Save A Life This Holiday–It Might Be Your Own!

We continue to receive poignant messages from visitors to our website about medical mistakes. Here are just a few:
Q. I was seeing a doctor for a year because I was suffering from right side complaints. I could feel a bump on my right side. She examined me and told me that she couldn’t tell if it was normal tissue or not. During this time, I was given two prescriptions for medicines that I was allergic to. I went back again and again with side effects and symptoms but was never referred to anyone else.
I asked to have my medications changed (to be taken off one or all of them) and she said no. I ended up in our local hospital with the early stages of kidney failure. The emergency physician thought my kidneys were damaged from the blood pressure pill and NSAID pain reliever my doctor prescribed.
When I visited my primary care doctor I was kept on a medicine that was bad for my kidneys. And a report from the CT scan stated that I should have yet another scan with IV contrast.
That was not done and I was released. Because I couldn’t get answers to my concerns or questions I decided to seek a second opinion. My doctor found out and said I violated doctor-patient trust and that she wouldn’t see me anymore.
I went to see another doctor anyway and within 5 minutes of examining me she FOUND A TUMOR! To think that if I’d have followed my original doctor’s orders I would never have found out till it was too late.
MY point in writing this is to just share my story. I wish doctors would please listen to their patients. They live in their body everyday and they know if something is wrong. There are some very good doctors as well as some bad ones. The good ones deserve much more credit than they get. The moral of my story is: Listen to your body. You know it best. If you don’t understand something ask questions. It’s your right. If you are not satisfied, seek a second opinion. A good doctor will welcome it. Best wishes to all! JL
A. Dear JL, thanks so much for sharing your story. We are glad you finally were diagnosed correctly and are on the way to recovery. The reason we wrote Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them was to help people like you ask the right questions, know what problems to watch out for and protect yourself or someone you love from harm.
We recently heard from Marie in Sweden:
Q.

 Many of the problems you wrote about in Top Screw-Ups are similar to the ones we experience here in Sweden, but there’s very little discussion of medical mistakes.
Unfortunately, the older Swedes can’t read your book as they did not learn English, but maybe their grown up “children” can. They are also taking a lot of statins, ACE-inhibitors, pain medications, antidepressants etc.
I realized that it is absolutely essential to do your own “research” when my father, who already had 12-15 medications, came home from a week in a nursing facility with another two – Mellaril (thioridazine) and Aricept (for dementia) He looked like a zombie.
I immediately suspected drugging. I was sure that my father’s sudden confusion was caused by old age, lots of medications and an infection that was wrongly diagnosed. I later learned about the complications of thioridazine for older people and how it was withdrawn from the English market because it could cause irregular heart rhythms.
Thanks Joe and Teresa Graedon for your marvelous, new book. 
I also want to thank you for your interesting website which I discovered long ago.
A. Marie, we are glad you learned about the dangers of too many drugs for older people. The problem with drugs like thioridazine for an older person are now very clear, but it took a long time to discover them. The warning that the FDA now lists with such anti-psychotic medications makes it very clear that these drugs pose a great risk to those over 65.
We hope our new book will protect senior citizens, children and everyone in between from dangerous drug interactions, medication mistakes, misdiagnoses, hospital-acquired infections, blood clots and many other medical misadventures. To learn more about our new book, here is a link to more information.