How the doctors killed my father

armenvartan · New User Joined: 18 Jan 2008 Posts: 2

My father was a very healthy man. He used to walk 4-5 miles every day. In mid July 2007, he went to Garden Grove hospital to do an endoscopic test. After one hour, the doctor came out and said he had a narrowing in his bile duct and he put a plastic stent to keep the bile duct open. We asked why the bile duct was narrowed and he said there are millions of reasons but there was no doubt of cancer. In the report he mentions that the pancreas and all other organs are in normal sizes. We didn’t think much of it at the time and we went back home happy. Note that the doctor didn’t ask our permission to put the stent in his body. The stent he put eventually killed him. After exactly ten days of this procedure, my father started getting sever pains in his abdomen. He couldn’t sleep at night. He had strong fever and shivering. The next day, we took him to the emergency room. My father begged them to remove the stent but they said you have to go to UCI. They only gave him pain killers. His primary doctor was meantime on a vacation. We went to another doctor, who said that it was most likely a gallstone and it would pass. He asked us to go to UCI to do another endoscopic test to see what’s wrong. It took us one month to take an authorization for the test and they gave the appointment one month later. So in all he stayed two months in that condition. Meanwhile he became jaundiced and his eye whites turned yellow. On September 20, he finally did the test at UCI. The first thing the doctor said was that he had pancreatic cancer (2cm tumor). Additionally the old stent was not in place. It was migrated from the bile duct and bile duct was inflamed. He put another stent in place that was much longer (12cm). After the procedure, his jaundice was not relieved. After about a week, he started having fever again. We took him to hospital where he stayed for a week. The doctors there said he had severe infection and was put on long term antibiotics. The infection was from the stent. It was replaced again on November 30th with a metal stent this time. After this procedure, he couldn’t even walk anymore. The report said, the old stent was melted and entirely blocked the bile duct. On December 25, we took him to the hospital after he got strong fever again. His blood pressure and O2 reading was extremely low. He stayed in the hospital for a week and was set to be released on January 2. The last day we ask them to give us Oxygen tube to take with him since he was on oxygen all the time during his stay in hospital. However, the nurse said his oxygen level is good now and he doesn’t need one. And to prove that, she removed his oxygen to show us that nothing will happen to him. After 4 hours of removing the oxygen, they checked his o2 level and it was down to 77 which was extremely low. They put his oxygen back. The same night January 2nd at 1:30am he died.

armenvartan · New User Joined: 18 Jan 2008 Posts: 2

I have decided to take legal action against the doctors. If anyone can recommend a good medical malpractive lawyer, let me know. I have summerized the malpractices below:

-The doctor who did the endoscopic test misdiagnosed his condition saying there is no doubt of cancer explicitly mentioning that the pancreas was in normal size, yet he put a stent in his bile duct.
-The stent caused infection, pain and fever. The primary doctor ignored these symptoms and misdiagnosed him as having a gallstone. Even though the first report of the endoscopic test mentions there are no stones in the gallbladder. Apparently he was lazy to read the full report.
- The emergency room only treated him with pain killers when he had severe infection as a result of the stent.
-The registered nurse at the hospital removed his oxygen which contributed to his death on that same day after his oxygen level went down to 77.

dcabral

I understand completely. My primary care doctor told me I was "getting fat" when I started to get puffy in the face and put on 40 lbs in three months. Refused to get any tests for me. Leg pains and all. It took an emergency room trip, tests and 3 weeks in ICU from a ruptured intestine (from the pancreatic cancer (Zollinger-Ellison to be exact) eating away at me) to get the CT scans that showed the pancreatic cancer.

I say sue. At least it may save someone else the pain you are experiencing.

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