Healthcare nightmare!

Sara was like any other five year old girl: smart, beautiful, and loving. I couldn’t have asked for a better little sister. One day Sara was out playing with her friends, like she usually did, but this particular day her friend threw sand in her eyes. Sara came home crying and we cleaned the sand out of her eyes. Two days later Sara started to get what we thought was pink eye. After several doctor visits we discovered that she had Iritis. Iritis is an autoimmune disease that causes the body to attack itself. Sara also started to have aches and pains in her joints, and we were getting very worried. Little Sara was referred to an autoimmune specialist, Dr. Kuhls. He prescribed Motrin and sent Sara to two other specialists, a Rheumatologist Dr. Brown, who did nothing, but golf, and Dr. Torrez, who was a gastro-enterologist. She was sent to Dr. Brown, because it was suspected that she had rheumatoid juvenile arthitus, which turns out this is what she had the whole time, which again many, many people live with. Dr. Brown never really told us anything except to give her Motrin as prescribed by Dr. Kuhls, I remember once when the Motrin wasn’t working and little Sara had trouble sleeping we called Dr. Brown’s office that morning, she refused to talk to us or see us, because her, ‘golf tournament was more important’, she literally told my mother that over the phone. She was sent to Dr. Torrez because they thought she might also have Lupus or Crohn’s disease, two other types of autoimmune diseases. My mother was quite worried about Sara taking Motrin so often, so she questioned Dr. Kuhls about Motrin every single visit. He always pointed out to her the back of the bottle, where it says it can be taken for more than two weeks ‘under a doctor’s supervision.’ After four months passed, Sara got worse; She was looking very jaundice. That means the skin and eyes begin to turn brownish-yellow in color, a sign that the liver is failing. Dr. Torrez admitted Sara into the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) that day. Keep in mind she was seeing all three of these doctors on a weekly basis, and she was seeing Dr. Kuhls twice a week. The day before Dr. Kuhls had seen Sara and said she was fine. Several liver transplant doctors immediately approached us and started telling us that Sara would need a liver transplant if she was to survive. As you can imagine we were in shock and had no idea what to do. Dr. Kuhls met us at the hospital and told us to ignore the ‘liver sharks’, which we didn’t really understand his terminology at the time. None the less the doctors began the preparatory work for a liver transplant. The plan was to do a biopsy on Sara’s liver and see if my mother or father would be a match for taking a piece of their liver and transferring it to Sara. At the time her platelet count was very low, because of her liver failure and the fact that they had taken five large vials of blood for testing, so they were giving her platelets with plasma. When Dr. Torrez decided that her platelet count was high enough to do the biopsy he preceded. Approximately 10 minutes after the biopsy Sara started to go into shock, and turn pale blueish. They rushed her up stairs and shot dye into her stomach area to see if there was any internal bleeding on x-ray. They decided there was not and started to give her more blood even though they claimed she didn’t have internal bleeding. Sara went into a coma and this was the last time she would ever talk to us. That night she had her first seizer. Her brain was swelling from the toxicity in her blood, they drilled a whole in her head to relieve cranial pressure via a one way valve. At this point # was getting way above serious. The next day they brought in a plasmapheresis machine. This machine cleans the blood and puts it back into your body. They attached a very large, scary Y catheter in her carotid artery, which this machine connected to. She was having seizers two to three times a day now. They discovered that our insurance only covered up to $100,000 dollars. We had good insurance, Blue Cross & Blue Shield. They ushered us into a little conference room, and began drilling my dad about his finances. Some specific questions I remember included, “Do you have any sports cars?”, “What kind of house do you have?”, “Can you take a loan out on the house, or sell the house?”, “Can you call the president of the University you work for and ask for a loan?” They asked many more questions about my family’s finances, but those are the ones that I can remember. Well the answer to all these questions was no. They told us that regardless of the cost, they would take care of it, even if they had to forgive our debts. The doctors started to tell us that unless she awakes from her coma there will be no hope for a liver transplant. By Tuesday they started talking to us about disconnecting her from life support. I can still remember, it was Wednesday nine AM, my mom, dad, sister, and me each gave her one last hug and kiss, and then Dr. Griggs disconnected her from life support. I can remember it just like the movies, he looked up at the clock and said, “time of death 0902”. I watched her lips turn purple. I felt her body turn cold. I watched her die. My father demanded an autopsy, so that gladly had him fill out the paper work, he specifically told them that the autopsy must be done at another hospital, and by different doctors. They did an autopsy alright, Dr. Griggs completed it. Which by the way it is rare for the attending pediatric intensive care physician to do an autopsy; usually they allow the mortuary doctor to do it. The cause of death was due to autoimmune attack on the liver, according to the autopsy. After this we were in complete shock, exhausted and traumatized by the whole episode, my family slept for days. After a few months passed we set out to discover what happened.
A long story short we went through several doctors and lawyer, but none would touch it. Every doctor and lawyer that was within a 500 mile radius refused to even look at her medical records. We later found out this is because their malpractice insurance will drop them if they testify against another doctor. Long story short after 1 year and a half of searching and being denied we found a laywer from another state that was willing to take a look, he sent her records off to a doctor at the Mayo Clinic. We found out that Dr. Kuhls had purposely prescribed Motrin to Sara in order to cause liver failure, so that the hospital could do a liver transplant. Her cause of death would have been ‘drug induced liver failure’, without a liver transplant, but it gets worse. They were attempting to become the best pediatric liver transplant institute in the world, and the only way to do that is to do more pediatric liver transplants. When they discovered that our insurance had run out, they allowed her to bleed to death after the biopsy, rather than do emergency surgery. Insanely they had even given her the wrong blood type, and they heated the frozen blood up in microwaves! They also gave my sister an extremely high dose of Demerol that would kill a full grown man. At least they had heart enough to kill without pain right? This is why she appeared to go into a coma, on that Friday. They had actually killed her four days before they disconnected her from life support, but pretended she was still alive the whole time.

