Pain and Suffering

 A third excerpt from the book:

Justice for Lisa

The extraordinary story of one avoidable 

hospital death and the people who

 helped those responsible avoid accountability

David Baker

   Five months after Lisa’s death, another patient also with diabetes died in the same hospital in shockingly similar circumstances.  Once again, a nurse failed to monitor the patient’s glucose level after an episode of hypoglycemia.

    Members of Samaritan Hospital’s management had learned nothing from what they had done to Lisa.

   Or maybe they just didn’t care.

    But Samaritan Hospital’s response to the two cases was very different:  The lawsuit filed by the family over the second patient’s death was settled just over a year later with minimal litigation for $125,000. (Which was five times the amount — $25,000 —  that at one point Samaritan Hospital offered me to settle:  I turned it down.) 

   In Lisa’s case, the hospital’s management was desperate to avoid acknowledging the mistake that took Lisa’s life.

   Its lawyers repeatedly claimed that Lisa and I were not married at the time the lawsuit was filed - meaning I would not have been eligible to sue the hospital  Then, faced with my motion for summary judgment, they paid Matthew C. Leinung, a doctor at nearby Albany Medical Center Hospital, to provide an affidavit stating it was his opinion that a nurse who failed to follow specific written instructions on treating low blood glucose did not deviate from the standard of care.  It was all the impatient judge needed to dismiss my claim. 

   So what was the difference between the two cases? 

   In four words: Conscious pain and suffering.

   In the medical records of the second death, there is no indication the patient was aware of the drop in his blood glucose level; he became unconscious and died.

  In Lisa’s case, it’s clear she knew that without a source of glucose she was going to die.

   She always was aware when her blood-glucose level was dropping.  The shear terror she would have experienced that evening before being found in her hospital bed near death can hardly be overstated.

  Here’s how I described visiting Lisa the day she collapsed:

   “When I arrived in Samaritan Hospital’s ICU a few hours after Lisa had been found near death, she was sitting up in the bed.  But she was far from normal.  She didn’t speak.  Instead, her eyes were rolled up in her head.  She was making a strange groaning sound while sticking out her tongue, holding her arms out in front of her as if reaching out to hug someone and turning her body from side to side from the waist.  Lisa’s brother had come in while I was there and he was so disturbed by what he saw that he had to quickly leave.”

   It’s an image that will be with me until the day I die.

   The lack of glucose had caused catastrophic damage.  Her brain cells were slowly dying. She was later placed on life support, where she remained until she died.

   But for a week or so she was minimally conscious. She would respond the doctors’ and nurses’ requests, such as “lie still, or “sit up’. She understood spoken words and so would have been acutely aware of her dire situation.

***

   In many claims for wrongful death there are two elements of a jury award or a pre-trial settlement   One is for economic damages: the amount the victim would have earned over his or her expected lifetime,  as well medical and other expenses. 

  The second - and often the far larger amount — is for conscious pain and suffering and fear of imminent death.

  In the second case in Samaritan Hospital there was no indication of the patient’s conscious awareness of his impending death.

   In Lisa’s case, the evidence is overwhelming.

    And that is why the management of Samaritan Hospital was desperate to defeat my claim for Lisa’s wrongful death.

  They got my claim dismissed.  But they are left with the outrageous claims made by that doctor at Albany Medical Center Hospital on their behalf, permanently available in a  public record.

   And now, this book.  Lisa, and how Samaritan Hospital’s management dodged responsibility for taking her life, will not be forgotten. 

******