Wouldn’t the doctors have had to ask her for permission? The trauma doc asked Mom and me for permission to display our X-rays in her office, and to perhaps use them in articles someday (Mom’s is an example of “what a spine should not be”, mine as an example of “and this is what a spine should look like”). Even if the data is anonymized, I don’t think they’re supposed to use it without permission.
I’m pretty sure you can publish on a single patient (as a case study) without permission; it’s when you start collecting data on multiple patients that it turns into research and consent forms get involved.
My very first thread here, I believe, was about this - the night before Thanksgiving at my SIL’s brother’s house his wife was killed in a single vehicle accident on her way home from work. I hadn’t met either her bro or his wife but now my SIL needed me to help w/ the meal as they were still hosting it at the dead woman’s house. She’d made everything but the turkey pretty much. So we had Thanksgiving surrounded by five children who were alternating between sobbing and zombie-like drifting around the house while neighbors and such came by to offer condolences (and brought more food). I probably didn’t mention this last time but I have less shame now - my period started early while there and I rummaged around to find and use a dead woman’s Super-size tampons.
I hope when I’m dead someone can use MY tampons.
I should mention that at this festive feast was my SIL’s mom and dad; mom was already dying from uterine cancer b/c her husband (Christian Scientist) wouldn’t let her go to the doctor until she was nearly crippled from the pain of the cancer eating away at her. Meanwhile he’s insulin-dependent and talked of nothing else around the food, how he couldn’t have this or that or else it would kill him. SIL’s mom died that Christmas Eve; I hope she went on to a greater reward than she ever got on Earth.
My husband was just putting away some of the decorations and other things from our Thanksgiving get-together - and found a pie. A sweet potato pie, which the sister-in-law who’d been assigned to bring pies had brought with the other pies, and it was put aside and lost in the chaos of trying to cram that many people into a tiny place.
So thanks, other sister-in-law who posted multiple times to Facebook, seemingly with no memory of ever posting on it before, asking what you can bring, only to say you’re going to bring sweet potato pie because your dad insisted - instead of the appetizers we were counting on you for. You could have consulted with the sister that was bringing pie, because hey look, we had it. (Sort of. Someone hid it or whatever and we found it nearly a week later - ew.) So because you’re too drunk/drugged-up to recall what you’re supposed to bring, you start a screaming argument with your brother, which he has to sweep under the carpet by apologizing for … whatever. For not implanting the knowledge of what you were going to bring directly into your brain, or something.
My husband has declared that next holiday here will be entirely devoid of pie. 
I’m thinking the next holiday here may not involve anyone but he and I, frankly, because I don’t need the chaos and the tiptoeing around which bipolar inlaw is going to explode in an emotional rage next.
Hmmmmm…Christmas just around the corner. I think this thread needs a little bump.
Just remembered another: Thanksgiving Eve, many years back. Frozen roads. I, living with Mum and little brother, mid 20s in age. He’s acting kind of strange all day/evening. Short version: I end up having to drive him to the Psych Hospital, about 20 miles away on ice sheeted roads, with heavy snow falling, and leaving him there for about a month. This was his first time there, and then, I had to go home and tell Mum at about 2am Thanksgiving Morn!
I have a few more, but, the thread may need bumping again. I like to do my part!
Best wishes,
hh
A family my wife has been friends with for a long time just had the Worst Thanksgiving Ever. Hard to believe something like this can even happen.
Their 16-year-old son, J, was an energetic kid. Apparently, he’d been living with a cracked bone in his wrist for more than a week (probably a football injury), hardly noticing it. But it finally bothered him enough to get an X-ray. They saw the crack, so they scheduled an operation to put in a pin. Easy operation, 20 minutes, then another 20 in recovery for the anesthetic to wear off, and they can take him home.
Surgery goes fine, the doctor comes out and says everything is great and they can take him home in about half an hour. Well, time ticks by, and no one comes to get them. Finally his mother, M, goes to ask what’s up. She then disappears as well. The dad, P, is now getting very concerned. Finally, a nurse comes to get him, saying, “You’d better come back with me.”
J died in the recovery room. At first, there was no explanation, and it seemed so random. An autopsy revealed what happened. I’m not 100% clear on the details, but it happened something like this: operation went fine, everything was great. He’d had a breathing tube in, because he’d been under general anesthesia. Somehow, a nurse or someone in the recovery room hooked up an oxygen supply to the wrong tube, meaning that the bad gases he was breathing out couldn’t escape, and built up in his body and bloodstream. Apparently no one was watching as he lay there, an otherwise-healthy teenager, asleep, helpless, and suffocating. The gas build-up was so extensive, they said, that his skin crackled like Rice Krispies when you touched it.
The funeral was just a couple of weeks ago. In all my life I’ve never seen such grief.
Oh my goodness. I know a lawsuit will not bring this young man back, but this kind of medical incompetance should be punished.
My condolences to the family.
Sorry for their senseless loss.
To threadjack, my husband just had a very similar case go to court.
My husband’s boss just found out that insurance isn’t going to pay for most of his son’s pre-approved, life-saving open heart surgery, after all.
Maybe they’ll get better health insurance at that company now (sigh).
