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Season 1, Episode 2 · 1 year ago
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Season 1, Episode 2 · 1 year ago
EP2 Medical Mixups
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Alrigdy hello and welcome todestination death. I am Rachel and if you listened all the way through myfirst episode and are coming back for more thank you so much for dealing withme saying m every five seconds. Please don't relisten to it to try to discover how many times I said it. I am already embarrassed about it. I'mlearning I promise this episode will be better and the show will only getbetter and better, as I record new episodes. So for this episode I'vedecided to cover a topic that can be kind of alarming. So please listen with caution. I am inno way trying to dissuade anyone from modern medicine, I'm just covering atopic which I find interesting. So I got ta mention my disclaimer againfor anyone that has not been here before disclaimer the information inthis podcast as well as those that follow, is information readilyavailable on the Internet. I spent my own time researching these events andhave included only information I deem necessary in describing the events tomy audience. That being said, some information topics and opinionsexpressed from this point on could be considered explicit, grotesque and oroffpudding. Listen with your own discretion, I'm also not a medicaldoctor. Nor do I have medical training that is licensed yet enjoy. Medical mixups is the topic for today'sepisode and while I was researching, I wish I hadn't discovered as much as Idid, but there is just a wealth ofinformation out there regarding pharmaceutical mistakes to like babymixups and even surgical mistakes, which just sounds honestly so awful. So I picked a few to discuss here. Someof them ended up in death or serious injurgry injury. Others were just so ridiculous that Iwanted to include them. So let me just be clear about one thing: Ifully support modern medicine IAM on a bunch of different medications for avariety of things. I see a bunch of different specialists. I think thataround ninety percent, probably higher of doctors, have good intentions andreally actually care about their patients, but we got TA. Remember that even a Medscudent student that gets seas is still a doctor. So with that being said, let's talk aboutsome medical mishaps, so I took a lot of these from the same website,so I'm going to like paraphrase them, because some of them are pretty long, but I wanted to start in like sections, soI'm going to start with pharmaceutical mixups, which usually are the most deadly. Sometimes in certain cases they justend up with, like a funny result or like a nonlifethreatening result, but perhaps the most...
...insane one of all of them that Iresearched is the first one we're going to talk aboutand it's from two thousand and eleven a fifty one year old man had heartsurgery, for he had the he had a heart surgery for aplacsol of a balv and at some point in the surgery complications arose whichrequired him to be resuscitated about seven to eight times, so he he easilycould have been marked as clinically dead, but theywere able to bring him back so they required Cardio version and theyresucitated him, like. I said before the surgeon that performed the surgeryordered a hundred and fifty miligrams of Amio Derone, which is used to normalizeabnormal heartrhythms. So in this case it wasn't really abnormal for thesurgeon to decide to give this patient this medication, considering what they just went through on theoperating table. So the anestesiologist got three vialsof the drug. He believed they were fifty milograms in each bile, so heintraveniously administered all three vials to the man. However, theanestesiologist was not normally working at the hospitalthat he was at on this particular day, so unbenounced to him, each vialactually contained nine hundred miligrams of the drug, meaning that hegave the patient twenty seven hundred miligrams of this drug as opposed to ahundred and fifty. So this stabilized the man's heart.However, it caused the heart, the lower chambers, toquiver and prevent it from pumping blood to his brain, so he ultimatelyended up with like really bad brain injury. He now has to be around theclock, monitored for the rest of his life. He filed a medical, mixupmalpractice suit against the hospital and he was awarded. I believe twelve million dollars in pain and suffering and then past andfuture medical costs. So I I don't really know how to how tojustify the situation. I think that it's great that the man survivedresuscitation as many times as he did. I'm glad he's still here, but at thesame time his quality of life has like so significantly declined. So I don'treally know what to make of that one. I can't really think of a situation where I wouldconsider any type of pharmaceutical mixup to be able to be smoothed over, even if theperson is now alive because of it, I'm not sure, but on a last damaging note, there weresome infants given incorrect medication and Spain. This story is a little biton the not as bad side of pharmaceuticalmixups. So in two thousad and nineteen, this was, I believe. In August parentsin Spain started panicking when...
