Hospital Apologizes For Amputating Wisconsin Woman's ....

[jfulcer]

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A St. Paul hospital apologized for a laboratory mix-up that resulted in the amputation of a healthy Wisconsin woman's b***sts after she was mistakenly told she had cancer.

Dr. Daniel Foley, medical director of United Hospital, told KARE-TV in the Twin Cities that the hospital had made changes so "this kind of mix-up would never happen again."

Linda McDougal, 46, said she was diagnosed with cancer in May 2002 after her doctor had a biopsy performed when a suspicious spot appeared on her mammogram.

McDougal said she was told the cancer was so aggressive that a double mastectomy, chemotherapy or radiation were her only chances for survival. In June, she had the surgery.

Hospital spokeswoman Terri Dresen said that McDougal was diagnosed with a malignant tumor and the mastectomy was one of several options McDougal had to chose from for treatment.

Two days after the surgery, McDougal was recovering when her doctor visited told her she didn't have cancer.

 

[Serena]

 

[aahmom1]

I hope they do a little more than apologize. If they don't do it on their own, I certainly hope a judge leads them in the right direction. How sad for that poor woman.

 

[WillyJ]

Good Lord!!! What a horrific mistake!!!

That poor woman. .

 

[WillyJ]

Oh, you know that's going to cost them some big bucks Ahhmom. . and it should!!!

 

[SonjaB]

OMG, what exactly did her doctor say???? "Oops"??????

 

[MerryPoppins]

I'm also worried about the other woman involved. If this woman was told she had an aggressive cancer and she didn't, did someone else have a "clean" mammogram when she really had aggressive cancer?

Idiots have no business dealing with important information like this. No amount of money will bring back her breasts, but I hope heads roll. When you are dealing with life and death issues, you don't make mistakes of this magnitude.

 

[Dan Murphy]

Very sad, so senseless in this day and age.

 

[dalepool]

So sad that the hospital didn't run another test---expecially when the first test showed positive for an aggressive form of cancer. I'm an Ovarian Cancer survivor---Since I have had cancer before I always have two tests run on any tissue samples--1 at the hospital and 1 is sent out to a private lab. I think that hospital/labs should be required to run tissue samples twice if a sample shows positive---why they don't I just don't know. I hope she gets a good attorney.....Not sure who dropped the ball on this one--but someone needs to be responsible.

Just my .02

I sure hope that lady gets better---having any surgery is hard on your body--let alone one that was not needed.

PattyN

 

[Helopoh]

OMG!!! That poor woman. How in the world do places do this kind of thing???

 

[wdwnutze]

I saw this story on the Today show and couldn't believe it. The poor woman. And to think they didn't even come on their own and apologize and offer something to her. Apparently the technician that initially screwed things up is still working there. There were 3 people that read the films and not one of them checked the name with the patient ID number like they were suppose to.

 

[Disney Doll]

As a nurse, may I jump in here and say that try as we will, healthcare workers are human and mistakes do happen and we certainly don't do the "happy dance" when something of this magnitude happens. We also don't take a flip attitude about a mistake of this magnitude, either.

The hospital is doing the best it can to rectify the situation at this point. Rest assured, the hospital, the doctor and everyone else will pay dearly for the error, as well they should. But, after the fact, the thing the hospital can do is to change policies and procedures to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again. They can't put her breast back on, they can't shoot the people who made the error. They can look at their policies and procedures for reading biopsies, and change them, and put checks, and double checks, and triple checks in place and make their best effort to prevent this from happening again.

Most (notice I said MOST...let's not start to relay stories about every lousy nurse,doctor,lab tech,pharmacist or whatever that every DISer has ever encountered...every profession has bad apples) healthcare employees really do their jobs because they like to help people, even when the people they are trying to help don't want to help themselves, take any responsibiltiy for their state of health, or threaten to sue you because their breakfast tray didn't come at the time of day that they wanted it to come. We really don't sit there every day saying "Let's see, who can we maim or kill today?" The reality of the situation is that when HUMANS are caring for other humans, mistakes will happen. We are all very well aware that our mistakes generally have more dire consequences than the mistakes made by the fry guy at McDonalds, which is why we really do try not to make too many.

 

[helenabear]

How sad that this happened to her I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to go through all that to find out you didn't have cancer!

 

[luvwinnie]

makes you wonder about your own results.

Are "breasts" really considered a "bad word"?

 

[MerryPoppins]

Disney Doll, I hope you didn't think I was talking bad about everyone in health care. I've had great experiences myself. I just think some checks and balances need to be in place. Someone should obviously have double-checked this and it didn't happen. Personally, I think the lab tech or whoever is at fault should lose his/her job before it happens again.

I feel the same way about the nurse in my own town that reused syringes. What was this person thinking? When the work you do can change somebody's life, you need to stay on your toes and do your job, which I am sure you do. Most health care folks take their jobs very seriously.

Maybe I feel this way because it hits a little too close to home. I can't imagine how I would have felt if after my surgery they had told me I didn't really have cancer after all.

 

[Pugsley]

luvwinnie, I was wondering the same thing, but I guess the op just typed it that way since it came out OK when you typed it.

I saw this on the Today Show too. What a horrible situation. But I was kind of disappointed that the victim’s major concern seems to be that there is a cap on malpractice suit awards. While I certainly think she should get some major compensation, money is not going to bring back her breasts. I think awards in lawsuits have gotten way out of hand and we all have to pay for that.

 

[luv2nascar]

She was on the today show on Monday
I was off for the holiday
it has been 7 months since the mistake surgery
the lady from the hospital was there via satellite & apologized
the poor lady said it's a shame I had to wait 7 months and bring this to the media before I got an apology
I really think that's awful of the hospital to not do something before now they admit it was their fault

 

[jfulcer]

Originally posted by luvwinnie
makes you wonder about your own results.

Are "breasts" really considered a "bad word"?

luv winnie... I've been burned too many times on this board by saying things I thought were 'ok' and were out of line and I got spanked by the moderators. In RL, it's not a big deal to me to say 'breasts' but you'd be amazed at how many people will take offense at posters saying it...

 

[jfulcer]

Disney Doll,

I totally agree with you. People make mistakes all the time and obviously this is the kind of place you would hope that things would be checked and checked again.

It comes down to the question should everyone question the answers they get from their doctors - get a second opinion. I guess I don't know what the normal protocol is for diagnoses of this nature.

And although my heart goes out to her and her family for the pain and horror she has gone through, her being concerned about the 'cap' on malpractice suits also leaves the same kind of bad taste in my mouth that the original mistake did.

 

[nativetxn]

That poor woman. I can't even begin to imagine how I would deal with something like. It's just terrible.

Katholyn