Amazingly, the nurses had recorded all of these events in their medical records. We owed the doctors and the hospital over $400,000 dollars. When they discovered that we were suing them, the bills climbed to over one million dollars. Remember we had insurance. To top it off, they suddenly lost my sister’s medical records.
Little Sara did not have a life threatening disease. Millions of people live with autoimmune diseases, and more specifically hundreds live with Iritis. Her liver would have never failed, had Dr. Kuhls not prescribed Motrin. They purposely worked Sara up for a liver transplant for the money and prestige. My sister died because of greedy doctors and greedy health insurance companies.

August 18th, 1992 - August 12th 1998. Six days before she was six.

Please no sorry's, its done its over with, I have never quite moved on, but I'm not looking for sympathy. I want to make you think a little harder about healthcare. All this happened when I was 15 years old. It tore my family apart literally. Both my parents divorced shortly after. I can remember a specific incident where my mom and dad where blaming each other for my sisters death and my father grabbed a shotgun and was loading it as I tried to rip it away. Thankfully it never went off.

There is much much more detail to this story, but I don't feel like looking through my mothers daily journal.

Any questions feel free to ask, I will attempt to answer them.

All of the doctors got away scott free. They payed us and made us swear to never tell a soul.

This is what happens when you have a healthcare market, not a healthcare system.

I now consider myself an expert on health insurance and healthcare, you could say I'm obsessed with it now.

Please understand that this particular mal-practice is extreme! Not all American doctors are like this. But the insurance practice that happened with my sister called rescission is very very common in America. Its the act of canceling or capping ones insurance while they are in the hospital/receiving care.

I personally will never ever trust American doctors again with my wife, son, or my life. I am very nice to them, but I'm really just using them. I double check everything they do when I get home.

Final thought: I wish for my fellow Americans to rethink the strange ideas we have about healthcare, and start thinking about a non-profit healthcare revamp, no I'm not talking about socialism. The biggest thing that MUST be non-profit is the health insurance, but can still be a commercially run business. I would direct you to look at Germany's system. I'm not implying doctors can't earn money, but money cannot be a sole motivator of everything like in our system. Is it moral to get rich of the sick, and poor? The healthcare debate in America boils down to one thing: morals. Do we have morals?

Her grave:
Sweet precious Sara our princess and sweet little angel. You were a little ray of God's sunshine that brightened our lives. You were such a great blessing to us we miss you always. We are so proud of you. God must be very happy to have you in heaven. The greatest day of our lives will be when we will be with you again.


[url=https://flic.kr/p/odL3Do]

This is what can happen when health services are run as a business.
I fear our beloved nhs will turn into something similar .
Sad sad tale poor likkle poppet .

This is what can happen when health services are run as a business.
I fear our beloved nhs will turn into something similar .
Sad sad tale poor likkle poppet .

While I have never seen this level of corruption in the medical field, I have seen it in too many areas that involved hurting children for financial gain or prestige. My heart goes out to and your parents, as I have suffered such a loss recently. The pain is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Edit to retract my "sorry" but the last part remains. I don't see how something like this could ever be gotten over.