...seventeen children and babiesmysteriously came down with hypertricosis, which basically meansthey started growing hair on their hands their feet. They had really bigbushy eyebrows. The hair on the top of their head was rapidly growing, come to find out. These babies had beengiven medication for Alapesha, which is acondition that causes hair loss, so they were supposed to have been givenOmeprazol, which is an which is something that you can purchase overthe counter it's to help with like acid reflux, which is something thatchildren frequently have issues with. So somehow, in the pharmaceutical lines,the alapetia medication was mistakenly mislabelled as Omeprozol, and while I was researching some ofthese pharmaceutical issues, the first headline that came up waspharmaceutical mixup results in seventeen very hairy children, and eventhough the story is like obviously awful for the parents involved, I justthought that that headline grabbed my attention so much that Ireally just felt like I needed to include it in this episode, so there itis, if you want to look it up, that is the headline so moving on from pharmaceuticals,let's talk about some surgical mistakes. I personally have only had my wisdomtooth removed and even then I was so scared of them. Giving me Anasthesiathat I had to be given an Adavan before my surgery, and I can't even imagine if I was insurgery for like eight hours plus and then was told that the whole thing wassomehow messed up or they had removed the wrong thing. I'm not sure how youwould mess that up in someone's mouth, but that's beside the point. Some ofthese I'm really not sure how this got messed up, but it's above me at this point, I'm justhere to talk about it. So on two thousand and seven in RhodeIsland, there were three reports of brain surgeries that had occurred inthe wrong area of the brain for the patient and these all occurred at thesame hospital within less than one year. So basically, this hospital is like upto their neck in medical. Malpractice suits at this point. The first case a third year residentdidn't mark on someone's body where they were planning to put a drain inthe patient's head. And, if you don't t know what I'm talking about or what I'mreferring to some hospitals, not specifically the one that I volunteeredat. But a good amount of hospitals have decided to start using sharpy or someother type of marker, or some way to indicate that they are removing oroperating on some part of a person's body. So, let's say like if I need toget my right arm amputated. They'll take sharpy and they'll write all overmy right arm so that the person doing the surgery like absolutely cannot messit up by removing my left arm, not knowingthat it was the one that was all marked and sharpy. That was the one thatneeded to go. So that is what I referred to. What I'm referring to, ifI come across it again, but this thirdye resident did not do that and he ended up going on to the wrong side of thepatient's head to remove a blood clot, and so he ended up figuring out his mistakeand then he ended up closing that side...
...of the brain operating on the correct side and thepatients in this case recovered. This also happened in the second case. Thesurgeon cut all the way through the patient's skull and then was told or realized. Oh, my God, I'mcutting into the wrong side of someone's brain. So in both of those cases, the patientsended up all right in the third case the patient recovered from theirsurgery, but they died several weeks later from some other unrelated cause in Minnesota. There was another case of surgery, Gonwrong, a surgeon removed the incorrect kidneyfrom a patient diagnosed with kidney cancer. So, let's think about this, you haveone good kidney and the surgeon removes that instead of your cancer ridden kidney so to fix it, the surgical team decidedthey were just going to try to operate on the inoperable tumor and at some point I'm sure they came to a resolution. Itdoesn't tell me whether or not the patient was given a kidney transplant or whathappened to the good kidney. It also doesn't say like what happenedto the patient ultimately, but it does say that the personinvolved in removing the incorrect kidney has now been restricted to outpatient or office base procedures. So I guess outpatient doctors are just the onesthat messed up a while ago. That's probably not true. Don't takethat for what I just said, but in Michigan in two thousand and twelveand eighty one year old woman died two months after receiving brain surgerythat she did not need. That's right, a woman died because they operated onher brain because her name was actually put onanother patient's ct skin, so they decided to drill five holesinto her brain and remove the right side of her skull and close her upbefore. Someone noticed that she was the completely wrong patient, so the woman was ultimately placed onlife support and she died because of the complications of her surgery. The hospital actually did not tell herfamily or the state of Michigan about what happened until the trial almosttwo years later. I really don't understand this one, but I am also the type of person that'slike. I will own any mistake I make like probably- and I just don't understand how, if youkill someones parent grandmother, she was our. She lived o eighty one andthey just I just can't. I really I don't knowwhat to make of this one. They ended up paying the family twentyone million dollars in damages, but ultimately I don't. I just don't knowhow you recover from something like that another one in Iowa there was anothercase of unnecessary surgery.
