My UpDate, “Not Bad, Not Good Also”

My Update, “Not Bad, Not Great Also”

    My update is about the same as mom’s with a bit more flair you could say.  In September 2013′ when I went into my Pain Management Group (PMG) for what I thought was a routing refill of my Internal Medicine Pump (IMP) which usually take about 15 minutes, once I’m in the back room and the doctor walks in.   During the process which is pretty straight forward, or at least I thought and it goes something like this:

1. Place a template onto of the pump area and align with the knob  felt on one side.  This places a small hole in the template directly over where the fill/extract port should be.
2. Insert a needle into a port in the pump and remove any excess medicine.  This confirms and should match what the computer says should be left over.
3. Once confirmed the remainder med syringe is unscrewed and a new syringe with an exact amount to what the pump will hold (40 cc) is screwed on with a filter.
4. When injected the medication is filtered and then place into the IMP.
5. The needle is then removed and a scan is taken to confirm the amount removed, refilled with, estimated low level alarm date and run dry date is printed and a new appointment is set to refill approximately 3-4 days in advance of the low alarm date.
6. Any oral medication refills are then written up or called into the pharmacy.  END

     Well my refill went a little different in that when the refill medicine was attached a test or something was done and I heard the doctor say, “That’s not right?  Wait should there be bubbles?  There should.”  Of course these are not words you want to hear from a doctor standing over you with a syringe filled with 40 cc of Fentynal.  On http://www.WebMD.com/pain-management/fentynal (03/18/14) the second sentence in the article is this, ” Use fentanyl exactly as prescribed by your doctor. This is very important so that you do not get too much of the drug. If you get too much fentanyl in your system, you could have serious problems that can lead to death.”  In some research done by a family member who is an engineer for a medical device firm he found that Fentynal is estimated to be 75-100 times more powerful than Morphine.  After a few minutes of the doctor (we’ll call her Dr. F) trying to  determine if there was or was not a problem and me not getting a clear answer out of her, she proceeded to leave the room and as she left said something to the effect of, “I’ll be right back.”  Not long after Dr. F and now Dr. M came back in did they began to sort of whisper to each other and neither were answering my questions of “What’s the matter?”  I hear words like, “bubbles, pocket area and others” then the next thing I remember is being rolled onto a gurney by paramedics, with me still asking, ‘What happened? and You need to call my wife.” I then see the ambulance and am pointing out that their clock is broken and they need to call my wife.  From that point on I do not remember anything until 3-1/2 days later when I wake up in the ICU having had a tube down my throat because I continued to stop breathing (on/off) for the first couple of days.  Not until the fourth day did I find out that not only did my doctors office “NOT” call Trish (yes, she is my wife), but neither did the ambulance or the ICU.  It was not until 3:30 (+/-) that she received a call from me somehow that she figured out why I was not responding to her text’s and calls.  While still in the ICU now on day four is when the owner of the PMG finally called and spoke with Trish regarding what had happened and how was I doing.  In this conversation issue of no one calling her and the comment which was made by a nurse in the ICU came up which was regarding suing and his response to that was, “You can’t, it a Workers Compensation Case.”  Which if you know Trish, thems fighting words.

     That was not really on top of our list of things to be worrying about but the more people came into the room for tests, scans, admissions, doctors, etc. the first question that kept coming up was, were you intubated?  Yes, the reason this was of concern is if so, it means that I was at some point unable to breath on my own.  The second comment was, “I hope your planning to sue.”  After searching for some other PMG that works with the IMP and Fentynal and having kept running into comments such as, “We don’t work with the IMP or Fentynal anymore because of that very reason.” or  “I don’t use it because it is to easy to not have the needle in side the pump when refilling.”  Even others responded with, “Due to it being a Workers Comp case you have to stay with the primary physician .”  Well, he just recently retired and sold his practice to one of the two “Doctors” who had a hand in overdosing me.  Yea I feel real comfortable going back in.  Dr. F was let go and Dr. M was sold the practice, the only one there I trust now is the Nurse Practitioner who I’ve seen on/off over the years.  It is now six months since the incident happened and I’ve been back three times for refills while still hunting for someone else or something else to control my pain.  I contacted my lawyers office once I found out about the letter I needed and they were stumped by my message of the September incident.  Once we connected and I explained the situation (which they were suppose to be informed of and copied on) my in house agent went right to work.  Normally slacking, she was able in under two hours, get on the phone with my adjuster, have her agree to supply six  months of medical reports and supply Dr. Snook’s office with a letter of approval for treatment.  WHAT?  They have never, ever moved this fast in the past 21 years.   My lawyers office also mentioned that the “No Suing” item may not be correct in that there is the Workers Comp side of all this and then there is the medical mix up side and if I wanted to she could run it by her “others” and see what they thought.  Which is where we are now.  My question, if I were to ask one is this, “If you are being treated for something and the treatment your getting  is the Cadillac of treatments and nothing is better, there are only a hand full of doctors in your area that even deal with it and this were to have happened to you, would you sue?“