I did not want to post on that thread because I did not want to take a chance of that topic being hijacked.
My girls have lost all of their aunts now. My beloved sister died two and a half years ago in a hospice where she was well cared for.
My girls are this minute in Delaware at the memorial of one of their aunts on their father's side, who had been in/out of the ICU at the hospital and died on January 2, just a few days after coming home from the hospital. Her sister, my girls' other aunt on their father's side, died several years ago, four days after coming home from heart valve surgery which was deemed successful. She had contracted MRSA and no one had noticed.
I also had two very close calls with two of my children, one in a dentist's chair (she took inordinately long to come out of the "twilight sleep" he had put her in). As I waited and waited with my other children, who had procedures also, but were fine, I was a wreck about my little daughter who was still unconscious. He kept reassuring me that "some children just take a little longer," and I was thinking "he gave her too much." She finally did wake up, but I never went back to that dentist again. I told my then husband about it, but he didn't want to take any action. She was alive and it was over and done with, was his position.
Many years later, my 18 year old daughter had to have a tonsillectomy. I was in the waiting room when the doctor came and told me, "she made quite a fuss, but she's in recovery" and someone would come for me soon and take me to her. And he promptly left the hospital. It was over an hour later that I finally stopped an orderly in the hallway and asked where my daughter was. He took me to her bed which was in a hallway, and where she was still bleeding from the surgery, and there was not a soul around, no one. She stared at me with frightened eyes, but she could not speak. I had to keep my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming.
We were taken upstairs to a room where they made me wait while they cleaned her up. When I finally got to her, she was crying and furious at the same time. She told me the anesthesia had worn off and she was trying to fend off the doctor because he was intent on pulling her tonsils out of her throat while she was trying to tell him that she could feel everything. He called that "a fuss" when he spoke to me.
They decided to keep her overnight and I planned to stay with her, but she told me to go home, as "what good are you anyway?" I was filled with guilt and grief over what had happened to her. I should have taken action much sooner than I did. They committed malpractice, but I was culpable too, I trusted she was being taken care of, but she wasn't.
I typed out the entire incident and took it to an attorney whom I knew, in fact, used to work for. He said as long as she was fine now, had no permanent injuries, there would be no way her word would be taken over the doctor and the staff and I should try to forget it and not take any action. What I heard was "she's not dead." I guess her emotional and mental anguish did not count, but I did not pursue it further. I don't think she has ever forgiven me for that incident and I don't blame her.
I was lucky, I did not lose my children. As for my girls' aunts, I suppose it was/is up to their families if they had/have any doubts about why their mothers came home from the hospital and died just days later.
The moral of the story is not to assume that these professionals know what they're doing or are paying attention. If one has any doubts, don't worry about being thought of as "uncooperative." Look after your loved one, no matter what.
Formerly Ford1224
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel 1986
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