Current Events > I had to face the very near-reality of my mom dying a couple of months ago.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I decided to write this tonight for a couple of reasons. One being that I think putting my thoughts down in this manner and sharing it with strangers will help me cope with it and get more closure, and the other being that I'd like to hear your thoughts on the situation and how you would handle it yourselves. However, please know going in that this is a long story.

Several years ago, my mom was diagnosed with a heart condition, ventricular tachycardia, commonly called Vtac. Essentially the heart flutters at a very high speed causing blood to not be pumped properly through the body and making her pass out. There were a few times that she fell out of nowhere and would cut up her face pretty badly, and we later realized that it was because of this.

It's treated with a procedure called an ablation. They go into the heart through the arteries and try to burn away the problem tissues causing the irregularity. Now, my mom went through this TWICE some years back with her regular heart doctor, and he was unable to solve the problem. He also found that her arteries were perfect, no cholesterol blockage at all. Other than this condition that they considered an electrical problem, her heart itself was very healthy and fully functioning.

She wasn't satisfied just going on with medicine though, so she decided to do the more dangerous procedure of an external ablation, where the doctor would burn tissues on the outside of the heart. This was done over 2 years ago now, and that event caused me very extreme grief, as I wrestled with my mom not making it through that procedure and trying to convince her to just take the drugs instead.

Well, as it turned out, this was unsuccessful as well, as they could not get the heart to go into Vtac! She was awake with them in her heart, pumping in testosterone and whatever else, but the heart wouldn't cooperate, so he wasn't able to actually do anything. It was all just a waste of time, money, emotions, and the awful pain she went through.

Fast forward to 2017. She makes quarterly visits to the heart doctor (if that) and everything seems good. She takes her drugs and feels healthy. Up until one day she gets her refill and she sees that the pills have completely changed. She asked the pharmacist to make sure it was the right stuff, and was told that it's the same thing, but the manufacturer was changed so it looks different.

Well, right as she got onto this new regimen, she started feeling like she was passing out again, heart racing again, losing it again, and every time I saw her she would act like it was happening. We were at a certain event just sitting there and she would go into periods where she was staring off into nothing and then say she didn't know what happened the past couple minutes.

This culminated on a particularly snowy day as she was driving to work. Because people are idiots and weren't used to some snow being on the ground, traffic was completely stopped on the freeway and she ended up being on the road for 2 hours. She never made it to work that day because her heart went into Vtac. She ended up getting my dad to call the hospital and she turned her car around and drove back there. Then he calls me and lets me know, so I left work at lunch time.

This is where things get ugly and I'm going to get very emotional as I relive it.
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She arrives at the hospital, at her doctor that she's gone to many times before, and they begrudgingly put her into a room. Once there and someone finally looks at her, they first argued with her that she was even in it, but once they hooked her up, they told her that they can see she was in Vtac earlier, but she isn't now... so go home. They sent her away.

She wouldn't leave though. She went to the food court and sure enough, went right back into the rhythm. She marched to the ER this time and said "I am in Vtac, admit me now." They said you're not in Vtac, calm down. She said "I will not calm down. Get me hooked up." So, they did! And they found that yes, she's in Vtac!

They ended up taking her to a room in the ICU where the alarm was going off constantly and nurses would come in and mute it. They finally tried some kind of shock treatment to make it go down, and it would not. I had been there a couple hours at this point and finally a doctor came around.

Yet, it wasn't "her" doctor. It was another doctor who worked beneath him. Her doctor never once showed up during this entire ordeal. What he told us is that nothing they've tried has worked to get her heart under control. There are other drugs available that they could try, but he saw this as a great opportunity to fix the problem once and for all, by sending her to the other hospital, with the other doctor who could do the external ablation.

He told us that it's perfectly safe to leave her in Vtac for a few days, so she'll be fine. Now, all my parents wanted to ask him about was insurance covering it and whatnot, and I'm getting all pissed thinking for one he's a doctor so he doesn't know what your damn insurance covers, and also it doesn't fucking matter. We'll figure it out.

They called the other hospital and were told that the doctor is there and can do it now, but they don't have a room in the CCU to put her in after, so they delayed it until the next morning. Now, I had to leave to go to a class, so I told her goodbye and to stay strong, knowing very well this could be the last time I ever saw her.

What I didn't anticipate was my dad leaving soon after, as well as her parents and siblings. She was left alone in that room all night with no care whatsoever.

