Osce0la
1/11/2007, 12:38 PM
I am asking this because we have been told by several people that we should file a lawsuit, but I don't know that it'd be worth the trouble (or money) to file a suit that would likely do us no good and that I am not even certain we could win...
Here's the deal.
My wife went in several months ago to see a doctor about some pain she was having. Turns out the pain was some sort of infection - in which they had to cut a hole in her and drain it. They then had to pack some sort of stuff into it so it could continue to drain as it heals. Apparently the first time she went they put too much of the stuff in there so it wasn't healing properly, and at the second visit they had to pull the remaining packing stuff out and re-pack it. They said they would send the stuff off to the lab and let us know what kind of infection it was. As I said, this was several (more than 6) months ago, and still no word on what it was. We saw an article about a few women that were suing American Family Care because of a situation just like this where the doctors gave this woman nothing to numb the area or ease the pain (just like they did to my wife) and then they did the same thing to this woman that they did to my wife - put too much of that packing stuff in her, causing her to not heal properly.
Well, we go back to this office not long after all of that because my wife's ribs are hurting her. They tell her it is pleurisy and give her some medications and send her on her way. Turns out the meds they gave her weren't anything that they should have given her for this - however, we didn't know that until a few weeks ago when she had to go back to the doctor because the same thing was happening (pain in her ribs)...This time the doctor tells her it doesn't sound like pleurisy to him, they took blood, got a urine sample, took xrays of her chest and all that stuff...He then comes back and says "I guess it could be pleurisy" - WHAT?!?! You just said it WASN'T pleurisy...He then tells her it could possibly be something with her liver because of where the pain was coming from. He gave her a prescription and told her if she starts running a fever and/or vomiting to go to the emergency room...Well, the next morning she wakes up, runs to the bathroom and throws up. She decided she would go to a different doctor that morning before actually going to the emergency room. She gets an appointment with her mom's doctor and goes in to see him...It took this guy less than 2 minutes to get the diagnosis - you guessed it - pleurisy. This doctor has no idea why they ever needed a urine sample at American Family Care, and looked at her completely shocked when she tells him they thought it could be something with her liver. They bruised her arms so badly when they took blood at American Family care that it took 2 weeks for the bruises to even become faint. Then it turns out that the reason for her vomiting was the prescription she had gotten from American Family Care - prescription would have done absolutely NOTHING for her other than make her completely miserable.
Now, my thing is, if this second guy (her mom's doctor) could tell in an instant what the problem was, why couldn't the first doctor tell after spending 45 minutes with her - the original doctor was pretty much just taking a wild guess. Knowing that there are other people out there that are suing this company for problems they have had that were very similar to hers kinda makes me lean towards going for it. It just seems to me that these people aren't being trained properly and generally just don't know what they are doing. So my question to you, does this seem like something that would be worth the risk of filing a lawsuit?
Here's the deal.
My wife went in several months ago to see a doctor about some pain she was having. Turns out the pain was some sort of infection - in which they had to cut a hole in her and drain it. They then had to pack some sort of stuff into it so it could continue to drain as it heals. Apparently the first time she went they put too much of the stuff in there so it wasn't healing properly, and at the second visit they had to pull the remaining packing stuff out and re-pack it. They said they would send the stuff off to the lab and let us know what kind of infection it was. As I said, this was several (more than 6) months ago, and still no word on what it was. We saw an article about a few women that were suing American Family Care because of a situation just like this where the doctors gave this woman nothing to numb the area or ease the pain (just like they did to my wife) and then they did the same thing to this woman that they did to my wife - put too much of that packing stuff in her, causing her to not heal properly.
Well, we go back to this office not long after all of that because my wife's ribs are hurting her. They tell her it is pleurisy and give her some medications and send her on her way. Turns out the meds they gave her weren't anything that they should have given her for this - however, we didn't know that until a few weeks ago when she had to go back to the doctor because the same thing was happening (pain in her ribs)...This time the doctor tells her it doesn't sound like pleurisy to him, they took blood, got a urine sample, took xrays of her chest and all that stuff...He then comes back and says "I guess it could be pleurisy" - WHAT?!?! You just said it WASN'T pleurisy...He then tells her it could possibly be something with her liver because of where the pain was coming from. He gave her a prescription and told her if she starts running a fever and/or vomiting to go to the emergency room...Well, the next morning she wakes up, runs to the bathroom and throws up. She decided she would go to a different doctor that morning before actually going to the emergency room. She gets an appointment with her mom's doctor and goes in to see him...It took this guy less than 2 minutes to get the diagnosis - you guessed it - pleurisy. This doctor has no idea why they ever needed a urine sample at American Family Care, and looked at her completely shocked when she tells him they thought it could be something with her liver. They bruised her arms so badly when they took blood at American Family care that it took 2 weeks for the bruises to even become faint. Then it turns out that the reason for her vomiting was the prescription she had gotten from American Family Care - prescription would have done absolutely NOTHING for her other than make her completely miserable.
Now, my thing is, if this second guy (her mom's doctor) could tell in an instant what the problem was, why couldn't the first doctor tell after spending 45 minutes with her - the original doctor was pretty much just taking a wild guess. Knowing that there are other people out there that are suing this company for problems they have had that were very similar to hers kinda makes me lean towards going for it. It just seems to me that these people aren't being trained properly and generally just don't know what they are doing. So my question to you, does this seem like something that would be worth the risk of filing a lawsuit?