When it comes to waiting in queues, there’s nothing worse than waiting in a hospital for an appointment, especially when the place is packed. However, for the ER, you’d imagine things would move a bit faster; it’s in the name: Emergency. But for one unfortunate 90-year-old mother in Connecticut, the doctor wasn’t able to get to her on time because she waited for 9 hours while the blood clot in her leg eventually killed her.
The reason for this extremely long wait was that the hospital staff was handling cosmetic vein surgeries instead of addressing the dangerous arterial clot that had formed in the mother’s leg. Her family, who was with her, asked the nurses passing by multiple times when her mother would see a surgeon, and they all said the same answer: all the operating rooms were booked with cosmetic surgeries. “ORs (operating rooms) not being available for emergency surgeries but available for COSMETIC ELECTIVE surgery was a real issue,” they said in their Reddit post about the matter.
Eventually, a surgeon became available and operated on the mother. Unfortunately, it was too late, and the blood clot had already done severe damage to her body. He told the family that she “should have been operated on very soon after she came in, MANY hours earlier.” He said there’s a slight chance she could survive if he amputated her leg, but given her age, current health conditions, and failing heart, the surgery would likely kill her. After much discussion with other doctors and family members, it was finally decided that the mother would live out the rest of her short time left in a private hospice.
“She died a very beautiful, peaceful death with her family around her, and she recognized us all because her dementia was not advanced enough to make her totally non compis mentis,” a family member said. Still, it haunts them to this day that the hospital miscommunicated the severity of the mother’s health. While the family has no intentions to sue, other online users on Reddit feel that what the hospital did isn’t right and should take some form of responsibility. “They should have transferred her,” remarks a Redditor. If the hospital miscommunicated things, resulting in the mother’s death, “why malpractice law exists,” they conclude.
Another person chimed in, saying, “These wait times in the ER are killing people, and no one will talk about it. The ER is now used as an urgent care because people also can’t get in to see their own doctors. We are miserably stuck in a system that is failing us and the general public.” Even if the system is messed up and the ER is not being used for its proper purpose, the staff are still in the wrong for not giving the mother immediate treatment. Even if she had just a few years or even months left, that time is precious to her and her family. Hopefully, the hospital will take accountability and compensate the family for its mistake if they decide to pursue legal action.
