why did he have to die?

[dee284]

My husband, age 62, had 3 bouts with diverticulitis, in the last 15 years. After his last colonoscopy , his Dr. recommended  a sigmoidectomy. He told my husband he needed to do this,  so he wouldn't have any more problems with the diverticulitis.This was an elective procedure. He had surgery on May 18th 2010.  The surgery went well and they were planning to release him from the hospital on  May 24, as long as he started having normal bowel movements.. On  Friday, 21st, He started to complain  about nausea and pain in his abdomen. Around lunch time he had projectile vomiting of bile. The nurse called the Dr. and he came by the hospital around 5 o clock that afternoon. He entered the room with a smile and stated,he heard that my husband had a bile movement.  I explained to him that the bile movement was through his mouth not the rectum.. He looked startled at first and then added,"no harm done as long as it did not happen again". He was leaving the hospital for his week end activities.  
       The next day, Sat., my husband was getting out of bed to go to the bathroom, and he started screaming in pain.He stated that it felt like something had ripped in his abdomen.  The nurses kept telling him he had gas and kept giving him pain med. and suppositories. After an hour of him begging for help, the  nurse finally called the  week end Dr. that was filling in for the surgeon. He moved my husband to  ICU. They placed an NG tube in him and the nurse was shocked to see how much bile that was coming  out of him and kept filling up the containers.  He stayed in ICU   totally drugged up , Saturday, Sunday and Monday afternoon, his  surgeon decided to stop by and check on him.  He finally realized what was going on and  rushed him into surgery. By this time he was in septic shock and his organs were shutting down..   The Dr. told us  the the sutures in the colon has  came loose and his body was filled with feces. He wound up having a total of 3 surgeries in  3 weeks. During the
second surgery , they put him on blood pressure suppressers. This caused his intestates to   die from lack of blood.   During this time his surgeon decided to take an extended vacation, and was gone from the hospital for 5 days. When he came back to check on him, he realized that he was not doing well at all.  His third surgery, they filled him up with 12 liters of fluid, to keep his blood pressure  up , so he wouldn't die on the operating table. He never regained consciousness, and died about 12 hours after surgery.
        My family and I are still in shock and cannot believe that in this day and time with the technology available , how could they let him lie in ICU  for 3 days  and not know that he was in septic shock and that something terrible was going on? Why did  my husband have to wait until it was convenient for the Dr. to see him, before action could be taken?

Our kids insisted on an autopsy. Today I got the results. The Dr. and hospital  claimed that he was admitted to the hospital with a perforated bowel secondary to severe sigmoid diverticulitis.   This is a lie, he did not even have an active infection when he entered the hospital. I  am so hurt and confused right now ,I don't know what to do to make any sense. of this.   Can  you help me?


                                                                                     dee284

[MarkTPease]

Dee,
I am sorry for your loss and I will pray for you and your children.  Remember that GOD has a will for things that we have no control over.  Despite what happened seek refuge in his word and from your pastor.

Please do not talk to anyone from the hospital, do not sign anything from the hospital, and contact your attorney.

May god comfort you in your time of sorrow!

  

[TrudieC]

I am so very sorry for your loss.  Reading your husband's story takes me back to a similar situation that I had.

I had severe ulcerative colitis and my gastro doc made it hard on me to get appointments and as a result I was in the hospital again being treated for dehydration and blood loss.  I was in a private room and one evening the most excrutiating pain occurred.  I called the nurse and told her that something had happened inside.  She told me that after having this disease for 10 years that I should be able to handle the pain better.  I pleaded with her that this was not normal but she ignored me.  I tried calling doctor's office and couldn't get anyone, called my husband and he didn't believe me either.  

In the morning when they switched nursing shifts, the new nurse found me with almost no blood pressure and unconscious in my bed.  They took an xray (portable) and determined that I had a perforated bowel and my body was full of  feces.  They rushed me into surgery.  My family told me later that when the surgeon came out of the operating room that he rammed my gastro doc up against the wall and put his fists to his face and threatened him that he'd kill him if he ever sent a patient in such bad shape to him again.

