Florida Woman Loses Arms, Legs After Misdiagnosis

[WriteDown]

Source: AP

DAVIE, Fla. — When the sharp pain shooting through Lisa Strong's back got worse, she thought it was another kidney stone and expected the discomfort to pass. This time was different.

Through a series of mistakes, miscommunications and misdiagnoses, she wound up having her arms and legs amputated. She sued the doctors, who essentially blamed one another for what everyone involved agrees were profound errors.

Everyone except the jury that ruled against Strong.

The verdict came in the face of such overwhelming evidence that in a rare move, the judge tossed out the jury's decision and ordered a new trial....



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522785,00.html?test=latestnews

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Geez.

[Enrique]

1. key sentence

(confusing because this doctor happens to have the same name as the victim, but here it is)

"Dr. Strong works for a firm contracted by Lisa Strong's insurance company to make medical decisions if her personal doctor isn't available or chooses not to make the call."

Anyone know about these firms? They specializing in making diagnoses that will save the insurance company money?

[kojak]

12. Frist school of medicine?

Correct me if I'm wrong but based on what I interpret from the article, this doctor made a diagnosis without seeing the patient. WTF?!

[riverdeep]

41. The doctor claims that he was never told about kidney stones

over the phone or that she was in septic shock. The attending ER physician said she did tell the other physician, but didn't write it down. Lesson, ALWAYS write stuff down. What I learned a long time ago, is that it's better to be overly-detailed than under.

He says he believed the patient was stable and so didn't come in to see her.

[AlphaCentauri]

19. This health care system sucks big time

I have seen people going to their primary health care provider having a stroke and they are send home for 3 days to wait for a call from the insurance company to approve a CT Scan.

that's stupidity at work.

[edbermac]

2. Damn that activist judge!

:sarcasm:

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. I hope that jury walks away in shame.

There is no better example, than this one, to show what we're faced with in this day in age. You have the medical profession, screwing up, usually not this bad, usually enough to cover for each other. But when they can't, we're at the mercy of the courts. And then the real damage begins.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

29. Self delete

Misread, my apologies.

David

[No Elephants]

32. Judges have the power to set aside a jury verdict if the evidence does not support it, so

no activism here whatever.

(You were being sarcastic, but this info might comfort some of the more rightest DU'ers.)

[Auggie]

3. My neighbor's ALS was misdiagnosed for a year

She lost valuable treatment time that would have slowed the disability.

[WriteDown]

6. Yeah....

but ALS is super hard to diagnose. Kidney stones are not.

[No Elephants]

34. Correct, especially when the patient has a history of kidney stones and so informs the

caregivers on arrival, as did this patient.

ALS is a much tougher call (though otherwise unexplained diminution of hand strength is often one of the first signs).

[Berry Cool]

4. What a horrible story.

The article says "her 10-year marriage fell apart" too, so she's living on her own and sharing custody of two kids. Must be fun when trying to adjust to artificial limbs.

I imagine her husband decided it was just too much trouble sticking with a "deformed" wife when he could have a much easier time of it asking for a divorce and finding himself a new woman with all her limbs. Life is so much more fun that way, you know. Dealing with your wife after she has problems like this is too much of a bummer for many men. :sarcasm:

[WriteDown]

7. Works both ways...

I'm sure women have left men during illnesses as well.

[No Elephants]

33. A study testing your theory would be interesting. I'd like to know if the %'s are even.

[elocs]

35. I wonder, how much of both sides in life is "even"? n/t

[SteelPenguin]

16. We have no idea what happened

I imagine that having her arms and legs lopped off changed her, and she became bitter and spiteful. Her husband tried to help her, but they were already having problems before the amputations based on her having multiple affairs, and it grew too much on him. After many months of her yelling at him, refusing his help, calling him names, and worse, he finally left.

Actually I don't imagine that. I have no idea what happened between them, so I'm not going to assume anything about it.

[kskiska]

17. Sort of like John McCain n/t

[KamaAina]

20. And Newt Gingrich

:puke:

[KamaAina]

40. And *unlike* Tammy Duckworth's husband!

Ms. Strong-KamaAina (we're secretly married, you know :-) ) actually looks better in her prosthetics than Tammy does! And I say this as one who goes past Duckworth's alma mater McKinley High School every afternoon; she was also the guest of honor at our Memorial Day service at Punchbowl Cemetery.