The way my mom describes this experience is horrifying. She wasn't hooked up to any kind of drugs, pain killers, fever reducers, nothing. There was just a machine watching her heart rate. They reported to the other hospital that she was stable, and the doctor there actually called sometimes during the night to check on her status just to be safe, and they told her she was good.

In reality, she was in immense pain, feeling her heart pumping out of her skin, and eventually progressing to the point where she was vomiting. They gave her a bucket that she was leaning over and puking this slime into, but eventually she stopped even bothering. She was vomiting onto herself, letting her face get covered in it. She no longer had the strength or the will to move. She was succumbing to death.
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When morning came and they started getting her ready to transfer her, they found her covered in vomit and thought oh, we can't send her like this! They washed her hair before sending her out to the ambulance.

When the EMT hooked her up in the ambulance, she says that he started actually screaming and swearing because of what he found. Her blood pressure was incredibly low, unlike the reports that they were given. This was meant to be a standard patient transfer and instead he found himself in an emergency situation where they had to handle it like a gunshot victim and prepare life-support techniques. He screamed to the driver that they needed to hit the road now or she's not going to make it.

Now again keep in mind, she wasn't coming in off the street like this. A hospital's ICU allowed her to get to this point and lied to the other hospital that she was stable. It's truly remarkable that this was allowed to happen and that this place calls itself a hospital.

Meanwhile, I let work know the situation and that I won't be coming in the next day. My dad calls me at like 7 AM saying that she's been transferred and he comes to pick me up and drive over there.

When we get there and I see her... her face told the story of the agony she was in, but her body painted the picture. Her body was just shaking and her skin was so pale. I'm asking why are you shaking like that? The nurse or whoever it was is just like she's in Vtac, so the heart is making her that way.

I could tell that something wasn't right though. This was not the healthy condition they said she would be in. This was not how I left her yesterday as she was arguing with the doctor about insurance coverage. She looked like an old hag on her last legs.

My grandparents showed up with some aunts and uncles and then the doctor came around. When he had a moment, he took us down the hallway and he told us "I want you to know that you were led to believe she was in much better condition than she really is. We're going to take her up and do what we can, and if we find the problem, there is a chance that she fully recovers from this. However there is also a probability that she does not survive the day."
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This doctor is actually quite famous and renowned. My family was mad that he said this and thought he was making excuses, but I understood completely. He was being honest and he was blindsided by her condition. He later told us that if they had properly reported that her status was declining, he would have taken her immediately. This other hospital truly left her to die. By the time they got her hooked up here, her blood pressure was very close to 0.

We went back into the room and I tried whatever I could to try and get her spirits up. I started talking about my class the night before and how great it went and how excited I am, then the nurse started talking to me about it and I really think that this helped to establish a personality to the case, that this isn't just some old lady, it's a mom who has a lot of people here early and a son who is still trying to go to school and start his real career. He told me that she's in the best place she can be right now and they're going to take care of her.

Finally they wheeled her out of the room and we said our last goodbyes. They almost took her away without giving me a chance because of the urgency in the situation but I got up to her and I hugged her and I told her I loved her. I never say that to my mom but I made sure I said it this time.
What happened next as I stepped back from that bed was a sensation that I hadn't felt since I was probably 5 years old. Completely out of my control, my face twisted into this crazy contortion and I openly wept. I was loud and I couldn't stop myself. I even tried turning it into a smile and stopping it, and I couldn't. All I could do was shake my head and say "I don't know why I'm doing this."

Her bed was surrounded with so many people and the women witnessed this and are all going Awwww, it's ok, your mom's going to be fine, and I set THEM off into crying. It became a whole scene as they took her through the doors and I stood there crying uncontrollably.

You might think that this is the emotional climax of the story. You would be wrong in that assertion.

We went to the waiting room, but not before my dad filled out some forms, basically in the event of her death. They wanted this squared away first because it doesn't go as well if they wait for later...

We waited for over 3 hours before my dad got a call from the doctor. He said that they were done and they're just trying to get her heart back under control now, but that she did well. Once they assign her a room, we can head up there. Before long, sure enough we're given a room number.

We get up there, meet with a nurse who tells us that she should be up in 20 minutes. Of course in a hospital you can't take a timeframe too literally, but we started getting really worried after an hour. We had amassed a pretty large group of people now and were growing more and more restless. Finally we got a nurse to give us an update that when they were going to bring her up, her heart went back into Vtac, so that's the reason for the delay, and it could be another hour, she didn't know.

It was indeed over an hour before we saw her come rolling down the hallway with 10+ people surrounding the bed. She was hooked up to as many devices as you could imagine and things plugged into her pumping all sorts of drugs in.

