September 29, 1998

Debra,

Last Friday, September 25, should have been my fathers 62^nd birthday.  For my family, it is one more horrible day each year.  On March 11, 1987 our family holidays were forever scorned.  Our family, as I have found over the years, was unique in that for each birthday or other holiday we were together.  We are not wealthy people, but we love like not many others I've known.
Dad was 51 years old when he got sick in February of 1987.  He'd had a complete physical not a year before that, and had no long term problems.  He'd been taking blood pressure medicine, but his overall health had not been bad prior to this time.  On the evening of February 7, Mom took him to Hospital A with chest pains - he was checked out and released with pain pills and a prescription for a potassium supplement.  He woke up the following morning very sick & was sent to another Emergency Center, where he was treated briefly and released again.  He was more sick before getting home and wound up in an ambulance going back to Hospital A.
By Monday the 9^th, he was so weak he couldn't feed himself, and was extremely disoriented.  They would not allow us to stay the night with him.  On Tuesday the Doctor said that the cat scan that had been ordered "wasn't necessary" and had not been done.
On Friday the 13^th, he was moved to a Nursing Home for physical therapy because he "wasn't recovering as fast as expected".  Dad had explained the pain in his back and legs in great detail, but the doctor did not seem concerned.  He was allowed to rest the remainder of that day after the transfer.  Saturday they began their ritual of swinging him into a wheelchair as he could not move himself at all, and having him sit for no less than an hour each day.  He would be so sick by the time he got back into bed that he couldn't eat.
Each time they put him in the wheelchair his legs would turn blue, he would break out into a cold sweat and turn very pale, then become nauseated when trying to do the therapy they insisted on.  The pain and sweat become worse in therapy.  My mother would ask the doctor repeatedly if his back had been x-rayed only to be ignored.  He finally told her to let him worry about it, that there was nothing wrong with his back, and he was the doctor - not her.
On February 20, Mom and Dad demanded x-rays which were performed in the room at the nursing home.  He was taken promptly to physical therapy after they were done and before they could be read.  While in the therapy area the nurse from his floor called and said that the ambulance drivers wanted him NOW.  They had to take him back to Hospital A where they did many more x-rays, and then several shots in the cat scan.  The x-ray room doctors or technicians were overheard saying that his back was broken.  A doctor came to the waiting room, introduced himself, and said he had 2 crushed vertebra, and would need surgery and it would be serious.  Dr. B, his regular doctor, came to talk to him and assure them that even though the x-ray showed a fracture, not to be overly concerned because it didn't look bad to him.
The surgery was performed on the 26^th.  It was stopped after the halfway point because, they said,  he had lost a lot of blood, and considered it to be life threatening to continue.  During the initial visit after the surgery, the nurse kept insisting that he had not had a heart attack.  (For what reason wasn't clear.)
He was moved from critical care on March 2 and was measured for a back brace on the 4^th.  He got the brace on the 9^th, but they didn't come to adjust it until the 10^th when they took it off because it had been entirely too tight.  He was taken to x-ray on the 10^th where he complained that they had jerked him around by his arms until he could hardly stand it.
On the 11^th the brace was put back on and he was taken to therapy.  Before they could take him he had visitors.  The people who were to take him were asked to wait in the hall with the door shut while he visited with his cousin Arlis and a Doctor friend who were there to get his consent to pull the medical records.  After therapy he had a nap, then dinner, then more visitors.  He was in good humor, and seemed to be feeling very well.  Everyone left for the evening around 7:30 p.m.
About 9:30 p.m. a Dr. C called Mom and announced that he had died, and said that  if she wanted to go back - to call him first.  We did go back, and were made to wait in the waiting room while they got him ready to see.  Dr. C said that after we'd left they discovered he wasn't breathing and they couldn't get him restarted, but he didn't know why.  The doctor later asked if Mom would sign papers for an autopsy.  She said that she wanted one done, but not at Hospital A.  She said she wanted it done by the coroner at Hospital B.  He said that he could take care of that for us.  After a few minutes away, he returned and said  "it is mandatory that anytime someone dies within a year and a day of a fracture, there is an autopsy".  He said that it is Indiana State Law!  Mom was offered no papers to sign.
On Friday March 20, we called the coroners office and found that there had been no autopsy!  The death certificate had been signed but, no autopsy.  My aunt told us that the newspaper said the cause of death was "Liver Failure"!
The Death Certificate said "Chronic Liver Failure"  "Chronic Alcoholism", and "Remote Fracture Spine T-12, L-1 due to fall in withdrawal".  We find the wording on the Death Certificate unacceptable, as there was no autopsy.
Nobody ever mentioned anything about a liver problem to us in the hospital at anytime.  If there had been a liver problem, how could they even start to do the surgery without mentioning it?  As for the fall during withdrawal - we were unaware at that time of any type of a fall.  We since learned in the process of reading the medical records that there was a fall from a gurney in an x-ray room.  We were never told of this, and there is barely a mention of it in the records.
His problems were not taken seriously in the hospital after we told them that he had a drinking problem. He was given nothing to ease any withdrawal while in the hospital.  He was not x-rayed and was sent to do physical therapy when he shouldn't have been moving at all.  His shoulders had been x-rayed. If he already had the fractured vertebra shouldn't it have been detected?  Or, did the therapist do it?
The following years were almost as bad.  Trying to overcome what had happened, and find a suitable attorney to look into the wrong doings.  We filed a "Wrongful Death Suit" just before the deadline.  Our attorneys office kept reassuring us that all was going according to plan, and that there would be a precedence set, and would  be  known  as  the  "William Ground" precedence.  After all the time had elapsed that was allowed, we received a notice from the head attorney at the firm that they were very sorry, but there was no more they could do for us.  They may as well have killed him all over again.  The hurt just started all over.  (We had even paid an 'Independent Medical Records Examiner' to review the records - he found many incidences of wrong doing.)

It is very difficult to understand how doctors can do the things they do with no accountability.  My fathers back was broken.  He was tortured with physical therapy.  He died mysteriously.  Any evidence of the cause of death was destroyed and then he was publicly blamed and discredited.  We have to just swallow it.

Joanne Pyle