In the ICU I had a breathing tube so couldn't talk.  The pain was out of this world.  If my family just touched my bed a bit I would squirm with pain.  My SIL finally figured out I was not getting any pain relief.  They called the surgeon back as the port they had sewed into my chest where the morphine was being pumped was not in right so I was not getting anything for the pain.  After that was fixed pure relief!  

They weren't sure I would make it and I was pumped with every imaginable antibiotic and stayed in the ICU for a month.  I did recover and after a year had reconstructive surgery to create a J-pouch and I am now continent again even though I don't have a large bowel.  At least it cured me of my ulcerative colitis.

The reason I share this story is that I never sued the doctor, nurse or hospital.  I live in this area and did not want to hurt any future dealings which I knew I would have due to my bad health.  This happened 18 years ago and I am still angry with myself for not doing anything.  I would encourage you to go down the legal route.  It will help you to deal with your feelings of anger and it will help to ensure this doesn't happen to another patient like your husband.

[ggreg]

Poor communication between patients and nurses and docs seem to be the bane of our existence these days on account of less staff to do more work, perhaps.  And while people do take on risks when they submit to surgery, I think in your husband's situation, folks simply did not respond to him as well as they could have.  

First mistake was when your husband was three days out from his op and threw up all that bile, becuz the nurse should have called whatever doctor was on the floor when his doc didn't show up within the hour, your husband should have been moved to ICU right then, and a serious determination should have been attempted as to why he was vomiting bile, unless I'm not familiar with typical problems postop in abdominal surgery...my husband had abdominal surgery and he didn't do that.

Next mistake is when your husband reported the sensation that his bowels were ripped, and he finally did get put in the ICU, and the nurse noticed so much bile coming up the nose tube, whatever doc was on the floor or the one who put him in ICU should have right then put together the patient complaint of ripping, with bile rushing up the tube, and considered the possibility that his intestinal sutures had come loose, which they had, before your husband inevitably went into septic shock three days later and his organs began to shut down, which is more or less what led to his death, which would not have happened if only post-op care had been rather more responsive than it was, in my view.  

There is also a possibility that the surgery itself was goofed up, which led to his two incidents of unnatural bile output.  But there is also a chance that your husband was in pretty fragile health to begin with, perhaps his liver was in failure for example and surgery was just plain too hard on him...but even then, the docs should have known that before they did the operation, and thus put him in ICU immediately and longer, to make sure nothing wierd went unnoticed.  But the real kicker is when they finally get him in ICU and he lays there for three days without anybody attempting to figure out why he felt like his guts were ripped, why he was in so much pain, and why so much bile came out of his nose tube coupled with vomiting it the day before!  Gee whiz!

I am normally the first one to stand up for our docs and nurses and hospitals and I would be reluctant to drag something like this out, but in your situation, especially when you witnessed this whole awful thing go down, I think you might want speak to an attorney, let him take care of it, you need some answers or an apology, and perhaps eventually you should receive a settlement of some kind to somehow make up for what you were exposed to, not to mention the endless personal and financial losses caused by the death of your husband that may have indeed been preventable.  

I am so sorry things turned out so badly, I would have gone out of my mind with frustration over the situation you were faced with.  As for the autopsy (mis)statements, that your husband was admitted with a perforated bowel, your attorney needs to forthwith get a copy of the colonoscopy report that led to his doc wanting to do surgery, see if it reported a perforated bowel.  

And actually, the business in the autopsy about your husband having severe diverticulitis,  that should have been a risk factor big enough to have caused a much higher level of care and more serious reaction by the docs and nurses to his projectile vomiting, his pain in his gut from ripping, and tons of bile going up his nose tube, and certainly no medical personnel should have let him lay there sick as a dog for days on end!  I hope you will visit with an attorney and see what he says about all this, they will be able to distinguish what's expected and what isn't, and they can obtain that colonoscopy report.  Or if you're not ready to do something like that, you could arrange to visit with a professor of gastroenterology at a nearby medical school, see what he thinks before making some big legal move.