So in her professional medical opinion, she thinks she should sue them for not checking her stomach because she thinks it could be serious? Your friend is a whack-job.
Actually, I talked to her yesterday. It was her friend/neighbor who is lawyer happy, and she was agreeing with him just to get him to stop talking about it. She hopes to get to a actual doctor someday and get it checked out. It happens about weekly, not every day.
In the mean time, she needs to stop drinking. But it sounds like she’s well aware of it. I’m sure a specialist can make some other suggestions, but I’d guess, the first thing they’d want to do is rule out alcohol so it wouldn’t hurt to get a jump start on that and be able to meet the doctor and say “I haven’t had a drink in two weeks” rather then “yeah yeah, I know I have to stop one of these days.” Of course IANAD and really don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s possible for a doctor to have one visit with her and be able to tell her it’s not alcohol related at all.
Well, in my ER, we get a steady stream of people that are concerned that coughing up/throwing up bright red blood after a lot of coughing/throwing up is a big deal, which it usually isn’t. Same is true for the other end. ‘Coffee ground’* emesis, or black tarry stools are what gets our motor cranking. If you friend had good skin color, reasonable vital signs and a WNL H&H with a history of occasionally vomiting blood she could see for a month or so I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t do a targeted stomach eval.
If I recall my legal correctly, for malpractice to attach you need 3 things.
Duty to patient, they did.
Breach of said duty, not seeing it so far.
Harm as a result of said breach, it’d be on her to demostrate that.
*It really looks like used coffee grounds, hmm good times.
If she’s THAT BIG of an alcoholic that she’s in the early stages of cirrhosis, quitting drinking could kill her.
On the other hand, she can afford booze but not a doctor? ehhhhh
HAHAHAHAHA!!! eh?
My naive little sibling to the North!!! This is AMERICA!!! Land of the Free (To Sue Anyone for Anything)!
I don’t know about you backwoodsy Canucks, but down here, We Hold These Truths to be Self-Invalid… um… Self-Eviscerating… wait… uhh, Self-Serve!… Self-Serving?*** Soft-Serve?!?** * No? Hmmm… OK! OK! I got it!!
"We Hold These Truths to be like, DUHHHHH!" …
**"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of…
[COLOR=“DarkGreen”][SIZE=“7”]JACKPOT!!!
I GOT MINE!!! WOOOOOOOT!!"[/SIZE][/COLOR]**
Litigious jerkwads like your friend are whats wrong with this country.
I can’t imagine that they would’ve let her leave the ER without providing follow-up instructions. I would ask what the papers they provided her say. Having two small children, I’ve been to the ER several times the past five years and have never, ever been let go without follow-up instructions, even when it turned out that nothing was seriously wrong.
Out of curiosity, what prompted your friend to go to the ER? Did she feel that her health was seriously endangered, or was she just going because, “Hey, I’ve been barfing blood for a while. I should check that out.”?
I am not a lawyer, but your friend needs to stop talking to litigious assholes and worry about her health first.
She went because she broke her collarbone for the second time.
The man she lives with buys her the beer (they estimate its over 200 a month). I don’t know how much doctors charge.
If she went in specifically about a collarbone break, they’re probably going to look at that, not barfing blood. In my experience, the ER treats what they and you have indicated is the problem causing you problems now. If they find something else that is cause for significant concern and presents imminent and serious danger to your health, they might treat that as well, but unless it endangers your health now, they recommend a follow up and don’t do diagnostics on other issues. Just my experience, though.
Good luck to your friend - she sounds like she could use some help. I hope things get better for her.
Are you sure that she broke her collarbone? Twice?
She needs to talk to a social worker as well as medical people. If you want to help her, try to find out what resources your community offers. It won’t be easy; maybe the eejit who suggested suing the ER can make use of that excess energy.
Yes, she fell off the couch and hit it at the right angle. I am sure, as my son was there and saw it happen. It had been broken many years before, also from a fall.
Considering she averages a 6 pack a day, it’s no wonder she fell off the couch.
Well, she can certainly try, but that doesn’t mean she’ll actually win the case.
Nice coding, by the way. 
I wonder what sort of mystery ailment would cause an alcoholic to vomit all the time.
One possibility, as QtM mentioned above, is alcoholic gastritis. My brother-in-law had some version of it, except that he had stomach problems that he thought/he was passing off as irritable bowel disease. By the time it got to vomiting blood for him, his liver was already actively failing (alcoholic hepatitis), and ended up in the ICU, with his family called because he might not make it through the night.
(He got better - well, better than he was, at least. But that was after his kidneys shut down, he got pneumonia, had a minor stroke, was intubated, and spent months in the ICU and then a rehabilitation institute so that he could walk again after all that time flat on his back. He’s still legally considered disabled, but he can walk, and do minor household tasks and such. Not much in the way of exertion, though.)
She has more than 6 a day!
Then she must be drinking generic beer, for $200 a month.
I had a girlfriend once who went to the ER for very sharp stomach cramps. They gave her a Vicodin, and when that didn’t work, gave her another. That didn’t work either.
She thought that she should have gotten a shot of morphine or Dilaudid, so she went to a lawyer a couple of days later to see if she could sue the ER.
The lawyer was happy to take her 150 bucks for 30 minutes of consultation and at the end of it he told her to basically go get fucked.