We still had to wait out there as they got her settled in. After waiting all day, the 15 minutes that passed felt very short before over the intercom we heard

CODE BLUE CCU, CODE BLUE CCU
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I'll never forget the look in my aunt's face as the tears poured out and she started running back and forth shouting "This can't be happening!" In total contrast, my dad sat there on the couch just staring at the floor, almost like nothing was going on. I was standing there, leaning over the railing, just thinking fuck... my mom is dead.

I thought of the things left undone and unsaid. I thought of my relationship with her family. I thought about what I'm going to do without a mom. I thought about how this could have been avoided and that it shouldn't be like this.

If you're unaware, a code blue means cardiac arrest. It typically means that the person's heart has stopped, they are legally dead, and all available hands in the hospital are called in to try and save this person's life.

As I pondered my new reality, the hordes of doctors, nurses, and students came walking briskly down the hall, followed by the priest. This was a Catholic hospital and they sent him to help the family with grieving. This sent my aunt into worse fits, told him to go away, and she ran into the fray.

She goes up and starts trying to push through the crowd and get to her. I'm watching from the waiting room and see as someone grabs a chair and makes her sit down and try to use calming body language and explain things.

My dad still hadn't moved but I finally summoned up the courage to go over there myself. Some guy sees me and says he's the attending fellow or whatever, and that everything is fine. She just went back into the Vtac again, which is expected at this point because the heart is so weak and has been damaged. It was just protocol to do the code blue and it was not a cardiac arrest.

I could never adequately describe the gamut of emotions I was going through. To first be trying to accept that I'm now living in a world without my mom, and then realize that she's actually ok and that they're just trying to give her the absolute best care possible so that it doesn't turn into a tragedy.

Over the course of the next week, she became a legend within the hospital. People who had been involved that day would come to visit, and other people would say they heard the story. They did not think that she would live, but a miracle happened.

Because of the state she was delivered to that hospital in, the doctor said that despite her heart returning to regular function and never needing to use the pacemaker again after that first night, they had to install a defibrillator in her heart. It was a liability issue. Now, if her heart goes above 165 BPM, she will be shocked, and it is said that it would completely knock her to the ground if it happens.

So now she's going through life feeling like she can't exercise because she's afraid of it getting to high. Even though the problem WAS found and she's been doing great ever since, she's stuck.

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Before being released from the hospital, she decided that she wanted to file a lawsuit against the first hospital that left her to die. I gleefully began contacting lawyers right away, but none of them would take the case. Because she didn't die, and because she has had the heart condition, there isn't a malpractice case.

Isn't there a case there, though? We have it documented from the doctor that they sent falsified reports. We know that they left her without any care overnight and transferred her very close to death. How can they be allowed to get away with that like nothing happened?
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Sorry
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Regarding the case, im sorry but you may not have one. I was tboned on my motorcycle and didnt get a dime
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Damn, that sounds heart wrenching. I'm sorry.
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Just realized I misread the ending. I'm glad to hear your mother is at least "okay". But that definitely sucks.

Anyways, really sorry to hear that TC. Hope whoever screwed up in the first hospital gets some sort of punishment, or at least feels guilty.
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Yeah, hospitals suck. The people in my area refer to the local hospital as "kill hill" because of how bad the patients are treated. If you're seriously hurt, and are sent there, it's likely you won't make it out.

Fortunately, they seem to have stopped trying to treat critical patients and instead fly them to better hospitals if its serious. I lost my uncle, and grandma to this place, and very nearly my dad too.
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Hard to say. At the time of initial handover, her cardiac output might've beeen stable enough for regular ICU observation, and it's unclear what the timeline of deterioration in her condition was in the peri-transfer period. Sucks that it happened, but I wouldn't get your hopes up in terms of retribution

Sorry you guys had to go through that but at least she's alive.

I'd had ablation done a decade ago for arterial ventricular node reentrant tachycardia, I'm in England though so healthcare is set up differently here, it's not perfect for all, but I was well taken care of at every stage. I would suggest however you do not become consumed with a legal case. Cherish the chance you have as a family, don't let litigation become your life. If there's a case pursue it but do not let it become you.

As a country, get your fucking shit together though.
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wow that sucks
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That sucks. I didn't realize that doctors could be so unprofessional and uncaring. It's good that she survived though
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Dang boy
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GOATSLAYER posted...

