Re: A few words about the law...
From: cathy:- (anonymous@medispecialty.com)
Thu Jan 17 15:39:39 2002
At Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Lisa wrote:
>Cathy- I have a question for you, don't know if you can answer it, but-
>my doctor told me I had to have my hysterectomy done adominally because
>my uterus was too enlarged turnsout it wasn't enlarged, his mistake.
>That surgery caused major adhesions and major PAIN! I had another doctor
>do a laparoscopy for adhesiolysis in October. When I asked the first
>doctor why he didn't want to do my laparoscopy he told me he didn't have
>the skills to do it, which makes me think he didn't have the skill to do
>my hysterectomy laprascopically, so he had to do it abdominally and he
>just gave me an excuse! Does this sound like something I could sue him
>for?
While I'm not an expert, that seems like EXACTLY the thing that you
could sue for. If your town is like any other town, you've got dozens
of ambulance-chasing lawyers out there advertising their services. The
town I used to live in even had a firm that had a lawyer who is also an
RN. You need to start asking around your friends and relatives as to
who is a trustworthy personal-injury lawyer, and then go talk to the
lawyer.
These sorts of injury lawsuits are almost always done on a split basis
where the lawyer gets to keep some percentage of any settlement that you
get, usually between 25% and 40%, and if you lose you walk away and owe
the lawyer nothing. So you are essentially trying to "sell" the lawyer
that there is a strong argument for a big-money payoff, big enough money
that the lawyer's take will make it worth his while.
There is also the question as to whether the hysterectomy was necessary.
Were you were having problems? What about consent? If you had any idea
what kind of life "adhesions" would mean and if you had any idea that an
abdominal hysterectomy puts you at something like a 5% to 10% risk of
this happening, would you have consented to the surgery at all?
And then there is the question of his surgical technique. An abdominal
hysterectomy is more likely to cause adhesions than a laporascopic one,
but there are a whole list of things that distinguish a "good" abdominal
surgery from a "bad" one, and the lawyer can use depositions to find out
if they followed the rules for meticulous surgery, too. Print out that
list of surgery techniques and take it with you to the lawyer. And also
Helen has posted lots of articles talking about the comparative adhesion
risks for various kinds of surgery -- print those out and take them with
you, too.
Basically in your meeting with the lawyer you want to make the case that
--
1) you were injured by the surgery (which you can show with the
operative report from the 2nd surgery) and these are significant,
life-altering injuries
2) the surgery could have been avoided completely, or done in a
different way so as to significantly reduce the probability of injury.
Stay focused on explaining to the lawyer these 2 things. If the lawyer
"blows you off" then don't take this as a sign that your case is week.
Take this as a sign that you need to refine and focus your argument, and
perhaps just find a different lawyer who "gets it" better.
--
cathy :-)
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