"Meet the Parents" Actress Dies ....

[BenDavid]

This may have already been posted earlier, but first I heard.

Nicole DeHuff, Teri Polo's sister in Meet the Parents, has died of causes related to pneumonia. She was 30. She died Feb. 16 in Hollywood, four days after she reportedly checked into an LA hospital, was misdiagnosed and sent home with orders to take Tylenol. When her condition worsened, she returned to the hospital and was prescribed antibiotics for bronchitis and again sent home. Two days later, paramedics were called to her home after she collapsed, gasping for breath. By the time she reached the hospital, she was unconscious and passed away soon after. She is survived by Palitz, her husband of four years.

Addendum: And what will he get for having his life destroyed by a doctor's negligence? Under the Bush plan, he'll get a pat on the head and a check for about 1/100th of his wife's earning potential.

[wtmusic]

1. Dayum...

there is some nasty shit going around

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. I wonder if she had been overseas recently....

...to southeast Asia, for instance? Or maybe came in contact with somone that had just returned from that area of the world?

That sounds exactly like some of the symptoms of Avian Flu.

[knitter4democracy]

5. Or CA MRSA--one nasty, icky bug. nt

[NNguyenMD]

7. yeah and when it converts to VRSA then you're really fucked, there's just

a handful of things they can try if Vancomycin doesn't work. But I hear the fosfamycins and Streptogramins show some promise against VRSA

[knitter4democracy]

24. My hubby says it depends on the strain.

Some of them might work, but not much is working on these things. Of course, we created them . . . Just wait until the other nasty stuff starts doing this more too, like strep or something more common. Actually, it's kept him up nights, wondering what's next. I know that sounds weird for an internist, but he really likes ID. I think it's all those pus stories he gets to tell me at dinner. :eyes:

[Warpy]

14. ....or hantaavirus or valley fever, both of which are more likely.

That's the problem around here. People think they've just got the flu until they suddenly get worse and die within hours.

The docs acted prudently the first time. They should have taken a closer look the second time.

[caligirl]

3. I wish people would go to another er, immediatly see another doc

for a second opinion. Pneumonia can sometimes be tricky to see on xrays, but they screwed up here.

[knitter4democracy]

4. Whoa. I'm sure the lawyers are in motion already.

At least the hospital's lawyers are. :eyes: They better do a good job on her M&M and find out what the hell happened.

I wonder what she had. I wonder if they took anything to culture when she tried to get admitted. I wonder if it's the same bug a friend's patient had: 24 y.o. got pneumonia and two days later was in sepsis in the unit, struggling to live. If she hadn't had the good nurse she had, she wouldn't have made it through that first night. My hubby was wondering what that patient had.

I'm so sorry for her family. How awful!

[NNguyenMD]

6. tragic, there were some many things they could have done to cover

pneumonia, hell Azithromycin can be used for pneumonia!!! And that costs a few bucks with insurance. The fact that she came back worsened should have been a red flag to admit her and run her through a course of heavy duty antibiotics.

[caligirl]

15. wouldn't she have been orthostatic? Iv's and more xrays? they blew it.

[NNguyenMD]

23. if she had sepsis she would have probably been hypotensive, but if the

X-RAY was negative, and the lung exam unremarkable, I can see why the docs were leaning against pneumonia. Culture takes a few days, and bronchoscopy is very invasive and only done under dire circumstances. She probably wasn't too dyspneic when she first came in, but they really should have looked at the Chest film with a magnifying glass if she was exhibiting symptoms of pneumonia. Lung exam should have reveal some kind of funky sonuds, either rales, rhonchi, or crepitus to have arouse some suspicion. There's a whole arsenal of antibiotics they could have ran there through to cover for pneumonia causing organism as well.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Anybody outside of the Southwest and So Cal had a really, really awful...

flu of some kind? It really lays you low, and there comes a time when you think you're over it, and it comes back and takes forever to get rid of. I heard a story, for example, that so many cast and crew on "Everybody Loves Raymond" were sick, that they had to cancel a taping. I have many family, friends who've had this recently.

[shanti]

20. yep

it's made the rounds up in northern california too! the "creeping crud", we call it!

[proud patriot]

26. My family had it

Thank Goodness we are young and healthy , took
near three weeks to be finally rid of it . we are
in the SF bay area

Mostly chest congestion that lingers , and lingers .

[coloradodem2005]

9. God damn neglegence, incompetence.

A friend of my father's got cancer and they misdiagnosed it early as not having a real problem. At that point it could have been stopped. WHen they diagnosed it as cancer, it was too late and they did not eliminate all the cancerous cells in time. They could have saved her life. But that didn't happen and she died as a result of the neglegence. Nobody ever does their goddamn job anymore. Motherfucker!!!!!!!

