Medical Malpractice or Obsession- Part II

To condense, my Dad now sits in a rehab center as I don't dare take him home with such a gross wound and still on intraveinous drugs.

After having brought him back from a stroke only to have a greedy little girl nearly kill him, the nursing home he was in was succeeding in stealing his will to live. I changed the door locks on his house to exclude the greedy one who still had a key and with an aide and without his son's knowledge, took him home. It took us 3 days to get his body temperature back to normal from them having him on an air mattress with no warming  barrier in between, merely a thin sheet; no top sheet, just a thin thing they called a "blanket".


It took us two weeks before we were able to get him strong enough to help us get him in and out of his wheel chair, bed and lift-up recliner. Within the month, he was walking again, so traumatized however he does not to last discussion remember any of this.

What led to this was "Miss Greedy" feeding him God knows what combination of drugs after I had already taken him to the doctor and he was already on medication.With guidance from the wound care center, I healed 3 large wounds and by myself, 4 small ones he had endured from collapsing when "Miss Greedy" forced him to get out of bed after I told him not to get out of bed til I came back. It was Septmber 3, 2009. just days before his 75th birthdayI had found an empty house, calling the police station to ask if the ambulance had dispatched. I got all sorts of disavowals of knowledge. One man called me back and siad he thought that the ambulance had been sent earlier but wasn't sure where they went. I called his doctor, who at that time still cared about his patient. I guess my Dad was making a lot of money for him considering that "Miss Greedy" managed to get my Dad stuck in the hospital nearly every two weeks.

When the aide and I took him home, a nurse from VNJ was ready to call in hospice services. Her exact words: "This poor guy can't take another hospital stay."

So if they were trying to kill my Dad, they failed at that time.

We had just celebrated his not having been hospitalised for 2 years under my supervision of his care and caregivers. I was told by one that I was very strict with her. I was able to tell this one I didn't have to be, she was strict with herself, but I am no more strict with anyone than is required or I would, being able, do myself.
I insist on all surfaces to be steam disinfected, no dust, no residues, garbage emptied every night, medical supplies, bandages and the like seperately triple bagged and immediately disposed of. My Dad's home was cleaner than some hospitals in the USA.

The aforementioned aide left because the State of New Jersey refused to renew her Certifications unless she worked through an agency or in a Nursing Home. My, my, how they bleed us dry.

The next aide was initially conscientious, then became acquainted with "Miss Greedy" who under yet another name was being "The Avon Lady". That aide, just like "Miss Greedy", was also discharged for neglect of her duties, negligence of the patient and direct as well as indirect insubordination and lieing about it, as I discovered when once again two wounds which could have been easily averted by a simple baking soda footbath every two or thee days and daily foot checks and ointments. How hard is that when putting on another person's socks? I had not been able to get there for a few weeks due to having to wait for an engine to be built for my car. When I discovered the wounds, ergo the lies, I didn't do what I wanted to do - I am not a physically violent person - but did not immediately throw her out of the house and render her homeless.
So I began to heal my Dad's feet. The wound on his heel, which had gone to the bone, was healed, the other in the process of healing, but she was banished to her quarters the moment my car pulled into the driveway.

Around his birthday, my Dad started having asthmatic bronchial spasms. I should have treated them myself. Instead, I took him to that doctor in question. The doctor's secretary was on the phone cancelling appointments and told us she had just called to cancel my Dad's but there was no answer.  The doctor didn't feel like staying in his office to write prescriptions, so told me to take him to the ER. No problems there. After two days, my Dad was cleared to go home and the foot doctor couldn't contain himself over the care I had rendered to my Dad's wounds. We spoke for a good ten minutes; his cardiologist just said to him to tell me he's fine, he can go home.

Enter the villain.

Apparently, he had gotten greedy and refused to release my Dad. He had him on an alarmed air bed that if the man so much as moved an alarm went off. Since the cardiologist and the podiatrist and the hospital had declared my Dad able to be discharged, his docotr was unmonitored except for the nurses who for some reason are fearful of countering the doctor or goin to administration. Seven days of these shennanigans and I told the nurse to have my dad ready for discharge at 4PM the next day. At 2:30 I finally got a call from what they refer to as his "primary care" physician ("his doctor") opening with the statement "Your Dad is in very bad shape." He wasn't when he went in there, just couldn't stop coughing, went through my head. Then came a string of lies about this and that and this test and that test (which upon learning later what medication my Dad was being given would have yielded a false positive reading for kidney failure and liver damage). I told him "No. I'm taking my father home".

