La Chica Organica™

I miss you dad – Dealing with the Aftermath of Losing a Loved One

14 Apr 2011 10 Comments

by LCO in Words for the Soul Tags: dealing with death, death, Father, Hospital, I miss you dad, medical malpractice, Surgery

Today marks the anniversary date of my dad’s untimely death.  He was taken from us due to medical malpractice.

Sometimes when we hide hurts deep inside our heart they eat away at us and slowly we begin to die.  I am still healing from his absence and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t remember him with profound joy or sadness.  I don’t want his absence to eat away at my heart so I am going to share with you what happened to him and tell you a bit about who my dad was.

My beloved father went into the hospital with pain in his abdomen and he turned to me and said that he felt like his intestines were knotted.  He was kind of right.  That morning I was preparing to take my son to school and my father was hunched over on my couch and had no saliva in his mouth, he could hardly speak.  So I rushed him to a nearby hospital.

Examination by the ER doctor confirmed that he had a hernia and needed immediate surgery so they had us wait in a room for about 7 hours until they had availability to operate.  My father was lying in a bed the entire time and I was calling into work explaining what had happened and trying to work on some things remotely.

Let me say that my father never carried insurance in the US.  He would always travel back to his country of birth to do medical checkups and blood work on a yearly basis while being seen by a Naturopath.  He never seemed to trust the medical professionals here and often said that they lacked knowledge and that most of them discriminated against those that did not have insurance.  We always thought he exaggerated until it happened to him.

I was alone with my dad waiting for surgery when he turned to me and said: “Mijita, aqui estan mis documentos mas importantes, con los codigos de acceso para mis cuentas y mi correo personal.”

In English this translates to: “My daughter, here are my most important documents and all the codes and password to my accounts and emails”

I turned to him and jokingly shrugged him off saying that I would not need that information, and then I got up and excused my self to the bathroom.  I did not want to think of my dad not making it; after all it was just a hernia repair not a major heart operation.

After many hours we finally got to see a surgeon.  The surgeon explained to me that the surgery would last under 2 hrs and that he would be out in the recovery room before 7:30pm.  I explained to the doctor that I would be waiting for him in the area right outside the OR room and for him to please come out and let me know once the surgery was over with, he said OK.

So I waited and I waited and I waited.  About 7:15pm I went back into the prep room and asked the staff if they knew anything and they said no.

I came back at 8pm and at 9pm and at 10pm and the answer was a very nasty “NO”, we don’t know where your father is.  I asked to have the surgeon paged several times and after 2 hours I was told that he had left to go home.   I knelt down and prayed for patience for self control and for peace.

I could not help but feeling furious and thought I would beat the lights out of the rude male nurse that was standing in front of me.  He kept saying that I had no reason to get all worked up.

I thought to myself:  “Worked up?????  Worked up???? Oh dude you have not even seen worked up yet!!!  If I don’t take a walk you’ll be in the OR soon getting worked on!!”  I laugh now as I recall my stress from that day.

It was a surreal experience.  These people had no humanity, no love, no respect and then got mad at me when I asked how my father could be lost in translation when they were the ones that prepped him before surgery.   This whole thing started wrong and was about to get even worse.

Finally, approaching midnight my cell rings and it was my dad, drugged on morphine, barely whispering and asking me where I was.  I asked him where he was and told him that I had been waiting for hours and no one could tell me where his room was.

He said that after the recovery room they wheeled him to a very nice room and he was there for about an hour or so until the nurse came in and said he could not be in that room and they were moving him to the upper wing of the hospital.  I later found out from a nurse in the hospital cafeteria, that was standard treatment for patients without insurance, so much for fair treatment.

This upper wing was like the hospital ghetto.  Dingy, smelly, cold, paint chipping of the walls, no private rooms and even ruder nurses.

So I rushed upstairs and finally got into his room.  He looked awful and his lips were parched and he was smacking them every time he talked because his mouth was so dry.

I asked my dad how he was feeling and he said so so.

Meanwhile the attending nurse was next to my dad asking him all sorts of questions when my poor dad was trying to go to sleep.  She said that they were switching to computerized charts and she needed to manually re-enter all of my dad’s medical history. At midnight; I thought? I turned to her and asked her if she could just read the info off of his chart and let him rest, she ignored my question and repeated herself instead.

By this time my sister walks in because she too had been trying to locate my dad before taking the 45 minute drive from her home to the hospital.  She immediately thanked the nurse for caring for dad and asked her for a special sponge kit to hydrate my dad’s lips and told them not to worry that she was a nurse and would do it for him.  The nurse rolled her eyes and grabbed the kit for my sister.  We were both looking at each other and I realized that I had, had enough drama for the day.  I knew dad was in good hands with my sister and I said I was running home to get a few hrs of sleep.  By this time it was close to 1am.

