Paracentesis

Scottiemom wrote:
My Dad was told just that when he had one of his carotid arteries 100% occluded. Course the doctor had been watching it for years telling him it wasn't ready to fix, etc. Then one year it was, "Oops! It's too far gone." The best specialist in the area told my Dad (I was there), "Go home and live everyday like it's your last, because it may well be." My cousin at the time was on the staff of the Texas Medical Center in Houston. He arranged for Dad to confer with a doctor at Hermann Memorial. My Dad drove to Houston from Indiana. The doctor called him a walking dead man. Said people with his condition never come in on their own, they are always on a stretcher. At the time very few people were doing the type of surgery he did. He could not fix the 100% occluded artery, but he cleaned out the other that was almost 90% closed. That was . . . hmmmm. . . about 20 years ago. My Dad is still alive and doing well for a 91 year old.

My cousin always told me, "Be thankful that first doctor wouldn't do the surgery. You don't want someone doing it who isn't comfortable with his own abilities." What he did do wrong was let us think there was no possibility of helping Dad.

Dale

Bingo!!! Absolutely hitting the nail on the head!!! In my brother's case... he had gone to several "premier" cardio's in our area. They did not know about rf ablation for atrial fibrilation. A doc at Cleveland had been performing them frequently for FIVE years!!! The doc's back here were a bit grumpy about having to take direction from Cleveland on bro's follow up after surgery. Now... it's a common place surgery here for a-fib. I have to wonder, how many people took their doc's advice and went home to die. I wonder how many could have been saved.

cts

My Dad was told just that when he had one of his carotid arteries 100% occluded. Course the doctor had been watching it for years telling him it wasn't ready to fix, etc. Then one year it was, "Oops! It's too far gone." The best specialist in the area told my Dad (I was there), "Go home and live everyday like it's your last, because it may well be." My cousin at the time was on the staff of the Texas Medical Center in Houston. He arranged for Dad to confer with a doctor at Hermann Memorial. My Dad drove to Houston from Indiana. The doctor called him a walking dead man. Said people with his condition never come in on their own, they are always on a stretcher. At the time very few people were doing the type of surgery he did. He could not fix the 100% occluded artery, but he cleaned out the other that was almost 90% closed. That was . . . hmmmm. . . about 20 years ago. My Dad is still alive and doing well for a 91 year old.

My cousin always told me, "Be thankful that first doctor wouldn't do the surgery. You don't want someone doing it who isn't comfortable with his own abilities." What he did do wrong was let us think there was no possibility of helping Dad.

Dale

Ditto on the teaching hospital. Atlanta has some of the best hospitals too. Check with Mayo and Cleveland Clinic as well. They often will review your medical records and tests for a very small fee. They have teams dedicated to unusual illnesses. My brother's life was saved by Cleveland when all the ego's here told him to make out a will.

Good luck to you
cts

gbopp wrote:

Scottiemom wrote:
I hope you are seeking care at a teaching hospital.
Dale

I'm curious, why?

Well, for all the reasons people have given. Ongoing research for one thing. . . doctors confer with one another on patients in their care. They are not as inclined to want to "own" a patient. Willing to talk with other experts. Teaching doctors who do my husband's care would bring in students of all levels when he was in the hospital. Those students would often ask very critical questions and many in the group would join in the discussion. Lots of talk about symptoms, outcomes, procedures, etc. Your case gets talked about a lot.

Any time we have traveled, our doctors have always told us if we need help on the road to seek out a teaching hospital. They are more likely to work with his doctors back home. The one time we had to go to a small regional hospital, my DH nearly had to die to get out. The idiot doctor wanted to run all kinds of tests and re-do everything that had ever been done. When I finally got him out of there, that doctor told Medicare that we left against his advice, so they declined to pay for the treatment he received from his "real" doctors after that. We did finally get that straightened out, but not till after we got billed for $17,000. That was a case of the EGO getting in the way of the patient care. We've never had that problem with a teaching hospital.

Dale

In June 2013 My DW was having severe abdominal pain for a month. Two E.R. trips and Both times they did CT scans, X-rays, and full blood work up and said all was normal and she was having gas related pain. Two weeks following the last E.R. visit we traveled from Oklahoma to Virginia for a family reunion. All along the trip DW kept getting worse. Ultimately things turned critical and we rushed her to E.R. where they found her pancreas enzymes were higher than they had ever seen. She was immediately put in ICU. The Dr. told me she only had a 30%-40% chance of pulling through. It took two weeks to get her stable enough to remove a very diseased gall bladder. She now has a damaged pancreas. Upon return to Oklahoma I went to our local hospital and requested the medical records from her E.R. visits to include all tests. I discovered that every test they had done showed she was having gall bladder issues and had an enlarged pancreas. At the time she did not have insurance. I think the hospital released her for that reason. I said all of this to say this: don't take a chance on upper abdominal pain. P.S Ironically, the hospitalist at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, VA told us that her very first patient after residency died from pancreatitis and she was not as bad as my DW. I thank God every day that she pulled through. And a big shout out to Mary Washington Hospital and physicians as they wrote off our entire bill.

Scottiemom X3

Amandasgramma point about fewer egos is an excellent one. I would separate teaching hospitals though into two categories. A hospital that is actually part of a university vs a hospital which has an affiliation with a university to teach its students. You may find the egos even larger than private practice at the latter style or at least that's my experience. The docs at the latter style hospital not only have the "God's gift to mankind" attitude but additionally an "I'm also a gift to the next generation doctor" syndrome.

Mayo may also be a good investigative choice.

Scottiemom wrote:
I hope you are seeking care at a teaching hospital. If this has gone on for six months, I would probably be thinking about getting a second opinion to find out the cause. There has to be something going on. That's not a normal thing.

So very sorry for what you are going through. Best wishes.

Dale

Another vote for the Teaching Hospitals.. All of my specialist Docs are down at either the University of Penn , or Jefferson Heart... no egos at either , and very thorough ..

Something is causing this , and you need to find that out.

I'm with Scottiemom....after 6 months you ahould have SOME idea what's going on. I think the teaching hospital would be a good idea. The doctors there work hard to find answers and have good equipment. Also, their egos don't get in the way.

Scottiemom wrote:
I hope you are seeking care at a teaching hospital.
Dale

I'm curious, why?

I hope you are seeking care at a teaching hospital. If this has gone on for six months, I would probably be thinking about getting a second opinion to find out the cause. There has to be something going on. That's not a normal thing.

So very sorry for what you are going through. Best wishes.

Dale