[wysimdnwyg]

5. All I can say is WTF????

She went to the damned ER! Do they not have doctors IN THE FRIGGEN ER???

And does this remind anyone else of a certain medical diagnosis a certain Senator made while not in the same city as the patient?

[superconnected]

8. Horrifying. Poor woman.

I read the article because it was horrifying. I mean she told them the right diagnosis from the start.

The only thing good about this is other people will see the article and have an idea that something is really wrong if they're limbs go black and they shouldn't just live with that for a month. And to make sure they check for kidney stones.

[Politicalboi]

9. And she owes $850,000

WTF? They should pay for everything. Perhaps she needs a better attorney.

[Seldona]

10. She owes 850k in medical bills, and the jury let the doctors off?

I am glad the judge tossed out the decision of the jury and allowed her a new trial. Were her lawyers high? The jury?

This is just horrible.

[sallylou666]

11. Judge let drs off

The jury did not let the drs off. The judge overturned the jury's verdict. That's highly unusual. Poor woman has to go through another trial now.

[kojak]

13. No, jury let doc's off

The judge overturned the verdict because idiot jurors couldn't see how ridiculously negligent her insurance company owned "health care" was.

[tomm2thumbs]

14. ineffective doctors, very effective lawyers

extremely effective judge

[sofa king]

27. Someone got to those jurors.

I suppose it could have been some Grishamesque jury selection artist who stacked the deck, but my first instinct is to guess that the insurance company simply bribed some or all of the jurors.

And what's a judge doing coming down on the wrong side of corporations and old money? Obviously, the price wasn't right.

[No Elephants]

36. Republicans may have had something to do with it. They've been instilling the ideas that

lawyers are evil, especially in malpractice and other tort cases, and medical malpractice cases should (a) disappear or get limited severely; and (b) be won by doctors.

I've been watching that trend since a California law firm got shot up years ago, killing a number of lawyers and staff, and Jay Leno made an incredibly tasteless lawyer joke about it that same night.

Remember Bush complaining that malpractice suits were preventing gynecologists from practicing their love for women?


Also, doctors and their insurers pay big lobbying bucks to make it tougher and tougher for these cases even to get into court. In some states, a panel of doctors has to agree that the doc not only screwed up, but no reasonable doc would have made that same mistake. Otherwise, you cannot even sue.

Think about that: The doctors know that every decision that goes against doctors coulc come back and bit them in their own stethoscope someday. So, they most often decide that the doctor made a mistake, but the mistake was not careless. (Hence the battery of tests they make you take whenever you sneeze. The tests may not prevent a wrong diagnosis, but they may well prevent someone from holding the doc/insurer liable for the error.)


Sometimes a lawyer's willingness to risk spending two years on your case without gettting paid unless you win is all that stands between you and your civil rights or between you and your right to recover for getting butchered. Yet, for about 20 years, they've been made to look like society's biggest villians. Not the doc or pharmaceutical company that ruined your life, but the lawyer who tries to get you compensation.

Please think twice next time you hear a lawyer joke.

[fascisthunter]

18. that jury had to be tampered with

the question now is WHO tampered with the jury.

Here's another example of money being an incentive to screw a person who had her fucking arms and legs amputated.

[WriteDown]

21. No it didn't

Sometimes jurors are just monumentally stupid.

[clixtox]

24. Sad, but true. We are getting dumber as a nation, IMHO.

I was on a jury last month in a minor criminal hit & run trial.

The jury deadlocked 11 to 1 for conviction on flimsy, albeit convenient, evidence and lying witnesses.

This may have been the public defenders first jury trial. She was basically inept, allowing the DA's witnesses to state opinions w/o foundation and never attempted to impugn their testimony or character.

The "presumption of innocence" was forgotten pretty much when the defendant required an interpreter.

In America, putting people in jails and prisons is perhaps the most efficient system we possess anymore. Wildly successful in fact!

Horrible! Beneath contempt...