I called the hospital and spoke to the nurse about these sudden alleged tests. The nurse (a man) called the doctors who were on staff in their field of expertise and neither had been called at any time during the week for blood or urine tests and "primary care" had called not ten minutes before he called me begging them to set up tests for the time I said I was taking him out of there.

My Dad was shaky and could not walk without leaning on me to get to his walker. Later that day when I changed his pull-ups I saw balck and blue marks on his belly. I asked him what that was and he said he didn't know, they weren't telling him anything. I called the hospital.

The black and blue marks were fro injections of Heparin, which my Dad's cardiologist who attended his quad bypass 12/2001 had very clearly dictated a letter stating that blood thinners were not to be used on my Dad.
Interim, the wound had scabbed over. That in treatment of diabetics is a great big NO! In addition, while my Dad had an open diabetic wound, the charlatan stopped ALL of diabetes medication. It is my belief that the intent was to kill my Dad.

We ran about to do all the tests demanded by the culprit, every trip out undid the healing which appeared to have begun. The tissue was patent, the scab had disappeared, but the wound, although not appearing infected; looking at them with jeweler's glasses, the appeared clean. So also agreed the foot doctor, but since the wound was widening we switched to saline dressings from alginates. The wound had been healing so well I didn't bother to order more alginate dressing. It appeared they would not be needed. But we were setting my Dad up for hyperbaric treatment and were in the process of doing all the clearance tests required for that. He was seen at the Hyperbaric center, they looked at the wound and said he was definitely a candidate for it, it would speed the healing and lessen chance for infection. That was a Thursday.

That Saturday, I put my Dad in the shower-there had been a lot of seepage and I did not want to tear the bandages off, so let the shower water dislodge them. When he came out of the shower, he left puddles of blood as he walked. I stopped the bleeding, cleaned the wound and dressed it with saline wet-to-dry therapy. I inistsed he not walk, but made him use his wheel chair.

On Sunday, my original aide came back on duty except for his foot care. Being a CNA(Certified Nursing Assistant), she naturally was standing by to help me. She came close to nearly having to revive me after I removed the bandages from my Dad's foot. I told her to look at it. She said "It wasn't like that!!!" I said "No, it wasn't." I was in shock. And I remain in upset beyond description.

What happens when a blood thinner, Heparin is specified, is administered with the presence of a Reactive Oxygen Species Bacteria (the hospital x-rays & MRI's showed the wound clean and no infection in the bone), the podiatrists having thought my Dad was discharged, nobody bothered to clean or keep the wound from scabbing over; administering Heparin against the directions from my Dad's cardiologist and my objections, Dr. Tusharkumar Mistry decided nobody knew anything and he was going to load my Dad up with Heparin, never having taken a bacterial culture or given any attention to the wound and just disregard everything everyone else said be cause HE was smarter than anyone else. And the bacteria had really high blood sugar levels to feed on; the Heparin causes the scavenger cells (phagocytes) from locating dead cells and engulfing them, in essence, making like pac-man and eating them up. While the wound had externally appeared to heal, there was all this dead tissue from them letting it scab over undisposed of because of the Heparin. The thin tissue which had looked patent was covering a pool of clear yellow exudate mixed with blood. When that oozed out, what I saw was a cavern with tendon and bone exposed.

Perhaps without the delay in the Emergency Room, the surgeaon might not have had to cut out 1/3 of my Dad's metatarsal bone or flesh the size of an ice cream scoop through the full thickness of my Dad's foot and they would have succeeded with IV antibiotics. The surgeon said there was no time to waste. He did say he didn't want my Dad to lose his foot. He called to say he had successfully removed all the infected bone and tissue, which was really difficult. I was still stunned from what I saw, how long the delay was, and having been told the previous night that no one was considering surgery. I'm glad he didn't tell me the mortality rate from this is 73%. I didn't know what to say to the man but "Thank God. Thank you."

I will have to call him to find out what we do next. Later I have to meet with my Dad's prior to 2008 physician and fill him in on the horror show my Dad, his son, and I have endured under that other man, who presented himself as the rescuing night in shining armor but houses one of the blackest, most rotten hearts I've ever encountered.

