Tony Rossi, son completed his residency in emergency medicine lives in another city (Time 1 hour)

Mom and Dad called me Tuesday night after Mom had been to the clinic and told me she was in pain and the doctor had told her she had some sort of inflammation she had a low grade fever, but she said Tylenol was working to take the pain away. I guess I should have asked more questions I probably should have called the doctor at the clinic to find out what the blood work results were, and to find out exactly what he thought given that he gave my Mom the prescription for Cipro and Metronidazole, I assumed she had diverticulitis and that was what he was treating I really didn't get the impression from my Mom that she was that sick, I should have known that they wouldn't tell me the whole story, even Carmen didn't know how bad it was my Mom never wants to bother anyone, she is usually the one taking care of everyone else.

So, finally, when Carmen called me on Thursday right around noon to say how sick my Mom was, and how no one seemed to be taking her concerns seriously in the ED. I was working that day, so I booked a flight to come home as soon as possible the next day and went straight to the hospital to see my Mom. She was intubated in the ICU and they had started her on dialysis. My sister told me about all the delays and how long it took for her surgery, so I demanded to see my Mom's chart to get to the bottom of things.

The first thing that jumped out at me was that she had an elevated creatinine that showed up in her blood work from the clinic and that it was even higher when it was taken in the hospital and that no one seemed to even notice and they went ahead and gave her IV contrast for her CT scan which I don't really understand why they didn't just take her up to do surgery instead of wasting time with more tests when if anyone had actually looked at her, they would have realized that she needed surgery anyway, everyone knows that you shouldn't give IV contrast to a patient with a high creatinine, because of the risk of renal failure.

I asked that Dr. Witmans about it in the ICU and that is when the whole runaround about who actually ordered the abdominal CT scan got started and when my sister and I really felt like the staff wasn't being honest with us and that there were lots of things they weren't telling us. My sister was really mad when we had that conversation because she had talked with Dr. Witmans before I got there and he never said anything about the fact that the IV contrast could have been a major factor that lead to Mom's renal failure. The ICU doctor said that he didn't order the scan and it wasn't his place to bring it up. He told me to talk with the surgical service as they were taking care of my Mom at that time the test was ordered.

So we talked with Dr. Chan about the decision to order a CT scan when Mom's creatinine was already high. Dr. Chan passed the buck and explained the test had been ordered by the ED physician and told us to talk to the Department of Emergency Medicine to find out how to contact Dr. Jordan who was the ED doc on that day.

Finally Dr. Jordan came and talked with us face to face at least, and said it was the emergency resident, I think his name was Fitzgerald or something, who ordered the test. Then she left for a bit and came back only to tell us that it was Dr. Fraser a surgical resident who recommended to the ED Resident that the CT with contrast be done. So in the end, it feels like absolutely no one is going to accept responsibility for ordering a test that has caused my Mom to be on dialysis or accept responsibility for all the delays in getting my Mom to the OR, and ultimately causing her to be close to death in the ICU.