The doctor's office just told me that they were not allowed to call in

[pnwmom]

226. Some hospital and doctor mistakes do kill people.

My relatives' family won a malpractice suit -- against the doctor and the hospital -- because the doctor DID fail to prescribe anything but Tylenol; and the hospital later admitted him but didn't start him on any antibiotics. They needed his doctor's order to do that and his doctor didn't come in that night. (This was in a small hospital in a rural area, and there was no such thing as a "hospitalist" twenty years ago -- at least in that part of the country.)

So the only treatment of a man with a history of emphysema (due to work in mines) was an oxygen tent. But they did think about treating him. A nurse wrote in his chart that he was cyanotic, so she asked him if he "needed anything." He said he didn't know, and died within the hour. All alone. They found him hours after he had died.

You see? That's how fast pneumonia can kill someone, when he's unlucky enough not to get antibiotics as quickly as he needs them.