I'm a Doctor Who Almost Died Because My Doctors Refused to Do This 1 Basic Thing | Hacker News Reader

I'm a Doctor Who Almost Died Because My Doctors Refused to Do This 1 Basic Thing

huffpost.com

17 points8bitsrule10 comments

The headline for this article is a travesty - there is no “basic thing” mentioned in the article. It’s almost like the headline was a banal or joke placeholder that was accidentally not updated.

This is a very interesting article written by a doctor who experienced severe medical emergency mismanagement following a failed colonoscopy. He nearly died, and his career was destroyed.

At the end, there are a number of constructive suggestions about what to do in a situation like this, if you feel your case isn’t being handled correctly.

there is no “basic thing” mentioned in the article

The "basic thing" is that the doctor didn't listen to his patient (i.e. the author).

It's right here: What’s more, why do too many of them not listen to their patients ― the most basic thing that should be a fundamental part of their practice?

(And the lack of listening is described in detail earlier during the chronology of events).

I’ll accept that, but I’m thinking that the editor tried to create a better headline and gave up.

Lack of listening is possible, but the reason for ignoring the massive blood loss in the presence of a highly likely causative factor is not understandable. Incompetence isn’t enough - they must be been considering economic factors, i.e. insurance issues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.

> If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

I wonder why his intention of suing for malpractice was rejected 6 times? It seems quite clearly for me that the healthcare providers did it wrong (at least according to his description). If it was not so obvious, how could we as lay people know the signs better to react accordingly?

I come to HN to escape this type of headline

Another lesson is this: when you go in for a colonoscopy or rectal exam you have to explicitly ask to NOT do any surgery if you are not ready for the downtime.

If they are giving you local or general anesthetic they are going to use the opportunity to perform a surgery if they can.

The fine print says they can do this.

They usually take the polyps for analysis. They don’t really want you to undergo this multiple times, so first explore and then another round, after permission, to take them out is not the preferred way.

Also; removing polyps doesn’t hurt; without anaesthetic and fully present, you don’t normally feel anything outside a bit of cramping.

Here they staple or clamp all polyp removal sites for people who are on any type of blood thinners/aspirin. That is almost always enough to prevent this.

Seems here they only did that on the second round in this case and after way too much time.

Modern medicine is a scam. There are zero consequences for doctors who fail to take the most basic steps to actually help their patients, so they will continue not to do so.

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