Regular readers of my blog over on "Mugsy's Rap Sheet" know that I've been dealing with a medical catastrophe these past few months concerning my mom.
Last May, my 75 year old mother, who was very health conscious, who walked three miles twice a week, watched her weight and still went out dancing in nightclubs with her younger friends, decided to mention a three year old lump in her cheek to her doctor. My mother called me at home, shaken & upset when the doctor told her she needed chemotherapy. I told her doctor "No! Absolutely not!", but the doctor bullied her into having the chemo. As expected, the chemo made her severely ill and she ended up in the hospital. Once in the hospital, further medical mistakes led to a collapsed lung, cardiac arrest and ending up in a vegetative state all in the space of 12 days.
And I can't sue.
I live in Texas, and in 2002, Governor Rick Perry pushed hard for a ridiculous "Medical Tort Reform" bill that promised lower insurance premiums by limiting medical malpractice judgements to just $250,000 for a lifetime of care, be the victim 1 or 100 (because in Republican-World, "tort reform" is a panacea for controlling costs). Thus, ensuring nothing but the simplest slam-dunk cases would ever see the light of day and complicated cases involving serious injury like my mothers that previously might have resulted in multimillion dollar judgements never get taken up. And in 2003, the voters of this state fell for it, voting away their right to sue on the promise of cheap insurance.
Health Insurance rates in Texas never did fall following passage of the new law, serving only to save the powerful medical industry in Texas hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars, while Texas fell to 50th Place in percentage of people with health insurance.
I have contacted ELEVEN lawfirms, all of whom have refused to take my mother's case citing it as "too complicated with too little payoff" after legal fees and taxes. Meanwhile, my mother lies dying in a hospital bed, seeing no specialists because she is dependent upon Medicare. We had to fight to get her on Medicaid because Governor Perry refused to expand the program while we were billed thousands for every test/drug, even food (if there is one bright spot in this mess, "Obamacare" capped my mother's annual out-of-pockets costs to just $2,500, which she reached before she even ended up in the Emergency Room.)
Meanwhile patients continue to be treated by the people that destroyed my mother's life, totally unaware they are taking their lives in their hands when they do so because no one has been able to sue these dangerously incompetent doctors for malpractice.
In October, my mother developed an infection at the site of her feeding tube. They treated her with antibiotics, but the infection persisted. Last month (November), I was told that her "blood count was low" and she needed a transfusion at the local hospital in a procedure that was to take but a few hours. But while there, the hospital became concerned about releasing her with a chronic infection and bedsore. They continued to treat her and after a few days moved her to a "Long Term Care" (LTAC) facility to continue her treatment.
The bedsore my mother developed in the first hospital has since become infected, is not responding to antibiotics and has now become life threatening. And she is unable to fight the infection due to the chemo the doctor that started this mess subjected her to.
I now fear the worst and wasn't even sure she'd make it through Christmas. She did, but I now live in constant fear of the telephone.
If my mother even had cancer, NOT ONE doctor has since brought it up as a health concern since entering the hospital last June. As far as they are aware, it never existed. Have you ever heard of someone being "cured" of "Stage 3" cancer after just three rounds of chemo? Funny how something so life-threatening just disappeared.
For months now, I have been seeking both help & justice for Mom as she fights to overcome all the harm that has been done to her. I write this in hopes that her story will spread and someone will take action. - Mugsy