mother when they were alive, and treasure their memories still. My dad's dad is the only grandparent I have left, and I'm thankful for every day that I have with him. I learned many of my core values from my grandparents, and I am grateful for the fact that I had them in my life for as long as I did, and indeed still have.


Again, my condolences.

 

I'm sorry for your loss.
What shame. Shame on the hospital for not spotting something like that. I would think that a simple x-ray would have shown the damage. I'm not a medical professional, but I would think that a chest x-ray would have been routine for an accident victim. Especially an elderly person with brittle bones.

With my daughter's recent health issues, I noticed that you really have to be on top of things when your in the hospital. Asking lots of questions and reminding them about things. At times I had to hunt a nurse down to get my daughters meds.
Word for the wise, never go to the ER alone.

 

Very good advice. The couple times my son has been in the hospital, I have almost had to threaten people to get answers and results. They have an attitude that since you are not a doctor you wouldn't understand anyway so why tell you anything. I actually asked for a different doctor once because I didn't like the attitude, the evasiveness or the obvious lack of compassion for my son or for us.

My condolences on your loss.

 

Another piece or ER advice. This is at least true for my area (NE). If you're going to the ER and you feel your situation is serious enough that you should not be left to sit in the waiting room, call an ambulance. It might cost you a little more, but patients coming in by ambulance must be given ER space immediately. If they don't have room for you, they are required to divert you to another hospital.

 

I lost an aunt and cousin, and my wife lost an uncle to cancer. All 3 cases were at first misdiagnosed. By the time the proper diagnosis was made, they were all late stage, with no coming back. 2 cases were caused by lifestyle, but still...

My wife's uncle even went to the hospital a few times, the doctors let him go. One time he went in, it was to make sure he was okay, as he was taking his family to Hawaii to visit his sister. They let him go, thinking it isn't gonna get worse, but that's 3 weeks of treatment he could have gotten. But at that point, no one in the family suspected cancer. But boy was he pissed when he got home to see a doctor again.

 

i was misdiagnosed with cancer also on my physical discharge from the Navy. they said the little lump i had was a cyst, well, it was cancer. found out all of 1 month after discharge.

 

First, let me say that I'm very sorry for your loss. I've lost a lot of loved ones in the past few years, and it sucks.

I'm a firefighter/paramedic and I'm on the ambulance 50% of my shifts each month. I know pre-hospital and in hospital care.

There are some good docs and some bad docs, but they are not the only people to see a patient. There are nurses, X-ray techs, lab techs, etc, etc. All can point out the obvious signs of shock if someone is bleeding out interally enough to cause death.

Next, if you go by ambulance you are triaged just like any other patient. You'll probably get a bed, but if your complaint is BS, you'll go to the waiting room. If you have a broken leg and the ER is full of more serious patients, you go to the waiting room. I never have to divert, ever. The hospital can request that I divert, but I can still go there.

An X-ray is not going to pick up an Aortic laceration. X-rays look at bones and more solid objects like EKG wires, not arteries or blood. You said they did do X-rays and it didn't find anything other than a broken sternum. Not surprising.

Now the Aorta is a huge artery under high pressure. Usually when you get an Aortic disection, laceration, aneurysm, etc you bleed out pretty fast. These are the people that look OK one second and are dead two seconds later from exsanguination.

If it actually was lacerated or punctured, or whatever, it might have clotted over and then broke loose later either from bad luck or maybe from the medication, which I'll bet was an agent to inhibit clot formation. Maybe it opened up more as time went by. (Although that is usually quite painful)

What is also seen in accidents is the Aorta being torn where it meets the heart. IDK, I'm just taking your word for it being stabbed.

Did she go by ambulance? I'd be suprised if there was only one set of vitals taken.

In any case, an overnight stay would have probably been prudent but a lot of the time my MVA patients are up and getting checked out before I even have my paperwork together. Some things are not easy to pick up on even by the best docs. You need some outward signs and symptoms to move you in that direction.

Once again, I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm not trying to belittle you or your family in any way. I'm just trying to help you understand the other side of the table.

Mike

 

Mike - Not sure what area you work in, but I was careful to say that I was only sure that my post was correct for my area.

BTW, I am a LT/EMT with the FD also, and that's how it works around here.

Don't get the idea I'm advocating always calling an ambulance just to avoid the inconvenience of the waiting room, but around here triaging of patients arriving by ambulance is always done by ED RNs or MDs. If your complaint is BS you won't get much attention after triage, but that's as it should be...

 

Sweet, there's more of us on FTE than I thought.

I'm in the Northern KY area. I don't necessarily "officially" triage patients. However, when we walk in with some BS we usually just say triage, and keep rolling to the waiting room. Or the charge nurse will ask if we think they can go to triage or minor care.

In any case, we do get a lot of calling the ambulance to avoid the waiting room (aka triage if anyone hasn't picked that up yet) because our clientel is about 80% smacktards living off the system who aren't paying anyway.

Mike

 

Yeah, I didn't mean it to sound like they don't listen to the EMTs, but everyone coming in by amb here still gets a bed and the ear of someone on ED staff immediately.

We're a relatively small town (~15K) on-call department, and while we do have our set of freq flyers, and 911 calls for a broken finger, no one's straining the system here...

-jim

 

Our main hospital is in the city. Just our city is about 30-35K at night and estimated much higher than that in the day. Maybe 70-100K rings a bell.

That's just our city.

mike