Terrified sick man in bad mood sentenced to die?

This is not a cross posting but please check out this thread in MPSIMS. I think that thread should stay there so people can see it and hopefully contact the bastards in charge.

However, I cannot see most people being able to put their responses to such an outrage anywhere else but the Pit.

This situation is incredible. These morons with the transplant team are going to let this man die and let his kids grow up as orphans because he was cranky during a bout of diarrhea?

In Ayesha’s post, there was some indication that he was also being taken off the transplant list because of a lacking support system. However, I think this is something the transplant people would have checked for before putting him on the transplant list so it sounds like they are trying to justify their completely heinous actions.

Movie and music stars routinely buy themselves organs after years of abusive lifestyles destroyed theirs and yet, a man who is the sole parent of two young children is going to be refused a transplant because he spoke harshly to the nursing staff who had ignored his pleas for help?

I am still too angry to really post about this. I leave it to the rest of you for now.

this is sick. very sick.
BTW: Grimhacker- may you fester in in a pool of your own liquified intestines.
Fuck you very much.

that is all.

Grimhacker does have a point (however harshly he put it). This is a single clipping on the issue, which may hide a lot of the background to this decision. Wouldn’t it be worth looking for more information before damning the Arizona University Medical Center as a bunch of bastards?

It dosent matter how obnoxious this guy might be, 2 kids do not deserve to be orphaned because of who their father pissed off.

I dare say that no-one on the waiting list deserves to die, but the fact is that some will. There are far less donors than people requiring transplants, so some will die. That means the doctors have to take decisions on who they think will best respond to the transplant - not just physically but emotionally. If you like, who will best use this gift. That’s probably one of the most horrible decisions they have to make, and I doubt they’d take it lightly or flippantly. The only way to find out if they did is to try to get more information on what happened, rather than just reacting angrily.

If this is true it is unbelievable.

btw. It may sound silly but I’m going to mail Michael Moore with this info. In a programme I’ve seen he got a HMO to back down about refusing a father of two a organ transplant.

This sounds like something that would be right up his street. You never know (Hey, he answered me once before) and it will take me about a minute to C&P the info.

You’re absolutely correct Gary, but due to the pressure on who should get the donors, perhaps they’ll use any excuse to satisfy the figures, and justify their decision.

[hijack]
Michael Moore answered you? was that about the UK and Ireland viewers?
[/hijack]

Hopefully, everybody who is reading this thread is already an organ donor. If you are not, do something about it today! I have been for many years, and it is one of the best things that you can do for the world around you. I’m feeling so smug, that I’m going to crosspost this to the original thread right away.

::Cheerfully crossposts after submitting to thread::

ToF, nope about a thread on this very board. I posted his reply. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=31681

I have to disagree. (spooje does not know whole story, but that’s never stopped him before) If they didn’t think he was a good canidate for transplant, they wouldn’t have put him on the donor list to start with.

quote"Livers are certainly scarce, and we have to make sure they go to people who will benefit from this gift," said Constance Glasby, UMC’s director of transplant services.
"During this process, the patient develops a relationship with our team, a relationship that is permanent. You just don’t get a transplant and then go off fancy-free. They’re with us for life. It’s a serious commitment -it’s a marriage. **

Read: “They have to make a commitment to kiss ass and suck up to us because we hold their very lives in our hands.”

And BTW, just who wouldn’t benefit from this gift. Hell, they gave one to David “Let’s do some heroin” Crosby and Micky “Let’s hit 6 bars a night” Mantle. You don’t think they would have cut these guys off the list, do you.

I bet that’s what really happened. The next guy on the list ponied up some dough or some celeb needed a liver.

I’ll say it again, people in dire situations can get a little irriatble. And I woulda bitched up a storm if I had to wait on a nurse for 40 minutes while I was trying to keep from shitting in my pants!!!

Has anyone confirmed the veracity of the story? Has there been any follow-up news?

Well I can verify that UMC is a bunch of bastards. I was born there, and that is where I had Nicky… and I’ve been in their emergency room, ICU, and Psych wards… To give you an example of their caring nursing staff, when I woke up after my seizure, not knowing where I was, the nurses made fun of me. I had a severe pain down by my vagina all day, and finally when the nursing staff changed shifts, a FRIENDLY nurse agreed to look and see what was wrong. They’d catheterized me but didn’t tie the catheter line to my leg, like you’re supposed to. So the entire weight of that was just tugging at my urethra. OW.

In the psych ward, where I was recuperating from what they insist on calling a suicide attempt (but which I claim was an attempt to put myself in a coma) the nurses yelled at me for crying at night.

This is also the hospital that kept Nicky an extra day after he was born, forcing me and my husband to sleep in the waiting room (24 hours after a 52 hour labor, I’m sleeping on chairs) and who also gave him a bottle against my instructions and effectively RUINED my chances of breastfeeding, which was probably the cause of him being failure to thrive for the first 3 months of his life. sigh

So all in all I would not be surprised in the least to find this was true. It’s a crappy hospital.

Sure he has a point, but if he’d keep his damn hat on nobody would notice it.