Sad state of affairs. Most people that invest the time and money to become licensed doctors do it for the money. Not because they desire to be real healers. I am sad for your loss.

a reply to: boymonkey74

The only way it can get as far is as the American system is by allowing pure greed to take over. I highly doubt the NHS will go that route as they heavily regulate the doctors/pharmaceutical markets, and regulate care of specialists (I'm not saying this in a bad way). I personally think the NHS is much better than anything we Americans have, but I favor Germany's and France's systems the most.

a reply to: calstorm
Medical mal-practice in America is actually very common not to the extent of my families case. A lot of it is care/surgeries that are unnecessary just because the insurance will pay for it. A good example, my grandmother is 94 years old. The doctors tried to say she had breast cancer and needed to biopsy it to see. Now tell me is a 94 year old lady going to live through cancer treatment? Whats the point? In fact even if it is cancer I'm pretty sure she will live longer not messing with it considering her age. Yet these doctors tried to take her all the way. I told her hey these guys are just trying to get her medicare money, and thankfully she listened to me.

Old people in general are big targets because they are on a socialized insurance plan with commercial doctors. Knee and hip replacements that rarely fix the problem are the first option they are given. Its extremely rare to hear them offer physical therapy, which is the first step.

My heart goes out to and your parents, as I have suffered such a loss recently. The pain is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I feel your pain, my heart goes out to you.

very sad to hear the story.

I lost trust in medical PROFESSIONALS some time ago.

big money plays in and around healthcare, not only in the USA; all around the world...

"the bottom line is money, nobody gives a #" - SOAD

they will take care of your health, yes.

the problem is your health is only second most important, the first is money.

so they will base their decisions that have to do with your life and well - being primarily on money.

sad, worrying and sick.

a reply to: lobograndemalo

I am so sorry for you and your family for what you have been through
and do understand how you feel as I too lost two of my children one
as an infant, and the other as an adult.

I am coming in here admitting I know nothing of your country's health-
care. But to tell you about ours in the UK.

We have had a very good system for around 75 years of care 'from
the cradle to the grave' where you got all necessary care and
treatment for illness and to keep you alive .... However for the past
15/20 years the system has been breaking down. Aside from 'fly'
politicians trying to make a name for themselves and making major
errors in the financial side we now have the "ENTITLEMENT"
society who require the additional 5* treatment.

When I had my children you went into hospital and delivered a child
job done .... Husband/Partner and family visited only. Today you
have all the trimmings lol!! day out for all the family, birthing pools
space hoppers et, al

Then there have been a few cases lately where young women have
had breast enlargements because they were depressed!!?? (unsatisfied
with what nature had given them) and to enable them to do 'glamour'
modelling!!

The Emergency Departments full to bursting point at weekends with
drunks (self inflicted) Injuries due to their drunkenness (again self
inflicted) There should be a charge for this it shouldn't come under
'Health care' it is deliberate and self inflicted.

The sooner we get back to basics the business of treating illnesses and
just keeping people 'healthy' the sooner our National Health Service will
recover and become healthy!!!!

Thats why they need to get the damn insurance companies out of medicine .. get big pharma under control and more importantly get doctors that are actually doctors and care about their patients instead of being pill pushers for big pharma.

The entire system there is fooked and needs a total rebuild from the ground up.

My heart breaks for you and your family and sweet little Sarah. I always thought how horrible it was for medical to be for profit. These are precious human lives that matter and are important.

I would say I'm sorry for your loss, and I actually am but know it doesn't help much now. I saw this stuff in school too but when these things happened everything became very hush hush.

This is precisely the type of thing that I saw and listened to doctors talking to one another about that made the medical industry the very last place I would want to work before I even graduated from school.

My ex-wife who divorced me partially because I went to college to enter a medical field but never went into one, she went on to be a nurse during our marriage. She frequently talked about how elderly patients were either dehydrated or hydrated to death, given the wrong medications and other mistakes which killed them, who knows how or why..., but for sure their insurance was running out or gone when things like this happened.

I am a disabled veteran because an injury was misdiagnosed and exacerbated by the recommendations that were made because of the misdiagnosis....

Anyway, recently I ripped out my rotator cuff in an accident and they offered me a shoulder replacement. I turned the replacement down because I didn't feel it was necessary as I KNOW that such an injury isn't necessarily all that disabling if one can take the pain of keeping it moving and building up surrounding muscle groups to make up for the deficiency. I also have a mortal fear of being placed in a state of general anesthesia from what I observed with my eyes and heard first hand when I was training in the operating room when I was in college.

...And found out that I would have potentially lost my VA benefits for the rest of my life after having a major surgery...

