Editor’s Note: This is long, rambling, and has no real reason for existing other than as a way for me to whine a bit. You’re perfectly justified in just closing this thread and moving on to something actually interesting.
For a few years, I had been dealing with pain and swelling in my left ankle. Not debilitating, but bothersome. It would be bad at times, and at other times it was just annoying. I saw a couple of orthopedic doctors for diagnoses / treatment, one of whom put me in a walking boot for three weeks and another who had orthotics made for me. Nothing really helped.
In early 2021, I saw a third orthopedic guy who tried a different tack. First they injected some anti-inflammatory and painkiller stuff into my ankle (which was not fun, let me tell you), which seemed to help for about a week. Then the pain and swelling came back. Finally he recommended surgery, and I agreed.
(For those of you playing Medical Procedure Bingo at home, the procedure was a subtalar fusion and excision of the os trigonum. Which is a fancy way of saying they took out a tiny bone in the ankle joint and inserted two screws into my ankle through the heel.)
I had the surgery on November 2, 2021, and came home in a cast that I had to wear for 12 weeks. Three weeks later, I started experiencing some shortness of breath. It wasn’t terrible at first, and I figured it was due to me being out of shape while simultaneously trying to move around on crutches or via a little knee-scooter.
The day before Thanksgiving, though, I was in the kitchen prepping dinner for the family, and had to sit down for a while because I couldn’t catch my breath. I thought I might have COVID-19, and while I didn’t have any other symptoms, I thought I should make an appointment with my regular doc to get checked out. Naturally, with it being the day before Thanksgiving, no appointments were available for a week or so.
On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up and couldn’t seem to breathe very deeply. I decided to visit a local doc-in-the-box clinic which was open. The doctor who examined me ruled out COVID-19 and a few other likely diagnoses, and said “We can’t find anything wrong definitively, but if you were my brother, I’d drive you to the emergency room right now. I think you might have a pulmonary embolism.”
Well, that doc was right on the money (and I sent him and his clinic a very appreciative email about a week later). Based on his advice, I went to the emergency room of a large nearby hospital, and after a few tests the cardiologist there diagnosed me with a saddle pulmonary embolism, which – depending on what statistics you believe – can be deadly around 35% of the time. I had an emergency thrombectomy Thanksgiving night, and the doc pulled a couple of clots out of my lungs that were around 18 inches long in total. (Incidentally, a thrombectomy is another procedure high on my list of things I would recommend not doing if you have the choice. You’re not asleep during the procedure – at least, I wasn’t – and it’s not fun to have a wire inserted in your upper thigh that snakes its way up to your lungs.)
I was in the hospital for a couple of nights for observation and such, and they put me on some mega-dose blood thinners. They found other clots in my left leg (behind the knee, and in the calf) that would be monitored for six months while I took blood thinner (Eliquis) to dissolve them. The cardiologist said he had no doubt the clots formed due to the ankle surgery; he said they were less than six weeks old, and I had no history whatsoever of clotting prior to the surgery.
Not to spoil the story, but everything worked. I didn’t die. The clots in my leg dissolved and / or turned to scar tissue. The ankle continued to heal, and in February 2022 I got out of the cast and graduated to a walking boot. In May 2022 I kicked the boot (so to speak) and was able to start wearing regular shoes again.
However, I still experienced swelling and some pain in my left ankle. The orthopedic surgeon said this was normal, and it would take additional time to let everything heal properly. I pointed out some spider veins I had on the inside of my left ankle, and he said they should resolve with time.
Well, they didn’t resolve, and the pain lingered. Not as bad as it was, granted, but enough to be frustrating … especially after I’d spent time and money trying to get this very situation resolved.
Meanwhile, I was seeing the cardiologist who operated on me on Thanksgiving semi-regularly to check on the blood clots in my leg and ensure my heart wasn’t damaged due to the embolisms. In July 2022 I underwent a stress test (one of those deals where they put special dye into your system and you run on a treadmill) so they could get a good look at how blood was moving through my heart. Based on the results of that test, he recommended I have a stent inserted in an artery behind my heart.
I wasn’t keen on having ANOTHER surgery, so I got a second opinion. The new doc, who I saw in November of 2022, looked at the results of the test, ordered a new CT scan, and in very late 2022 said I didn’t need the stent – everything looked just fine. He also recommended a vein specialist to treat the spider veins in my left ankle, which were more pronounced and were becoming slightly painful.
So, in March 2023, I started seeing a vein doc. He ran some preliminary tests and said I had venous insufficiency in a key vein in my left leg, which likely were caused by the clots that formed after the ankle surgery. Over the last couple of months, I’ve undergone treatments to essentially kill that vein and redirect blood flow to healthy veins in my left leg.
The vein doc asked me at one of our first consultations what blood thinner I was prescribed after the ankle surgery. I said I wasn’t prescribed one; the first anticoagulant I got was Eliquis after the thrombectomy. He was very surprised; he said, “It’s standard procedure to prescribe blood thinners after orthopedic surgery on a lower limb, precisely because of the threat of blood clots in the leg.”
So all of this led me to think I might have a legal case for medical malpractice against the orthopedic surgeon. Visions of a multi-million dollar settlement that would leave me set for life were dancing in my head.
I talked to a lawyer friend of mine, and my visions got dashed toot sweet. He said in our state, it was almost impossible to sue a doctor if there wasn’t a significant life-altering event that occurred. His quote: “It’s a shame you didn’t die; your wife and kids could sue and probably win. You messed up by living.”
However, he said he thought I did have a case, assuming I could find a lawyer who was willing to take it on. I wouldn’t get millions of dollars, but he thought I could win back the cost of treatments for all the stuff related to the saddle pulmonary embolism and maybe the vein-related stuff, along with some amount for pain and suffering. He suggested some law firms in our area that specialize in medical malpractice.
I’ve spent several weeks now off and on talking to various clerks / intake specialists at multiple firms, and I get the same response every time: “You have a case, but we can’t help you.” What they don’t say in their responses, but what I suspect, is what my lawyer friend said: There’s not a big enough payoff to justify their time. I would probably win a settlement of some sort, but it doesn’t rise to the level of what they handle. Basically, I messed up by living.
I warned you this was long and rambling, so you can’t blame me for the time you’ve lost reading this. But a parting word of advice: If you’re thinking of suing a doctor for medical malpractice, your best bet is to die first. Or at least lose a limb or two.