THE EDITOR: My father was always one who loved to walk any and everywhere. At 82 years young he was still very active and healthy. Never one to eat junk food, always exercising and, as I mentioned earlier, loved to walk.
Daddy’s leg started to swell to the point he could barely walk, and he had a bruise on his right big toe that was not healing. After many different doctors and private clinic visits and tests, it was determined he had a peripheral vascular disease, added to which he also had dry and wet gangrene.
Because of the seriousness of his condition, the private doctor recommended going to Mt Hope Hospital since they had a great vascular team.
That same day, March 18, as we couldn’t afford the $100,000 plus procedure to deal with daddy’s issue, we took him to Mt Hope. Daddy got blood work done, X-rays, CT scans, angiogram…the works and Mt Hope’s vascular team concluded that he needed to get an angioplasty done before addressing the situation of the gangrene on his toe.
Each time he was scheduled for the procedure it was cancelled. He would be discharged when the procedure was cancelled, then readmitted, only to repeat the cycle. On April 12, the procedure got cancelled again. On his discharge papers his new appointment date was May 9 for the vascular clinic. We were all gutted and couldn’t understand why.
My family and I tried several times to speak with someone to get answers. It was only when, out of pure frustration, I contacted the quality department did we find out why. Mt Hope did not have the angioplasty balloons to do the procedure and the awesome gentleman in the quality department was liaising with appropriate personnel to source and buy balloons and get daddy’s procedure done.
On April 29, daddy got a fever and we took him to Accident and Emergency at Mt Hope Hospital. They warded him and pumped him with antibiotics. On the 30th a different team of doctors amputated his right big toe. The same toe that had the gangrene. The same toe that no one treated and did not touch because he was to get the angioplasty done first…the same angioplasty that was cancelled several times. Of course, at this point there still were no balloons.
On May 3, daddy’s new team of doctors said they would have to amputate further up that same leg (the right leg) because the infection, the sepsis, caused by the gangrene was spreading. This was to be done in the hopes of getting ahead of the infection and once that was cleared the angioplasty could then be done. Thus, the amputation was scheduled to be done on May 4 at around 6 am.
On May 4, at 4.45 am or so, daddy died.
Daddy went into cardiac arrest due to complications from the sepsis spreading and partial organ failure. His body couldn’t handle it.
To say I am angry at Mt Hope is a huge understatement. Why after so many cancellations couldn’t the vascular team come up with an alternative plan to treat the gangrene? How can you send an 82-year-old man, with gangrene, home on April 12 and set his clinic date for May 9 and send him home with no antibiot