This is a very dangerous time to get sick or injured because of the state of the medical INDUSTRY, a very dangerous time to depend on the insurance INDUSTRY, and a dangerous time to TRUST the LEGAL INDUSTRY because it helps to cover many mistakes the medical industry and many other industries make, it's a very dangerous time to depend on any INDUSTRY really. It seems we are being ganged up on by several industries without understanding exactly what they are or actually do, or how they actually work....on and on....

To simplify things for most of those out there who wonder how things actually do work, just think about it like many of you do when it comes down to a sick pet when you can't afford the vet's bills any more and you have the pet euthanized because it's cheaper.

...And then the vet sells your pet's carcass to a medical research supply firm and effectively doubles his take on the whole deal...

It's just business, everything is, and that's the problem.

I currently KNOW several people who work in the insurance industry, they LOVE squandering your hard earned resources gained through your FEAR, INSECURITY and IGNORANCE.

I'm gonna stop now, before I sit here all day and rant about what a bunch of ignorant fools I am surrounded by every day and all the time everywhere I go.

a reply to: lobograndemalo

I read all of replies on this thread ...........................


Can someone tell me hoe much money Dr. Kuhls can get if he did the liver transplant successfully???

I can emphasize with you. Seven years ago my mother had a surgery which went horribly wrong. Very clear malpractice which even crossed the line to criminal behavior. No lawyer would file a case either. Apparently, since she was a senior and didn't die they wouldn't make enough money to cover the very large expense of filing a case.

To make matters worse, a few months before her surgery, another doctor was so disgusted with the dangerous practices of her surgeons, he filed a medicare whistle blower case stating they were engaging in fraudulent and dangerous practices (they would just turn the patient over to a new medical student with no supervision so they could book multiple surgeries at one time). We didn't know about this case because under the law, its held confidential until the government looks into it. It wasn't released until a few YEARS after her surgery.

There's a group of posters on this board who ALWAYS so malpractice claims are the cause of high insurance rates - which is so untrue. Besides, mistakes do cost money and it shouldn't be the victim who pays for it.
Have you seen the increase in doctor's salaries in the past decade - disgusting.

a reply to: candlestick

Actually there was a third doctor that I didn't put in the story - I refered to him a "liver shark", Dr. Kahn, him and his associates would have made lots of money. Dr. Kuhls has just recently been hired onto the office staff so he would probably have gotten lots of props for actually bringing a liver transplant patient in. This all came out in the case.

The average cost of a Liver transplant from entrance to exit is $577,100. Source
This doesn't include the cost for the $30,000 a month pills that are required to supress ones immune system so that it doesn't reject(kill) the new liver.

a reply to: Daughter2

I'm sorry for your mother. My sisters case took over 10 years to complete and I'm still under a gag order not to talk about it. The sad part is when one doctor blows the whistle the state medical board just alienates them. I think mal-practice insurance needs to be outlawed.

Abolish mal-practice insurance and either fine the doctor themselves for real accidents, because they do happen or criminal charges for cases like my sisters and yours.

Guys if you like this post and believe in what I'm pushing, please FLAG. I believe everyone needs to read this story before they go around making decisions about healthcare. Many are unaware that this is happening everyday in America. I put this information out there because I believe through knowledge it can save someone else. THIS IS ILLEGAL FOR ME TO POST, THE DOCTORs HAVE MY FAMILY UNDER A GAG ORDER. The names are real, the people are real. With a little research one could easily find the court case. Please lets educate our fellow brothers and sisters! I'd like to see on the front page.

a reply to: MyHappyDogShiner

I understand your trouble with the VA. I too am a disabled veteran, paratrooper, one to many jumps, and pop went my spine. I agree with everything you posted. Like you I could go on forever so I'll shut up.

a reply to: lobograndemalo

Gave you a flag ...
Although I don't think it really works in a such indifferent community .

originally posted by: lobograndemalo
a reply to: candlestick

Actually there was a third doctor that I didn't put in the story - I refered to him a "liver shark", Dr. Kahn, him and his associates would have made lots of money. Dr. Kuhls has just recently been hired onto the office staff so he would probably have gotten lots of props for actually bringing a liver transplant patient in. This all came out in the case.

The average cost of a Liver transplant from entrance to exit is $577,100. Source
This doesn't include the cost for the $30,000 a month pills that are required to supress ones immune system so that it doesn't reject(kill) the new liver.

That's a lot of profit .No wonder they want to do more surgery ...

Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.

This is my favorite quote.
The fee of the surgery already with over than 300% profit .