Well, this is unsettling. Man goes to hositpal for a circumcision, while he’s in surgery the surgeon apparently found cancer and deemed it necessary to remove his penis then & there; without bother to wake him or anything. There has got to be more to it than this. Are the consent forms really that vague? :eek: Why couldn’t removing the penis wait until Mr Seaton was able to get a 2nd opinion or at least be awake and able to give/deny consent? Assuming his wife was the one to take him to the hospital and was present in the hospital during the operation why wasn’t she asked; presumably she has power of attorney? Note the hospital settled out of court; presumably with everything sealed and no admission of anything by anyone.
I seriously belive I’d rather die of cancer than have my penis cut off. If I was Mr Seaton I probally would’ve murdered Dr Patterson by now (or at least cut his dick off).
But very few cancers will kill you in a day. I’d think waking him up and letting him know would have been appropriate. We obviously don’t have the facts, but I’d think that chemotherapy would have perhaps been an option, or even radiation (where you might end up needing to lose your testicals anyway, but at least you’d have a penis).
Oh, I don’t disagree. My argument was only with alphaboi867’s assertion that death was preferable to not having a penis. I should probably have snipped the rest of his post.
Obligatory Simpsons Joke: What do expect from a Shelbyville doctor?
Now that we have that out of the way…
I have several questions:
If the cancer in the penis is so bad it has to be amputated RIGHT NOW, isn’t it likely that it has already spread and the patient is screwed?
No really, he couldn’t wait a couple of hours for the guy to wake up?
Was there actually cancer?
3b. If so was it that bad?
Guy went to Jewish Hospital for a circumcision and they got it wrong? Man, you would think they would have that procedure well in hand.
But seriously, I am curious to see if there was follow-up confirmation of the cancer diagnosis and an agreement with the doctor’s course of action. Because if there is not, going to be real hard to convince the jury not to find for the plaintiff.
There’s always the chance that the wife consented to the dickectomy.
“Ma’am, we found your husband has cancer of the penis. There are a few things you need to discuss with your husband beforehand, but I recommend that we amputate it and…”
“REALLY? What the fuck are ya waiting for! What do I sign?”
Sorry, there is no way in hell that the hospital could pay me off for the Doctor not waking me up to let me decide, or let my spouse/SO who holds my medical power of atty to decide. That doctor would lose his license, pay malpractice [actually his insurance company] and go to jail for grievous bodily harm.
Clearly we disagree (& who nows I might change my mind if I’m ever in that situtation), but I still have the right to make that choice for myself. Indeed a competent adult has the legal right to refuse any & all medical treatment even when it will result in his death. It would appear this man was denyed the right to make that choice for himself. Even if he did decide to kill himself now he doesn’t technically have the legal right to do so. Regardless of his wishes any doctor, nurse, EMT, police officer, etc who discovers him in the act is legally bound to treat him against his will. Even if all he does is express a desire to commit suicide he’s automatically presumed incompetent and can be commited to a psych ward for 3 days (or more). And if he did it at home his wife could face criminal prosecution for not trying to stop him or call 911 if she was present.
I hope this trial get’s more coverage. I’m really curious as to what the whole story is (or at least how much of it get’s revealed in court).
Kentucky goes to hospital for a circumcision and get’s his penis amputated.
I blame Tennessee.
But seriously: could there be a bit more to this story than that account suggests? Was this a complete or partial amputation? What did the consent form actually say (and did the patient understand what he was signing)? How did the surgeon know for sure it was cancer (was there an intraoperative frozen section diagnosis)?
Maybe just a botched circumcision and they made up the cancer story as cover? After all the hospital-error horror stories of the last few years, that seems as likely as anything else.
Wouldn’t the penis be sent to the pathologist after being removed? If so then the hospital would either have to have to fake a pathology report or send it directly to the incinerator & explain why they didn’t save it to confirm the doctor’s diagnosis. I doubt they just happen to have a bunch of cancerous penises sitting around in the freezer.
The consent form that an overly tired and underpaid CNA makes you take a casual glance at before signing generally includes consent to perform any other procedures that may be deemed necessary by the surgeon. So if they discover a big tumor somewhere while they’re taking your gallbladder out, they’re not going to put you under again just to resect it.
That said, there are options well short of penectomy for most stages of penile cancer. And even if it was the only real option I can see why the patient might want to take it out for one last ride, if you will. (Personally, if it had to be done I’d much rather just wake up and find it done, instead of having to dread it. But I understand why people wouldn’t feel that way.)
OK, reading the article, it was a “circumcision to treat inflammation”, so there was a known problem before the surgery. It’s very possible that the pre-surgery paperwork included permission to treat anything found needing treatment during the operation. The papers for my colonoscopy included permission to remove or treat anything they found. I wouldn’t have expected to wake up with my colon gone, but it could have happened. Their concern was removing any polyps, but I can picture a sudden upgrade.
Doctors know that anesthesia is hard on the body and try to avoid multiple surgeries if possible. The article doesn’t specify that he was under general anesthesia, but I’m guessing that a regular circumcision would have only needed a local, possibly with a tranquilizer, while an ectomy would need general. Which leaves me guessing that the doctor may have been expecting more than a circumcision from the beginning.
Without more information, and the judge has told the lawyers not to talk to the press, I have no idea what the situation was expected to be going into the operation. There could have been bad communication by the doctor; could have been stonewall denial by the patient; could have been both.
Would sending him into recovery have been such an improvement? The good news is we found the cause of the inflammation. The bad news is that it’s cancer and we’ll have to cut your penis off - but we wanted to be completely sure that you’re ok with that so you have a pain pill and think about it and when you’ve recovered and signed the paper we’ll schedule the rest of it in, oh, about three months. Sorry about the pain. The next recovery will probably be worse.
I suppose the flip side is that it precluded a second opinion. Theoretically, they could have gone for another treatment, or no treatment, instead. And if the doctor downplayed the form signing at all, I could see how the lawsuit happened. But I’m not going to get completely outraged until I know more. I guess the lesson is that when you sign one of those forms, you should write in a codicil if you don’t want your dick cut off without your express permission. Or in the case of the colonoscopy - “removing polyps is ok, for anything more extensive, wake me up.”