Considering how many innocent people have been convicted by juries, even put on "death row" despite all of the supposed "safeguards" built into our "Justice" system, we have systemic problems requiring fundamental changes now.


Like meaningfully penalizing prosecutors for malpractice and politically motivated prosecutions.

[Codeine]

22. Never attribute to malice

that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[AngryAmish]

23. Large majority of med mal cases are verdicts for the doctors

Hard cases to try and win.

[No Elephants]

37. Maybe by getting paid or threatened or maybe less directly. Please see Reply # 36.

[knitter4democracy]

25. And she's never going to be the same.

I was misdiagnosed, though not to such a tragic level. My appendicitis was misdiagnosed as endometriosis, and I lived with it for ten years before I finally talked a specialist into opening me up and seeing what was going on inside. The resident helping him found my appendix in the wrong spot, and it wouldn't move, cut it out. Eight doctors missed that diagnosis, and I could've died from the appendicitis at any time. They also missed the huge kidney tumor, but that's another story.

The reality is, doctors screw up. They're human, and the amount of information they're required to know is astounding. The problem here, like in most cases, is that they forgot to listen to the patient. If they'd listened to her, she wouldn't have been in this mess.

As for the divorce, I'm going through one now, too, and STBX blames it on my health problems, too. I blame it on the infidelity. Please don't be so quick to defend this woman's ex. We don't know the story here, and we don't know why he left.

[KamaAina]

26. The doctors, jury, and ESPECIALLY the ex-husband share the honors as...

Today's... Worst... People... In The World!!!!! :grr: :banghead: :argh:

On second thought, just give it to the ex-husband. He left that beautiful lady -- not to mention the two children! -- after ten years, just because she now has a limb difference??!! :wtf:

I don't suppose Lisa might be lurking here, by any chance?... :loveya:

[happyslug]

28. Official Court cite for the case:

http://www.clerk-17th-flcourts.org/Clerkwebsite/BCCOC2/Pubsearch/case_summary.aspx?hidSearchType=party_case&txtLastName=strong&txtFirstName=lisa&txtMiddleInitial=&txtBusinessEntity=&chkAdvSearch=0&cboCourtType=&sbmPublicParty=Submit&user_type=&DVCE06002485=CIV,CIV&09019758TI40A=TRA&FMCE06006254=CIV&CACE05008614=CIV&01038516TI30A=TRA&CACE06005426=CIV,CIV&hidCaseNumber=CACE06006242&CACE06006242=CIV&hidCourtType=CIV&hidGeneralType=CIV&ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$comcs$btnSummary=View%20Selected%20Case&&user_type=

I tried to look up the actual decision but Boward County is Charging $5 to access the case.

https://www.clerk-17th-flcourts.org/ClerkWebsite/BCCOC2/newindividual_reg.aspx

She also have nine other cases, two traffic tickets, her divorce and maybe another case involved with this one:
http://www.clerk-17th-flcourts.org/Clerkwebsite/BCCOC2/Pubsearch/case_search_results.aspx?hidSearchType=party_case&txtLastName=strong&txtFirstName=lisa&txtMiddleInitial=&txtBusinessEntity=&chkAdvSearch=0&cboCourtType=&sbmPublicParty=Submit&user_type=

[No Elephants]

38. Someone else could have the same name. It's not an unusual one. Even the judge has the same surname

[avaistheone1]

30. I recommend Florida as the worse state in America.

And Texas is a close second.

The quality of justice in Florida is worse than pathetic. It is hard to believe they are not part of some banana republic.

[old mark]

31. My father in law sued a hospital in Philly for malpractice - they

went so far as to have several pages of his chart destroyed and more re-written and having several doctors lie under oath. He lost.
My former family doctor misdiagnosed my severe neck, arm and leg pain as carpal tunnel syndrome. It was really blocked arteries - I had at least 2 heart attacks, required a quad bypass and several more arteries in my chest replaced. A lawyer's advice - "You can't sue a doctor for being stupid - if you could, all lawyers would be rich."

The AMA protects its own, at every level and by any means possible.

mark

[No Elephants]

39. Yep, the AMA and the RNC. Please see Reply # 36.