[Johonny]

10. The part I don't get is

Why did she go to a hospital? I mean she's 30 and doesn't have a family doctor with a long history of her to talk to?

Was the doctor negligent? I think you need more facts before you can conclude that.

[harper]

11. Uh, dude...

Ny doctor is fairly competent, but it takes weeks to get an appointment and he's scheduled to see one person every 5 (count em) minutes. Not alot of time to build up much of a doctor/patient relationship. If I were really sick and felt I needed to be seen right away I'd go to the ER too.

[Johonny]

13. I think your wrong

I live in LA. If I'm sick (in the winter this is really not uncommon in LA) my family doctor will see me that day. It can take a week for a specialist, but in cold and flu season the longest I've ever had to wait is next day. Now if it was a weekend then I understand. But then the second visit couldn't have been on a week day. In either case it doesn't explain why she didn't inform her family doctor which is I believe what they generally tell you to do that at the hospital.

[caligirl]

17. probably for return appointments I would think that, but most docs

have a couple of times left open on their schedule for same day urgent cases, or there is a doc on staff whose day it is to take these urgent appts. Urgent care centers for non life threatening cases and Er's for life threatening cases otherwise. Unless your uninsured.

[ikojo]

41. You are so right....an HMO primary care doctor

is expected to see four patients an hour. That does not mean he/she spends 15 minutes with YOU...there are notes to write. My doc spends approx. five minutes with me and then he goes into his office and records our encounter information. I guess that is then transcribed by someone and put in my medical records.

If this actress was otherwise healthy she may not have had a relationship with a primary care doctor at 30, unless she was planning on starting a family. I don't know many young otherwise healthy people who have a regular doctor.

[amazona]

29. I can answer this

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

If a young person in her teens, 20s, or 30s goes to the ER complaining of "flu" they just send you home because you are clogging up the ER. I had pneumonia and was sent away. I was 19. I did survive but not because I got treatment, which I didn't get for another two weeks, but because I was lucky. This was what, 1975?

A friend of mine died of pneumonia at age 34. Why? Because he was young and healthy. He had the "flu." The flu can't be treated. By the time he realized he had a problem, it was too late. He died. As I said on the other thread, to this day, his family is convinced that if he had been "sickly," he would have gotten treated earlier and he would have survived.

It isn't common but it isn't uncommon either. I don't know what to say. Doctors can't assume that everybody who has flu/cold symptoms is going to die. They triage and concentrate on what seems to be the most urgent cases first. This does mean that sometimes young, healthy people die for delay in treatment. It doesn't seem right to me either but I don't have the sophistication to understand what could be done about it.

I do know it is NOT a new problem. It goes back to at least the 1970s. It is not Avian Flu. It is not Captain Trips. It is just that some people, even young people, sometimes have ****ty luck.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Misunderestimator]

42. She probably hadn't established a relationship with a regular doctor.

I move around so much that sometimes I don't have a regular doctor. It's one of the things I make a point to establish when I move to a new place, but even when I do that, I'm pretty much on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to getting an appointment. In the same situation as she was, I probably would have gone to a hospital as well. They ARE supposed to know what to do, after all. I don't think we should be blaming the patient here, no matter whether she had a regular doctor or not.

[cynatnite]

12. Misdiagnosis doesn't automatically equal doctor's blame

The thing is a misdiagnosis can happen for a variety of reason and it's easy to lay blame when there are so many factors that can play into why it happens.

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/intro/why.htm

There are many ways that a diagnosis can go wrong. There can be contributing factors from any of the players:

Patient
Doctor
Specialist
Tests (laboratory or pathology tests)

[Old and In the Way]

19. I agree.

I think it's SOP to assume the typical cause and treat accordingly. I was treated for nose bleeds a few years back. They tried packs and medication. It wasn't until a week later and 2 pints of blood loss that they had me admitted for immediate surgery. In spite of that, I think it was probably a reasonable course of action. My situation was 1/100 or higher...they can't assume the worst case scenario for every medical problem.

[cynatnite]

21. My granddaughter was misdiagnosed

My granddaughter had a UTI and it was bad enough for her to be hospitalized. It was misdiagnosed at first, but that was because the symptoms she had first shown weren't typical of what you'd expect. Aside from the low-grade fever she also had an ear infection and that's what the original diagnosis was, but it was the UTI that caused other problems.

It's just the way it goes and sometimes the human body doesn't give out the easy to spot symptoms for the real illness. Also, symptoms can be very misleading and can have unfortunate consequences.

[Old and In the Way]

22. I really respect the front line care givers.

You can be right 99% of the time, but that 1% is what gives you nightmares. It can't be an easy job.

[knitter4democracy]

25. It isn't.

Thank you for that. I'll pass that along to my hubby. He's an internist who tries his darndest everyday to give the best care possible, and he's scared of missing stuff or treating the wrong presenting illness and missing the bigger, underlying one. Thanks for understanding.