Fast forward a day and my dad is complaining of chest discomfort, gas, bloating, indigestion, heartburn and keeps telling me that it is getting worse.

I ask the nurses to please have the Dr paged so they can come up and hear his lungs and chest.

The nurse said that it was no big deal and that his discomfort and heartburn were normal and she would give him some Pepsid which is an anti-acid.

I kept insisting that they call a doctor because my dad’s blood pressure was out of control and he had normal blood pressure prior to surgery.  They then tell me that he is suffering from “White Coat Syndrome”, which is when a patient is affected by being in the hospital and seeing the people in white coats.  I laugh and shake my head in disbelief thinking that these people must have gotten their medical degrees out of a cereal box.  White Coat Syndrome, come on now.  In my mind there was something in his body that was triggering the high blood pressure the indigestion the chest discomfort etc..

Needles to say, my dad takes multiple doses of the Pepsid and nothing happens, he says he is feeling worse and his blood pressure is still very high.

At this point I run home and grab the most expensive organic aloe extract that I have.  I know it works for heartburn and indigestion because it cured my husband of many of the same symptoms.

Now back at the hospital I give him multiple doses of the aloe extract.  He sighs in relief for about 15 minutes and then starts complaining again.  I am baffled.  Now I know this is more than acid or indigestion.  So I reiterate everything to my mom and sister who are also asking the nurses to speak to the doctor, who until now had not made his way up to my father’s room to speak with us.

Time seems to be going by very slowly and I make a decision to return to work that Monday just for a few hrs and then head out to see my dad because that was supposed to be discharge day, but because of my dad’s high blood pressure and other symptoms they decide to keep him in the hospital longer.

I am sitting at my desk at work and the caller ID shows the name of the hospital, I grab the phone and it’s silent for a few seconds.  I can feel my heart pounding through my brain and tears beginning to well up.  I could feel that something was wrong.

“Hello is anyone there” I say.

One moment please wait for the ER doctor.

I hear a few beeps and then a male voice.

“Are you the daughter of Mr _______?”

“Yes I am, what’s wrong”

“We think your dad has suffered cardiac arrest and we need you to come down to the hospital right away, OK?”

“OK” I say and then the line goes to a dial tone.

My legs by this time feel like lead, I am sweating, exhausted, bewildered, scared, anxious, and paralyzed.  I get up and fallback against a wall.  A co-worker that was sharing my office at the time gets up and comes to my rescue and asks me if I am OK.

I can hardly speak and my legs won’t move.

After a few seconds of resting against the wall I make it out to the hallway with my purse while crying frantically.  I feel like the air in my lungs has been sucked out.

I stop right in front of my boss’s office and he looks up from his meeting at me and he knows exactly what to do after hearing the few unintelligent words I managed to mutter amidst my crying.  He grabs his briefcase and says “let’s go I’ll drive”.

The drive to the hospital was insane.  I kept trying to dial my sister and reach my mom to no avail.  I was finally able to reach my sister and I told her to hurry down.

I hung up and my boss offered to pray.  He said the most beautiful prayer and just asked for peace and serenity to handle whatever it is that we were going to encounter.

That prayer carried me through that rough day, and I was thankful for it.

Finally we make it to the hospital and I walk inside my dad’s room.  I see 4 nurses in there, no doctor.  They are removing their gloves and tossing them in the garbage.

In the distance through the open spaces of the room I see a glimpse of my dad.  He is lying there with a bloody tube in his mouth and lifeless.

“What happened” I ask the nurses.  “What happened to my dad?”

Not a word back from them.  One of them says that she will call the doctor to speak with me and that I should wait outside.

No, I am coming in because this is my dad, and you guys called me to come here and now you’re not letting me in to see him.  Please just tell me what happened.

Finally a very heavyset overweight nurse turns around and says to me: “Yo daddy died”.

Now I don’t have anything against slang and the yo’s and aints and all the other words that are customary to various groups in the US, but today was one of those days that warranted a little something extra.  But I got none.

Instead I was asked literally 10 minutes later to fill out all kinds of forms for my dad.  I was literally holding on to the hospital counter with wobbly legs and shaky hands trying to get the papers filled out.

Finally my mom arrives with some soup that she had made my dad.  She had no idea what was happening and neither did my daughter that was now running straight into his room.

I saw her and ran towards her and told her to come my way so she would not see my dead father.

