That’s the impression I got too. I get the idea the hospital did something improperly, such as not disinfecting something, which transferred the condition from another patient to this lady, resulting in her loss of limbs. What I don’t understand is how the hospital telling her that’s what happened is a violation of the other patient’s rights. They don’t have to refer to that patient by name, simply tell the woman that another patient had this condition, they screwed up and transferred it to her, and that’s why she’s now in a wheelchair and can’t hold her son. Damn, this story pisses me off.
This is part of the reason my skepticism meter is pegged. I (currently) surf the websites religiously, but this is the first I’ve heard about it. As with all things, I read them with a grain of salt, but in this case, I don’t think we’re getting the full story. . .
Tripler
But then again, rare is it that you do get the whole story online.
The tone of the story is so odd. It seems like something that would be in The Onion. It happened 8 months ago and it’s just now hitting the media? Weird.
I’ll tell ya…I’m terrified about the possibility of having to go into the hospital for ANYTHING. Between the fuck-ups and the bacterial diseases, it’s a fucking house of horrors.
Oh, and I preemptively apologize for my one comment. I wasn’t trying to be snarky. It was a Freudian slip.
Tripler
As soon as I hit the “submit” button, I went . . . “ooooooh . . .” :smack:
But they flat out told her she’d have to sue to get the info. It’s not “We’re compiling the info, you’ll have it in a week or two” it’s “You’re not getting it without a subpoena.”
Tripler, if you Google “orlando birth amputee” you’ll see several links to the story, including some international ones. I just grabbed the first one for the OP.
It’s just weird that CNN, MSNBC, etc., haven’t grabbed hold of this. Plus I didn’t notice any Orlando TV stations/newspapers covering it in my (admittedly fast) perusal of the googled links.
The link in the OP has this link at the bottom, which seems to be an Orlando TV station.
This isn’t the same Florida hospital that had some inadvertent amputations a few years ago, is it?
Whoops, missed that when reading the article. Well that’s even more weird, then, that it hasn’t been picked up nationally.
Wow that totally sucks. But it’s really not outside the realm of possibility that the hospital’s not wrong. Strep and staph are a pair of nasty mo-fos that have been all but genetically engineered to be antibiotic resistant. Some of the most evil crap around survives in hospitals. The surgury was 12 days after she gave birth if I read correctly. So it’s not as if someone looked at her swollen belly and said, “Yup, them limbs gotta go!”
This is so tragic. After witnessing what my dad went through having to have his legs amputated thanks to smoking/diabetes, I know amputation is traumatic under any circumstances. To have all four limbs removed AND not even understand why it happened would be absolutely crushing.
The hospital’s claim that this is from Toxic Shock Syndrome seems plausible to me. It can indeed develop even without having contact with another person (think of the dire warnings on tampons about TSS), and one of the possible complications of TSS is gangrene of the limbs requiring amputation. BUT even if it turns out there was no malpractice involved, it is obvious that someone really dropped the ball in making sure she (or her husband, if she wasn’t coherent) understood what was happening and why. I would like to know what went wrong in communicating about the situation and getting consent for the amputations!
Knee-jerk reaction over, this is really weird. I’ll make sure to keep an eye on how things turn out.
Here’s the explanation:
Sounds ridiculous to me. They can’t even confirm if they’re treating a patient with a certain disease? So long as they don’t identify the patient, how could that violate that person’s rights?
I’m going to hell for laughing at this choice of metaphor, aren’t I?
True, but the bitch of it is that it’s just going to end up costing each and every one of us. Could the insurance industry be any more throughly fucked up?
South Seminole doesn’t have maternity services. ORMC does. So what I’m saying is there must have been some kind of emergency to begin with for her to go to South Seminole.
And why the picture without prosthetic arms? Even the indigent can get those in some form. Something smells like rotten flesh eating bacteria to me. :dubious:
I have to agree that the tone of the article is really strange. It’s not clear what information Mejia is after. As someone who has performed multiple amputations, I’ve got to say that the entire OR staff would have to be high on PCP to perform this kind of procedure on the wrong patient. This isn’t like operating on the wrong hip; either the limb is grossly diseased or you don’t remove it.
As for this statement:
I’ve got to cry foul. If she was sick enough with toxic shock or necrotizing fasciitis to need multiple amputations, she would have been in the ICU and likely sedated/intubated/on pressors, etc. People don’t get operated on without SOMEONE’s consent (in this case probably her husband’s).
My suspicion, just from the sketchy info presented in the article, is that the family wants to know WHY she got whatever infection it was that led to her surgery. The hospital has probably already released her medical records, but they would likely not specifically state how she contracted the infection - quite possibly because the hospital and physicians don’t know. I would guess that the attorneys are requesting info about the other patients in the hospital at the time: i.e. did anyone else have sepsis/toxic shock/meningitis/necrotizing fasciitis, with an eye toward implying that she was cross-infected somehow. Ignoring for the moment the issue of whether this is a legitimate line of inquiry, it would not surprise me that the hospital would want a court order prior to releasing such information rather than appearing to ignore HIPAA. I know that we have folks on the Dope who are much more well versed in HIPAA minutae than I am; perhaps they could shed light on this. If they are asking for records showing what all the other people on the floor were being treated for at the time she was there, that sure sounds like a HIPAA violation.
All that aside, I can see the following having taken place:
Husband: “Why do you have to amputate???”
Surgeon: “Because she has a life-threatening infection that is destroying the tissue in her arms and legs, and if we don’t amputate them she will die.”
H: “OK (signs consent for surgery) - but how did she get this flesh-eating virus?”
S: “It’s not really a virus, it’s a bacterial infection, but with particular strains of bacteria that are very aggressive and hard to treat with drugs.”
H: “But she was healthy just a few days ago - where did she get this?”
S: “I don’t know. She may have had the bacteria on her skin or genital tract when she came to the hospital, and for whatever reason the infection took hold at the time of the birth. Or I suppose she may have contracted it here at the hospital after she had delivery complications. Most cases like this start out with trivial injuries, and for whatever reason the bacteria get a foothold. Perhaps her [brossa’s WAG] major blood loss at the delivery or her gestational diabetes or her 4th degree perineal tear [/end brossa’s WAG] contributed to this.”
H: “Are you serious? How can you not know how this happened? She was fine until she came to this hospital! Why won’t you tell me what happened? What are you hiding!?”
S: “I can tell you what the risk factors for necrotizing fasciitis are, but I don’t know why one person gets it and another with the same risk factors doesn’t.”
H: “But she was fine a few days ago…”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Am I really the only one that’s seen this on the National news? I know I saw it last week and could have sworn I even saw it here. And I don’t watch that much news. They had a video of her and her baby as well.
So, you’re stumped?
(d&r)
Right behind me, for making it.