A dude had prostate surgery for prostate cancerthat he never had so similar to the last woman. They operated on a part ofthe body that really did not need any operation, and let me tell you guyssomething about this: prostate cancer can be so debilitating,and sometimes the only way to do anything about it is just to remove theentire prostate and for men that can sometimes justcompletely destroy their sex life and I'm not trying to be weird or like gross in any type of way.But the prostate is really essential for a lot of the demands that are required during sexual intercourseand just I cannot believe that they messed with some man's prostate. For noreason it just is such an integral part of men's health that just it just blows mymind honestly, and it is so sensitive and there's so many nerves that go intothat area of the body that one wrong move and your entire, like reck dum. All the muscles down there,like just everything, could feel completely wrong for the rest of yourlife, like. I can't even describe that enough. He was awarded twelve million dollarsand damages, though so not sure what he's going to do withthat woman in Connecticut had the incorrectrib removed, that was in two thousand and fifteen.They even went so far as to insert a metallic coil around the rib that wassupposed to be removed. She had cancer bone cancer in her eighth rib.So when the surgeon went in, they removedher Sevenh rib instead of her eighth, even though the eighth was very clearlymarked like I previously stated they will do, they will mark up your body onthe outside. They will even do go so far as to insert metallic coils around a body part that they want to beremoved and somehow this surgeon still did not remove the right rib. So I have a couple more cases. They areinvolving children and if you yourself have children- oryou know someone that has children or you have children in your family, I'msure most of you do. If any of this is disturbing to you, I'm not really going to apologize, butjust know that I'm going to be talking about children for the next few moments. So in February two thousand and sixthere was a toddler who had numerous surgeries.They had an adominal tunor tumor, I'm sorry that was finally declared cancelcancer free. Oh my God, I'm having a problem talking in the last few minutesof my podcast, but a few days after the last day of cemotherapy. For thistoddler, a nurse gave the toddler and IV bag filled with twenty times therecommended dose of Sodium Chloride. So this nurse literally dumped tablesalt into this child's Ivy, and so, ifyou've heard of like you can drink too much water and it will kill you, thisis the exact opposite.
This nurse injected, so much sodiumchloride into this child that it dehydrated all of the tissues in thiskid's body. This is like a kid. This is like drinking a gallon of soy sauce asopposed to a gallon of water. So just think about that the kid fell into Acoma and actuallydied. I don't know if the family was awarded anything in damages. I don'tknow what happened to the nurse. All I know is that what has happened in Thi story that has really honestly just gotten,got to be an awful way to go, especially after kicking cancer like Wow and IVF clinic in Los Angeles mix upthe embryos for three families. The clinic ended up implanting two embryosfrom two different women and families into a single woman and her husband, and they will not into her husband butinto her, and then she actually had a successful pregnancy with both children and the woman and her husband were KoreanAmerican. So when she ended up giving birth to two baby boys that were not ofAsian descent, they did some detective work and endedup finding out that the embryos that they carried fully toterm and hoped to would be their actual children ere. Actually, the children oftwo separate families, so they ended up settling in court.Both of the couples involved ended up taking responsibility for the childrenthat this woman brought into the world for them, and the original woman who ended uphaving the twin boys does not have any children. As far as Iknow, which is pretty said, an IVF is so expensive. I really justdon't understand how you can pay hundreds of thousands ofdollars to conceive, and then you finally doand then you find out that Bot, not one, but both of your babies are otherpeople's babies. That you just housed for nine months. So with all that being said, those areall the stories that I have decided to include. That was a whirlwin really awful stuff. But how do we feel? After all of that, I, I still believe in modern medicine, I'mgoing to continue to trust my doctors, because I honestly I don't. I don'thave a second opinion to get, but I will say that I have worked in ahospital and regulations are getting so strict, they're getting stricter by theminute. Every time a mistake happens, things get stricter and stricter morerules come about. There's new practices. All the time. I can say with certainty that thesetypes of mistakes will most likely be on the decline. I'm hopeful anyway. The only thing that I could reallysuggest to you guys if, if this podcast really like messed, you up made, youfeel really upset. Is You should ask a lot of questions of your doctors? You should ask if the medications thatthey're giving you ar things that you actually need andwhat they're going to do in your body...
...and then I would also do a lot ofresearch before actually picking up the prescription and taking it make sure that your doctor doesn't have a problemtelling you what drugs you're on and why you're being administered them orwhat surgery they recommend for you. If they don't want to answer your questions orthey act like your questions, aren't valid, then they're, probably not thedoctor, for you, I'm not really sure when this episodeis coming out, I'm hoping that it will be out sooner rather than my intendeddo dat. So I can give you guys some things to listen to about, while I research and record otherepisodes for you. I know that this episode wasn't superabout death or death involved, but this podcast isn't going to be like onehundred percent to death every single time. I want to talk about things thatI'm passionate about things that I think are interesting, obviously goingto be mostly medical field related. So if you're interested in that stuff- andyou are still hanging on to the end of this podcast- thank you for being here.If you have any comments, if you have any information aboutmedical mixups has something happened to you or your own family? Let me knowon my instagram at destination, death podcast and I will catch you guys next time,good, bye,.
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