I wrote on DU last week that my husband

[grantcart]

51. Sorry to hear this news.

I went through an astonishing misdiagnosis of Menier's Disease (a rather common affliction of the inner ear). After two weeks of nonsense I went to the internet and made an appointment with the doctor and handed him a two page letter of questions.

Half way through he said that I was an "excellent candidate for some groundbreaking work being done at the University Hospital".

What triggered that reaction was a simple question, "Is my diagnosis based on clinical observation or laboratory results".

I went tot he University Hospital Ear clinic and within 5 minutes they had diagnosed me with Menier's. I asked if it was based on clinical observation or laboratory results and they said, "Clinical but we will run a definitive test in 15 minutes".

The initial board certified ear specialist had made a rather obvious misdiagnosis of a fairly common ear problem for people in my age group but when I handed him that letter he was worried about only one thing, a malpractice suit. As a result he immediately made sure I got a second diagnosis at the best facility in the County.

You cannot leave these matters to the doctor you have to try and get on top of your diagnosis and prognosis yourself.

Now here is some sober advice. Find a reputable medical malpractice lawyer. You should do this for two important reasons:

1) From the facts that you have laid out there are a couple of glaring malpractice issues. I won't go into them but they are substantial enough that you should go to an ethical malpractice lawyer. My father was in the medical field and when he died we went to a lawyer we trusted and he took us through the steps. At the end the conclusion was that while mistakes were made they were not obvious and the doctors worked in good faith and he didn't think that they amounted to real malpractice.

A good medical malpractice attorney will help you identify the legal issues. For us it helped bring closure, and I hate that term, but it really did. If we hadn't done that then we would have been festering about until today, and that was 40 years ago.

You only have a one time chance to take legal action. The clock is running and every day your legal options diminish. You may wake up some years from now after hearing of some additional cases that make your blood boil only to find out that you know longer have a chance to take action, even though know you really want to.

It may turn out that some of the facts you have are incomplete or wrong and that no medical malpractice occurred, in which case an ethical medical malpractice lawyer will have helped you resolve the issues. Simply seeing the attorney does not mean that you are going to take legal action.

2) Corrective future action.

Assuming that there was some serious diagnostic or treatment errors, you should assume that the facility and doctors you went to will make no changes. The only thing that will change their case management are a few successful malpractice suits. If you are right then we should assume that this wasn't the first time but that other people who had similar problems walked away after the death and took no action. Had they taken action then maybe your husband would have had different care.

Consulting a malpractice lawyer doesn't mean that you are greedy. If malpractice has occurred and can be proven you will have various options for settlement. If you family has been financially affected then you should get a cash award. But as part of a settlement you could reduce your demand in lieu of certifying upgrades in care, etc, although the surest way to get a medical facility to change care management is to have 4 or 5 large settlements on the same issue and getting a letter from their insurance company stating that if changes aren't made immediately they will no longer be insurable for malpractice.

If your family is well off then you could donate the settlement for research to skin cancer.


I hope that the above has been helpful during a very difficult time for you and your family. It appears that you have raised an outstanding son.

grantcart.