The doctor made his way in, this was the first time I had seen him after my dad’s surgery.  I turn on my voice recorder and show him that I am recording to which the nurses call him aside and warns him.

I start asking questions and he stammers to answer them.

I ask him what time my father passed.  He says that he died at about 3:05pm.

I ask when was the last time my dad had been seen by a doctor that day.  He answers back by saying that the Pulmonologist had seen him right after 12pm and that my dad was fine.

We go back and forth, talking very cordially and the doctor leaves.

I still can’t believe what has happened, the reality of his death has still not sunken in and I am unbelievably calm.

The days pass after the terrible news and we still have no death certificate to bury my dad.  The doctor that operated on him the same one I spoke to the day my dad died decides to go on vacation without signing the death certificate.  By this time 8 days had passed. The man doing the funeral work sends a courier to the doctors house the morning the doctor was scheduled to leave and demands that he sign the death certificate so we can bury my father.

He signs it and places that the reasons for death are:

Pulmonary Embolism,

Heart Failure and Hernia Repair.

This doctor has nothing else to write and he knew he has messed up, that is why he did not want to fill out the death certificate and that is why he did not come out to speak to me after surgery.

There are just too many things that aren’t adding up so my mom orders an autopsy.

Finally the autopsy report comes back saying that my father was in exceptional health and then I read the conclusion which rips my heart out yet again.  You can read it below for your self:

All of a sudden my mom remembers the doctor explaining to her that when he did the surgery he was suppose to put in a mesh over the area to prevent a hernia from occurring in the future, but he decided that it was not the best thing to do so he would have to open my dad up for surgery in a months time.

This coupled with my dads constant complain of a burning chest and discomfort was enough to make us start looking for attorneys.  We spoke to several doctors and the Pathologist and they all said the same thing:  Your father died because he aspirated fecal matter that was in his lungs, in his esophagus and he developed all of the infections mentioned above as a direct result of a bad surgery.

So basically my father choked to death and that Pulmonologist that supposedly saw him at noon the day he died never did see him.  There was no hospital record and even if he had seen him he would have heard something wrong in my dads lungs.

The autopsy also revealed that my dad died earlier not at 3:05pm as stated by the doctor.

I went back and heard the recordings and looked at pictures that I had taken of my dads room and of his bedside chart and guess what I found?  The chart had no notes for that day regarding any doctor visits and nurse visits.  The room also had a board where the charge nurse would write her name everyday and the date along with the other on call nurse.  The board I photographed on Monday April 14th still had Sundays information on it.

My sister was told by one of the nice nurses in secrecy that “they should never had done that to your dad” and “If I had been his charge nurse this would not have happened”.

Now, I know that my dad was taken away because his time was up, I have accepted that fact.  But it still does not mean that I have to stay quiet and hear about  hundreds of people dying each day while being treated in the hospitals and clinics around the world.

The biggest lesson I learned concerning my dads tragic death is “NEVER trust anything anyone says until you prove it right yourself.”  That is as it relates to being hospitalized.  Although not all doctors are criminals and careless, those inhumane ones do exist, so be mindful and question everything for your own peace of mind.  I must add that I trust blindly in God; but  it’s sad to see people deposit that same trust in others who may not have their best interest at heart.

And just one more bit of this story is that no local attorney wanted to take our case.  Interestingly all of them said “You have a case but it’s not in our best interest to take it?”

One attorney said that if it had been his father he would pursue a case until the ends of the earth but that his firm could not take the case.

Makes you wonder if these attorneys had some agreement with the hospital or were paid off by them.

Things that make you go huuummmnnnn.  I will never know but in spite of it all I am thankful that I have gotten through this, because it has made me all that wiser and has made me delve deeper into true health and wellness through proper nutrition and using all that God created for our well-being.

My dad was my inspiration for creating La Chica Organica.

I still remember planting potatoes, carrots and corn with him.  I remember at 9 using a machete to chop down corn plants and make compost for a healthy soil.

I remember how my dad worked frantically day and night helping those people who were poor and had no voice.

The biggest blessing after my dad died was seeing the thousands of emails that poured in from all over the world.  People in shock and thanking him for his life work.  It was also a humbling experience for me to see all the recognitions, plaques and letters from dignitaries and important world leaders that my dad had kept a secret from us, stashed in a big duffel bag in my garage.  His humility and lack of self-awareness was the key to his peaceful life.  He cared more about the things of others than for himself.  It’s a life I want to follow and a legacy I want to hold on to forever.

He will be missed forever but I know I will see him again some day and then we’ll sing together: “Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing gonna be alright”  One of his favorite songs!

I love you dad!