That sucks. I didn't realize that doctors could be so unprofessional and uncaring. It's good that she survived though

Yup and I wanna be clear that I am eternally grateful for that 2nd hospital and the lead doctor, and I don't want to cheapen what they did.

Yet at the same time, I have a strong hatred for the first hospital and that worthless bastard who calls himself a doctor and it makes me irate to think they would do that to a patient.

BIackest_Night posted...

Hard to say. At the time of initial handover, her cardiac output might've beeen stable enough for regular ICU observation, and it's unclear what the timeline of deterioration in her condition was in the peri-transfer period. Sucks that it happened, but I wouldn't get your hopes up in terms of retribution

Sounds like you're well-versed on the subject!

As I understand malpractice suits, you need to be able to prove that because the doctor did the wrong things, the person died or had lasting damage caused. Since her condition was pre-existing, there's no solid way to say that she wouldn't have needed the defibrillator anyways.

Which is fine, I get that. However, the hospital records themselves show wrongdoing. They falsely reported her as being in stable condition. They lied to the doctor who actually was going well out of his way to check on her through the night. You would think that this alone would be enough to make SOMETHING happen.
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Uh yeah you would think they are liable somehow, they neglected her almost to death. I don't see why just because someone didn't die that there is no suit to be filed. I see those commercial for lawyers about neglect in nursing homes all the time. Kind of sick that your care is left in the hands of people who aren't held responsible if they don't care for you correctly. Sounds like a bunch of bs to me.

I can't imagine how hopeless her and all of you really felt when she went through that procedure all for not. How awful. I'm glad she pulled through after everything, she sounds like a fighter. My dad had a pacemaker and I know it's not ideal but there are some quality of life suffering things that are worth it to be able to still have a life at all.

I hope it brought you and your mom closer, it def seems to have made a big impact on you. Thanks for fighting through the pain of reliving this to tell this story. I hope it can help you even if it doesn't change anyone else's mind who may be taking their parents for granted. I lost both my parents to diseases, one to congestive heart failure so I know the despair that comes with knowing a persons vital organ isn't holding up and it's a terrible hopeless thing.

Hospitals can be terrible. Insurance Companies, the most evil institutions in the developed world, are to blame. They incentivise doctors to spend as little time as possible with each patient.

It doesn't look like you have legal recourse. You could make a group to spread awareness of that terrible hospital. Get your story heard, and hurt their business.
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DarkChozoGhost posted...

Hospitals can be terrible. Insurance Companies, the most evil institutions in the developed world, are to blame. They incentivise doctors to spend as little time as possible with each patient.

It doesn't look like you have legal recourse. You could make a group to spread awareness of that terrible hospital. Get your story heard, and hurt their business.

Bad idea. They coukd sue tc for smearing names or soem bullshit like that.

I am,so sorry tc. I dont even know what to say.
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First let me say, I am glad to hear your mom is alive (and I hope doing well), second I am very sorry for the pain that you and your family went through. You asked for our thoughts, if I had to go through that with either of my parents, I would be thoroughly devastated (I am very close with my folks)......I probably wouldn't adjust well at all. I would be angry as all hell at the hospital if I found out that my mom or dad had been left to die and the reports had been falsified. I am in total agreement with your mom, the hospital should be sued! You most certainly have a case!

Best of luck to you and your family!

Then the EMT looked at you and said "I need about tree fiddy "
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AcFan87 posted...

First let me say, I am glad to hear your mom is alive (and I hope doing well), second I am very sorry for the pain that you and your family went through. You asked for our thoughts, if I had to go through that with either of my parents, I would be thoroughly devastated (I am very close with my folks)......I probably wouldn't adjust well at all. I would be angry as all hell at the hospital if I found out that my mom or dad had been left to die and the reports had been falsified. I am in total agreement with your mom, the hospital should be sued! You most certainly have a case!

Best of luck to you and your family!

Thank you.
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Afternoon bump in case anyone wants to read
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Well then I guess I don't have much else to say.
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Damn cuh that story was a rollercoaster ride. Glad to hear that she is still alive.
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Glad she made it. Had bad experiences with hospitals myself these last few months. I hate them.
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Damn, I really wish there was something you could do about the first hospital. I would honestly go with the "spread word around" if you can't sue them. Gather information, make sure you have proof that they lied about her condition. Get corroborating statements from the second hospital that saved your mother's life. That way if they end up sueing you for "slander" you can counterclaim and tell them they left your mother to die and lied about her condition. You have a right to warn other people about this hospital, so that other people don't have to go through with this.
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That is a seriously fucked up situation. Sorry man.
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