So you may wonder why I didn't get rid of him before. My Dad made the mistake of writing a dual Power of Attorney wherein his son and I had to agree before any action could be taken. And at the time, he was so enamored of "Miss Greedy" he couldn't see the harm she was causing, much  less any idea what the doctor was talking about or listen to me. It was more than an entire year wherein we did not speak.

I am enraged inside that someone came along and destroyed all the sometimes excruciating work (I'm disabled-sometimes my body is a total mass of pain, my sleep is whenever it comes, I eat when I rememeber in between making sure my Dad is cared for, his medicals are in order, his finances are in order, his house is the optimum of cleanliness and attempt to do the same for myself.

Everyone keeps saying I have to put myself first. In a convoluted sense,the effort I put into keeping my Dad  well is putting myself first. Because keeping him well, I don't have to heal him. But the nurses and aides and too many doctors don't care about that; how bad a diaper rash has gotten (so bad Dad needed IV Mitronydazole) or even tell the doctor that the man has had feces running out of him for a week (I told the doctor-he took a culture-it was a stomach virus and required oral mitronydazole). Yet they tell me that they had to change his pull-ups 6 times in 7 hours.

God help us. More needs changing than just the financing of health care in the USA and I hope this writing will prevent someone else from losing a limb or their life.

Prinzessin Hohenzoller 

Medical Malpractice or Obsession?

We keep hearing things about the greatness of the US medical care system.

It's "great" allright, in the senses that it's large. But "great" in the sense of "good" it isn't.

I've been going through hell this past week. Why?

Because an obsessive/compulsive/Napoleonic Complexed physician nearly succeeded in causing the loss of my diabetic stepfather's foot.

For two years, I've been doing daily wound care nursing, rain or shine, well or ill, for my "Dad", who unfortunately, has become diabetic. The wounds on his feet have not been properly diagnosed or treated since day one. They come from restless leg syndrome, wherein he "doggy paddles" his feet in his sleep and from a bad habit he has of propping his legs into a "v" by leaning them on his heels. These developed in my absence while he was under the care of a delusional person who first called herself a homemaker, then a home health aide, then thought she was a nurse and finally thought she was a doctor. She was anything but an actual caregiver, the position she was hired for. My stepbrpther, his own son, is not the most observant or astute person when it comes to well-care. Between their shennanigans, they almost killed my Dad.

In the hospital, his already severe diaper area wounds became so severe his buttocks were bleeding. No attention was given to the wounds on his feet. The docotr was pumping him full of blood thinners and Vancomycin, which did nothing for his wounds. He was moved to a nursing home where I took control and demanded they allow me to take him to Wound Care Center at St. Peter's. They were reluctant; I was adamant. I got my way. Coming in to the nursing home to do the wound care daily as prescribed, they finally got on the ball and seeing me come in with my little pink medical bag, they finally got panicky and started doing the wound care as prescribed. (I had complained to the attending physician that they were failing to do so.)
That was 2009. I healed 9 wounds on the man in this time frame. On October 17, we celebrated that under my supervision, he had not been hospitalized in 2 years. Prior to this, he was in and out of the hospital like it had a revolving door set up for repeat patients. I couldn't get my brother to see. After October 17, 2009, I changed all the locks on the house and basically kicked all but my Dad, myself and a real Home Health Aide out. It took us 3 days to get his body temperature back up to normal; 2 weeks for him to be able to get himself out of his wheelchair and into his chair and bed. He was unable to do so when I "sprung" him from the "nursing home". This country has few true "Nursing homes"; they have "sick & elderly storage" facilities, where they put you and wait for you to die.

The first encounter I had with a "Socail Worker" at one place my dad was erroneously sent left me stunned. Her first question was "What are your wishes in regard to your father?" I said "We'd like him to come home as soon as feasible." She said that wasn't what she meant. What were our final wishes for my father. I told her we didn't have any "final wishes" at this point, we wanted him well. If he was going to die, the hospital would have kept him. I learned that isn't so anymore necessarily. They ship them off to nursing home. Which accounts for a lower mortality rate at any given hospital. Who knew?

