Thursday, February 12, 2009

Surgeons, Ethics, Informed Consent

It is unethical to choose not to reveal side effects of the surgeon's desired surgery. Too many times the Doctor only tells the patient things that are designed to make the surgery seem desirable to the patient. There are many reasons for this, unfortunately it is usually to coerce the patient into accepting this particular surgery. Maybe the surgeon needs practice at this surgery or knows that the patient may not agree if they knew the risk of the surgery. Maybe this is the MOST EXPENSIVE remedy!

My surgeon, Dr. Frankenstein, did not reveal any of the risks for the particular surgery I had performed. He forgot to tell me that my hand would be numb and that I would have a 70% loss of grip in my hand because of him "tugging on the nerves." He neglected to mention that he had to slash through the tendons in order to do this surgery. I found the incision right straight through my tendons on the inside of my wrist. This too should not have been a surprise!

Dr. Frankenstein allowed the CRNA or somebody to put a tourniquet on too tight and leave it like that for the entire surgery. New style tourniquets are made so that they can be tightened and released so that the extreme tourniquet pain doesn't happen. Naturally I was not important enough to worry about tourniquet pain. The pain from them leaving that tourniquet on was more than the incision or surgery. It was agonizing and I didn't know if it would last forever or not! This should have been explained to me and steps should have been taken to ensure that it didn't happen. There is no excuse for this.

Dr. Frankenstein also deliberately withheld information about alternative surgeries that were less intrusive and had fewer side effects. There is an external fixator type remedy that would have been so much better for me. Unfortunately this was never mentioned until after my horrible outcome from HIS desired surgery.

Dr. Frankenstein pretended to go along with my wishes to remain awake and alert. He knew that he doesn't work on anybody who is conscious and he deliberately withheld this information from me. He allowed or directed the anesthesia nurse to give me Versed to gain compliance and then ordered me to be knocked out. No informed consent and absolutely no communication.

I go on about this because all of this is in direct violation of the law and is UNETHICAL! It is unethical to conceal things in order to get an affirmative response from the unwitting patient. It is a violation of trust to do this as well. I trusted that my Doctor had my best interests at heart, not his own desires. I trusted him to reveal any downside to my surgery, as I have explained. I trusted him to make known to the anesthetist that I was not to be drugged, but instead he colluded with them so that he could have his own way. This is UNETHICAL and illegal.

I trusted my Doctor to make sure that I was treated with respect. Dr Frankenstein allowed my CRNA to make crude and insulting statements about me, in my presence and his. He directed this person to knock me out in flagrant violation of my wishes. He allowed nurses to practice on me.

I trusted that my modesty would be protected, and instead I was apparently a living corpse for students to practice threading a catheter into my vagina. Right in front of the nasty CRNA!!! Of course they deny all of this, just like they denied that I was treated like steer at the slaughter house. I got a kidney infection from it! This is unethical. I never gave permission to use my body as a teaching tool. Once again this is unethical and illegal. It's immoral too. Nobody should have their sexual organs exposed and experimented on without informed consent! If they are going to use us as a live cadaver, the hospital should at least be responsible for treating any infections that result... Maybe the whole surgery should be free as long as we are simply the test subject.

This is all medical care as it is today. It's shameful. Informed consent is a nuisance, ethics are out the door and immoral behavior is rampant. There are too many people complaining about this stuff for it to be just an isolated incident. It is a pattern of abuse. Be very careful out there.

All of this is my personal experience and opinion, and I have had to extrapolate a lot of what happened because the hospital lied to me and refused to admit or reveal certain things. The AMNESIA DIDN'T WORK!!! I know what they lied about after the Versed and before the general anesthetic, and from that I can assume that they lied about other things that I can only surmise. I would think that it should be unethical to refuse to reveal the truth about what happens in the OR.

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