[Old and In the Way]

28. My pleasure!

No greater vocation in life than treating the sick. :toast:

[Eloriel]

31. Uh, excuse me?

Misdiagnosis doesn't automatically equal doctor's blame

Seems to me the person giving a diagnosis -- in fact, the ONLY person "allowed" to give a diagnosis, by law in most if not all states -- is the M.D. In the absence of someone screwing up the test or the ID (patient's name) on test results, if a diagnosis is wrong, it's --- ta da! the M.D. who got it wrong. Period, end of discussion.

M.Deities have, over the years (over the span of more than a century now), made themselves all-goddamned-powerful, they can goddamned well take responsibility and accountability and live with the consequences of that. (I LOVE how that link paints patients as basically totally reasons for tests not getting completed, as just one example. And even less thought to the radical notion that patients ought to have some say-so in their care. Perish the thought!)

[knitter4democracy]

32. It doesn't, though.

If a test comes out wrong and instead points to something completely different, the doctor can make an honest mistake and come up with the wrong diagnosis. That happened to my husband with one of his patients a couple of months ago--he totally missed at pulmonary embolism because the blood tests pointed to a heart attack instead. When he re-did the tests because the patient was heading downhill fast, he got different results and realized that it was P.E. afterall. He didn't sleep for three days until that patient came out of the woods and ended up being fine. No--it wasn't because of fear of lawsuit--it was because he knew it was his responsibility and also because he liked her and her family.

I agree that MDs need to figure out whether they are little gods (and then can be held 100% accountable) or actually human (and can make honest mistakes). That said, though, living with one who I know does his best every day, day in, day out, to keep his patients alive and well, it's a freakin' hard job, and one I seriously doubt any of us would actually want.

How much death do you deal with in your job everyday? Have you ever had to tell a family that their loved one isn't getting better because you missed the initial diagnosis like my husband did and then work your ass off to make sure she doesn't die? It's easy to criticize when it's not you and your life's work.

[Pepperbelly]

16. That freaks me out ... I just got over a bout with pnemonia and ...

she's 20 years younger than me.

[caligirl]

18. My son had a pnuemonia vaccine two years ago, high risk group,

so far no pneumonia.

[LisaL]

27. I was misdiagnosed when I had pneumonia as a child.

For weeks, the Dr. just said I had a flu. He also falsified the charts, because he kept putting in my temperature as normal, when, in fact, I had a high fever. Thankfully, I made it when several weeks later a correct diagnosis was made, and I was put on antibiotics.
:7

[KitchenWitch]

33. I have had pneumonia three times in the last nine months

that really scares me!

[knitter4democracy]

35. What's you doctor doing to help manage that?

That just doesn't sound right. You might want to head to a specialist (Infectious Disease or Pulmonologist) at this point. That could be doing damage to your lungs.

[KitchenWitch]

36. I just got a referral to an ID specialist

I have immune compromise issues, so we are not sure if there is much I can do (yes I have had the pneumovax).

I am a survivor of Hodgkins Disease and have been cancer free since July of 1987. A lot of my issues are secondary to the long term effects of radiation therapy.

[knitter4democracy]

38. Wow. I'm so sorry.

That sounds awful. I hope the ID is nice (the one my hubby trained with was a jerk!). Have you written everything down so you don't forget anything? I have to do that.

[KitchenWitch]

39. Yeah I have a notebook

goes with me to ALL doctor appointments.

Nothing to be sorry about. I hope the ID is nice too, my endocrinologist is seriously lacking a personality (but I only see him every 6 months to adjust my thyroid).

[knitter4democracy]

40. Oh, well, he's endocrine. What can ya do? ;)

Actually, the ones who have very little personality tend to be the pathologists and radiologists. It's kind of funny, actually. The most gregarious tend to be sports med or orthopods (almost always a former jock and serious sports fan). If you want, check out www.placebojournal.com to take a sample to the visit or a joke that will loosen him up. ;)

[deadparrot]

30. Wow...that is far too young. nt

[jus_the_facts]

34. dammit....so many people of various ages are dyin' of pneumonia...

...these days....heard about it happening a LOT lately even with younger people....the negligence of the healthcare industry is SHAMEFUL and PATHETIC...they let my Dad lay in the hospital for almost a MONTH before realizing he'd become immune to his anti-fungal meds...runnin' over a 102 degrees of fever and developed fungal pneumonia...seein' how he has leukemia and had just went thru another round of chemo...they SHOULD have realized this immediately...instead he nearly DIED from fungus.... :grr:

RIP Nicole...such a senseless tragedy. :(

[northzax]

37. mmm, it's vicious

my grandfather died of pnemounia two weeks ago. But he was 88 and pretty banged up by life. This is a tragedy.