After they refused to let me take him to the hospital when he was obviously having a stroke, as soon as he made it clear he was planning to escape on his ow, I was going to take him out on  visitation and get him t a medical facility. They called 3 days before and wanted to know if we had gotten him a caregiver as they were going to release him on that day. They released him, saying, he'll be back or he'll be dead. Well, with 20 medications, some he should never have been on, keeping his blood sugar at 90 or below to keep him quiet, no wonder they thought so.

Within 5 days, my Dad was clearly not himself. I called my contacts who advised we bring him to a facility which was both medical and mental health. We did. His heart rate had dropped to 32 beats per minute and that was why he was acting as though in dementia, in conjunction with being heavily overmedicated. He was in for a week, out for 2 days, and back in again. This time for so many weeks I lost count. Epinephrine shots directly into his heart. The only person he recognized was me. He thought he still lived in a home he hadn't lived in since he went into the army at age 18. He was going to go out to the corner and take a bus there. He got confused and hallucinated a toilet next to a sink in the hospital hallway where there was none. The bathroom in his room looked like part of the wall, even I couldn't figure out where it was.

He finally got out and I got the psychiatrist to take him off the Depakote Sprinkles. She switched him to Abilify. I fired his Home Health Aide for refusing to take his blood pressure when I knew there was a problem. Her comment to me "I took it at lunch yesterday." I asked her, "Do you know what a nitroglycerin tablet is?" "NO.". That did it.

My dad was improving, recovering from the stroke when Miss I Am Everything decided to push her way in, and in the process first get my best friend not only to leave her caregiver position, but never speak to me again. Then she succeeded in forcing me out. And proceeded down the path of nearly killing my Dad.

My Dad and I have a very close paranormal connection. I always know when something isn't right. if not for that, he would have died in 2007. I'd had a bad couple of weeks with my own illnesses and trusted his son to watch him. I spoke to both of them, daily to my dad. They told me everything was fine. I had that awful feeling and dragged myself to his house. There he sat in his shorts with all these holes in his legs which were filled with decaying matter. I talked him into going to hospital. He stood up an colapsed. I told him not to move. I called the emergency squad.

The emergency room left him sitting in a wheelchair for multiple hours before I finally wrangled a guenry from them. That was the last time he was conscious for 5 days. He had MRSA. sepsis, pneumonia, subdural hematoma and internal bleeding from collapsing on to his walker. He had been afraid to go to the hospital because he thought they would cut his legs off. That was before the first nursing home where he had his first stroke. He already had a heart attack years before and a quadruple bypass, but was still a normal, functional human being.

Everyone refused to allow his usual doctors to attend him. Everyone refused to transfer him. Along came this nice little man who asked to be put in charge of the case. He gave me his assessment and it made sense. Initially, in my experience, there was no physician who was more attentive to his patient.

But my Dad had been put on Abilify. One night I missed a dose and my Dad seemed normal the next morning.
I gave him the prescribed dose and he was whacked out again the next day. I researched it, told the doctor. He had to put him in the hospital to observe this himself before he took him off the medicine. It escalated. More and more hospital emergency room admissions, and my dad getting sicker and sicker. When I took over, I fully researched everything. If the medicicne was stopped, I told he docotr at next scheduled visit. He'd get mad. Under my care, my Dad didn't need him much, just the right medicine. Which it turns out he wasn't getting. He was given medicine for high blood pressure when his BP and heart rate were low. He was given Lipitor when his strength and muscles began wasting away. He was given blood thinners contrary tohis cardiologists' orders. He was kept in hospital despite all other docotrs having cleared him to go back to home care.This one refused to discharge him, telling "Your father is in really bad shape." I asked what was wrong. In reality, there had not been any reason for him to be in the hospital, I was met with a barrage of lies and excuses. I took my Dad out of there after speaking to everyone who had cleared him to go home two days after admission. When I took him out, he was barely able to stand on his own. I learned that they had been giving him shots of Heparin in his belly, taken him off all diabetes medicine, and given an IV drip of Vancomycin. On admission to the hospital, his foot wound was examined, x-rayed, MRI's, scanned, re-examined. The foot doctor was beside himself with praise for the condition I had his wound in. By the time I took him out of the hospital, no one had done anything but run a 4oz syringe of saline and putting a gauze square, unsecured, on it. the wound had expanded and begun to be infected.