Do you, Gary Kumquat have the right to chose who lives and dies based solely upon your opinion of them? I tell you what, if I had that power, well, let’s just say that this board would be short a couple of posters.

Yep, Mr Cynical, I have that power - but like my powers of flight and x ray vision I’ve vowed only to use them for good.

Sorry, but what are you objecting too - the fact that doctors make life and death decisions, or my suggestion that it might be worth doing more background than one newspaper article before flaming the whole facility?

If it’s the former, then welcome to life’s flawed reality. Sure it sucks, but how to change it? Too few donors, too many people needing transplants, result - triage will be applied, the decisions made by doctors.

If it’s the latter, then please let me know, and I can just take it as read from now on that you’re not that bothered to check facts before posting an opinion.

Maybe this case is a horrible example of misuse of power. Maybe it’s not. That makes it worth looking into before making a judgement.

re: confirming story

A little searching turned up the following: there is a transplant surgeon by the name of Paul Nakazato at UA; the Daily Star does have a Metro reporter named Carla McClain; searching the Net and the AP newswire turned up no hits under “Rasmussen” and/or “liver transplant”. Searching Snopes turned up no “documented” UL of this nature. I emailed McClain in hopes of confirming/refuting the story. It does seem too detailed to be UL (ie names of actual people).

As a former transplant nurse (both pre and post-op) I find the whole situation outrageous. Yes, patients are screened for mental/emotional/psychological “fitness”. Yes, compliance is an issue - noncompliance with meds/treatment/lifestyle means you might as well put the organ in a blender; it ain’t gonna last long. But to banish this guy from the list because he was “difficult”? It is unbelievably stressful to be awaiting an organ - particularly a liver. Much assistance can be provided other failing organs (kidney: dialysis; heart: tons of meds, a few assistive devices like IABP or VADs; mechanical ventilation for lungs) but little for a failing liver. Patients hang around waiting to either get an organ or die. And many end up in the position of “hoping” for a tragedy to befall someone. I had long conversations with several patients about this - the guilt, the conflicting emotions. I had some patients behave “inappropriately”. If it was the occasional incident, it never went beyond me. If it seemed like a pattern, we took it as an indication that further help was needed - the patient was having trouble with the stress. Sometimes they act out. Sometimes I act out - over traffic.

He didn’t want to shit the bed? Good for him. I’d rather have a patient who doesn’t want to shit the bed any day. Losing one’s independence, particularly in a hospital setting, is very frustrating, and not being able to attend to a bodily function we learned to attend to at about 3 years old is disheartening. I’d have helped him back to bed, fluffed and buffed him, and found out why he had to wait for assistance - and raise hell about that, not about him.

Seems to me the folks at UA…Well, as Ricky would have said, “you have some 'splainin to do Lucy”

Yet another example of partenalistic attitudes in the medical prodfession. We’ll act like a parent, and treat you like a child.

Shaky Jake

Shaky Jake, great minds etc.
I just e-mailed Ms. McClain at the Arizona Star to confirm this story myself, providing a link to this thread and asking if she could answer by e-mail or here on the board.

Evilbeth, Thanks for posting this thread here, I put the other in mpsims simply because I thought it might get more views and hopefully people would e-mail the bastards in charge. Believe me I did my cussing and crying out loud before I posted.

Other friends of mine have e-mailed the reporter named to confirm the story, I haven’t heard from them as to her reply yet. If you have ever emailed me then I probably also sent the story to you via e-mail.

**grimhacker/concrete/whoeveryouarethisweek ** you are a prick. I don’t give a good bloody damn what this guy said to the nurse, he doesn’t deserve to die for it. You sound like the assholes who say that gay men and or drug users with aids deserve to die. People like you make me ill. I suppose that because I got Hep C , the same disease the man in the story will die from btw, from either a tattoo or a drug needle and because I get pissed off and let people know it I deserve to die too. Well fuck you.

I snipped off the last part, since it did not apply.

My discontent is more directed toward the hospital for even allowing such a perception to bloom in the minds of a patient. That is completely a terrible bedside (deathbedside, if you will) manner.

Well, that and that grimhacker is back. He’s just that way, you dig? I have serious doubt that he was trying to raise an issue with the credibility of the article at all, rather being the same old bile-spewing jackass we’ve all come to know and love.

I found the rest of the original story , it is posted in the link evilbeth gave. Along with the email of the reporter. Since it was incuded in the newspaper I doubt it is invading her privacy to put it out in public.

Now if y’all will pardon me, I will vent a little here.

This scares the hell out of me people ! I am not at the point of transplant, if I get there and get pissed at poor treatment and say something nasty, will they just let me die ? Does this mean I can be treated any way people want to treat me and if I say anything then I don’t deserve to live ?

Screw that ! I don’t kiss ass people ! I try to be plesant , but hell everyone has off days, and when you are ill it’s more common and when you know you may well die, it’s worse. How may times have I come to SDMB and cried, cussed and thrown a fit over this stuff ? Lots ! Do any of you think I should die because of it ? I don’t think so !

MrC, you wanna give me anther reach around honey ? ::smooch::