By now you’ve probably heard the one about the Dallas hospital that dropped the ball with America’s first Ebola patient. Unfortunately, it’s not a joke. The patient “was released from the hospital even though he told staff he had traveled from Liberia.”
That hospital is Texas Health’s Presbyterian Hospital, one that my own family has had numerous unfortunate experiences with, which has led us to personally conclude that we want nothing more to do with this hospital. Of course, I can’t say for sure whether or not there is a consistent pattern of incompetence with this hospital but, given what happened to my mother there, we don’t want to take any more chances.
About 4 years ago my mother went to Presbyterian Hospital to get a pacemaker implanted, a fairly routine procedure. However, about a month later my mother became very weak and sick and was rushed to the emergency room there. She became incoherent and when we explained that this was not normal for her the ER doctors became dismissive and chalked it up to her being old (mistake #3) They decided she needed rehab and were ready to ship her off to a skilled nursing facility (mistake #4) when my brother insisted that they hook her up to a heart monitor. At that point they discovered she was in atrial fibrillation and admitted her to the hospital.
It took them a while but they eventually concluded that she had a MRSA infection, which is often picked up in a hospital. Eventually the evidence pointed to the fact that it was the pacemaker implantation that had caused the infection (mistake #2) because the leads seemed to be harboring the bacteria. Although the pacemaker needed to be removed there was a significant delay in doing this as the cardiologist who had done the implantation was not buying the story (mistake #5). They finally removed the pacemaker and reinstalled another one in a different location (mistake #6).
Although she continued to complain about a generalized back to front pain when she was lifted out of bed they ignored her complaints and released her from the hospital (mistake #7). In a follow up visit with the Presbyterian infectious disease doctor my mother complained of continued pain but the doctor declared her cured despite one of two blood cultures that indicated continued infection. The doctor concluded the one culture had been contaminated (mistake #8). Eventually she became worse and this time we sent her to Baylor Hospital since we weren’t getting a warm fuzzy from Presbyterian.
Baylor concluded that she was in fact still infected and the infection had settled in her spine. They treated her accordingly but, to make a long story short, the infection settled in her knee replacements, which had to be permanently removed. My mother is now in a wheel chair/ bedridden for the rest of her life.
Oh…and to make matters worse the Baylor cardiologist told us that she never needed the pacemaker in the first place (mistake #1). Do you blame us for avoiding this hospital like the plague that is Ebola?
#presbyterianhospital #ebola #MRSA
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