Under home care, he began to improve, but I wanted to be sure I was moving in the right direction. I took him to a foot docotr whose group had previously healed a serious wound on my Dad's foot, wherein the flesh had detached from the foot itself. The doctor opted for slaine threapy and heperbaric treatments. In process of getting the tests needed for hyperbaric treatment, the wound had begun oozing exudate mixed with blood, with slight infection. I use jeweler's headgear to examine the wounds. It seemed to have cleared enough for my Dad to have a shower. I left the dressing in  place and let the shower water soak it off so I wouldn't cause it to bleed.

When he came out of the shower, the wound was puddling blood. He was somewhat "out of it" and I had to holler at him to put his foot up, it was bleeding a lot. I stopped the bleeding, checked for infection, cleaned it with saline and dressed it. I put protective quilt batting and the booties on him to protect the wound. When I changed the dressing on Sunday, the wound had collapsed from the inside out and his bone was clearly (to me)visible. I got him to the docotr Monday and told him I didn't think this could wait for Bariatric; he agreed-the toes and heel were cold, but the instep and above were pink and very warm. He said to go to the emergency room, he needed immediate IV therapy.

The ER was a nightmare. They didn't triage, they just took names. Despite the docotrs having called ahead to have my Dad admitted, we had to wait with a bunch of people who were there simply because they hadn't gone to a regular doctor and felt it convenient to go to the ER now. After 3 hours,, due to muscle wasting from the Lipitor, my dad couldn't stand any more. We had to leave.

I called the doctors the next day. They said go back tothe same ER. We got there at 4PM. Finally at 11PM someone attended my Dad-despite having given the admissions people all the information, that he had a severe infection with an exposed bone and emaceration and was oozing blood and exudate from his foot. 
Thursday AM I got a call from a surgeon whom I had never heard of telling me they were ready to go into surgery to "debride" the wound. I told him I wanted to call someone else. He told me there wasn't time. I asked him, are you telling me this infection is moving so fast you can't wait?" He said "Basically". I asked him a couple more questions, like "You are only going to debride the wound, nothing further? etc." He said he really wouldn't know for sure til he got in there and saw it, he only had 10 minutes to get into the o.r. and I had to talk to the anesthesiologist, who wasn't in such a hurry and listened carefully to what I said. My Dad came through fine, and seemed to be recovering by 2PM when I got to the hospital (his Home Health Aide had been bedside the whole time). That is until we saw what this debridement consisted of. Like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and chopped out a piece of my Dad's foot. The surgean had taken 1/3 of the metacarpal bone, but the tendons were intact and said it was difficult because the infection had gone into the joint.


The discussed the whole thing with the cardiologist the other night. I gave him the whole history. I don't remember the medical name, but the heparin injection which had been ordered by my dad's "Primary" while in RWJUH had somehow disrupted the oxygen supply and the infection began from the inside out.

It's a good thing I have a lot of self control. I am very careful around my Dad not to cause any cardiac issues or stress him into a stroke. When I saw the flesh gone from around the tendons and the bone that Sunday night, I wanted to scream with all my might. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. With and without my jewler's workbench glasses.I packed it with saline as the last pack of alginate composite had disappeared. I told my Da, "It's really bad. I don't know what happened to it, but it is beyond anything I can take care of.

We left the ER, I changed the dressings with saline. Before leaving for the E.R. the next day, I found the Fibracol Plus I had left. The wound nearly swallowed up a four-folded piece 2"x2" Fibracol. By the time the E.R. took us, it was satuarated, as were his bandages. They never removed the Fibracol and left the wound open. Finally they wrapped some gauze around it. While he was in a hallway with all kinds of people going back and forth, a wound down to the bone exposed. Why? Maybe because he said he wasn't in pain. He has diabetic neuropathy and no feeling in his feet. He had no idea what was going on down there. The doctor asked him why he was ther and he said "Because my doctor said I had to be." They wouldn't have cared even if he was in pain. They didn't care about the lady who was in severe pain. I told her she did not have to stay there, she could go to another hsopital, which was what was going to happen if we were not seen within the hour. I was on the phone to another ER when they called us in.

I'm sick over it. And that's not even the end......

more mistakes and overstepping report tomorrow-like why is the infectious disease doctor prescribing cardiovascular drugs when ON THE RECORD the patient's cardiologist's partner was in attendance....

Prinzessin Hohenzoller