Don’t tell me everybody’s had a Merry Christmas!!!
Not that I wish for bad, but, if it’s there…let’s hear about it!
Hmmmm…I forgot some of the other bummers in time past, but, I’ll remember them soon!
Best wishes,
hh
VERY similar story here. Second grade, forced to have a party and invite everyone, basement all decked out for a raging party (goody bags, games, cake, the works), me totally ready to the birthday to end all birthdays…and no one showed up. Not a single freaking person. I never got over that.
Were there any RSVP requests or anything? For most of my birthday parties as a kid, I’m pretty sure my mom talked to at least one parent of the invited kids. My mom was always diligent about following up, since kids are really good at losing invitations.
Well, this isn’t up to par with some of the horrorfest here, but we celebrated my birthday/Christmas with my side of the family Sunday. To preface, at Thanksgiving, we had discussed just getting everyone small or handmade gifts for Christmas. All December I worked like a demented elf, happily sewing, baking, etc. Even posting on Facebook pics of work in progress that I tagged for family members – and they commented on! Sunday comes, and I pass out presents to two sisters, one brother, nieces, nephews, etc. I get…zip. Not even a birthday card. And one sister doesn’t show up because she’s stolen her SO’s car and last bit of money and gone off on a heroin bender. One niece and a step-nephew have shared a bottle of peach schnapps on the way here and are plastered. Merry Christmas. Ha.
None that I know of. My mom still says to this day that it was the weather that caused to lack of people. She claims snow. I can say that I do not remember the weather (or weather ever being an issue on future birthdays), as my birthday is at the end of April.*
[SIZE=“2”]* - considering where I grew up, large amounts of snow were not uncommon at the end of April, but people also did not avoid day to day life because of the snow either. [/SIZE]
I don’t mind spending Christmas alone, one of the best I had was spent watching all the Alien movies by myself a couple of years ago, but maybe that’s from years of vaguely dysfunctional Christmases with my family. Nothing near as bad as some of the stories I’ve read, but bad enough to make being home with the dogs and not having to go anywhere a better option. There was the year my Mom cooked dinner, but was so drunk by the time it was ready that she was upstairs in bed, leaving my brother, his son and me eating dinner without her.
A couple of years ago on my birthday, my dog died. She was old and I knew her time was up soon and she seemed to be getting a bit worse that weekend. I was thinking that I would wait until Monday, the next day, to call it a day for her. She started having seizures that night. It is an awful thing to watch and know that there is nothing you can do. I had called my ex earlier in the day because she had been our dog when we were together and I wanted to give him the chance to say good bye. When he came over, she had her third or fourth seizure and I asked him to help me take her to the vet and end things. Nice end to my birthday day.
Christmas 1998. I was SO in love with my boyfriend of about 18 months (we ended up being together for a little over 7 years), he was being all secretive with his mom and everyone, and I was really hoping and praying that all of the sneaking around was about a ring and a proposal.
It wasn’t. It was a nice watch and other nice and expensive stuff, but I’d have rather have had a paper cigar band and him than all the “big” presents in the world. (so it was really a life disappointment and a Christmas disappointment all wrapped into one :(). Other than that, rich or poor, young (and now old) I have generally enjoyed Christmas even though I’m a bit of a humbug.
Like Cornthehead and Antigen, my sister had a childhood birthday party where nobody showed up. She’s older than I am, so I don’t remember it all. I really wish I knew the story behind it, but I can’t even bring myself to ask my mom about it. It’s just so awful.
Ooooh! Ooooooh! Just remembered a great one!
My birthday, somewhere between 10 and 12 years old: Dunno how it came about, but, I was sitting in our dining room of our house, looking out the back door. My father casually brought in his .22 rifle, and said “Let me show you what a .22 will do to a cat.” Our family cat was sitting outside, and my father shot it right between the eyes! Even worse than just dying, the cat went into all sorts of acrobatics of screams, hisses, etc… until it died. I, naturally, freaked out, screaming and crying like an idiot. Mom wasn’t there, and I thought that when she came home something good would happen, like leaving our father, but, it was pretty anti-climactic. Never found out what made it happen.
Best wishes,
hh
I usually like the holidays, but some have sucked a lot.
The third worst holiday memory I have is putting my ferret to sleep on December 23rd, and the next day going to the grocery store and standing there confused: every year at Christmas I’d buy both my dog and my ferret special treats, but Claudia had died the day before, and Princess eight months earlier, so there was nothing I needed to buy any more.
The second worst is my favorite cat dying on my twenty-eighth birthday. I’d had him since I was fourteen.
And the worst ever was walking back to my dorm after work two nights before Thanksgiving my freshman year of college. As I reached the dorm, I saw my dad standing on the walkway, which wasn’t right because I was supposed to be taking the bus home the next day. All the sudden, before he even opened his mouth, I knew what he was going to say. “Grampy?” I asked, hoping I was wrong, but he nodded and explained that he’d died a few hours earlier, just before my dad drove three hours to get me. His dying wasn’t a shock, not when he’d been diagnosed with cancer a year earlier, but I’d imagined that I’d get to say goodbye.