My Brother Mike The Rest Of The Story

[Pete53]

Re: My Brother Mike passed on Christmas Day

The story behind the Story. Mike was my best friend since we were toddlers. We pretty much thought the same way, liked the same food, the same sports and took pretty much the same meds. He was 6'5 and I thought that he would live a long time more than me.

In September Mike called me and said he was in Hospital and he thought he was going to be diagnosed with cancer. After one week in Hospital an Army Hospital used by VA for emergencies. It turned out he had something called psoratic arthritis and was very anemic one of the symptoms. He also had high white count in blood and the VA gave him anti biotics that caused major problems.

Over the next four months he made quite a few visits to er mostly to get morphine for pain. By my count he went to hospital or er probably a dozen times. All the time they kept juggling medicine and their diagnosis. One day he would have kidney stones and shortly he would not have them.

Mike kept telling me that he could not tolerate the pain. Just beofre my birthday he called and told me that he had been in an ambulance for over 11 hours while VA and Army fought about who was going to take care of him. I begged him to go to any place but VA as he had regular insurance.

By Christmas Day Mike had given up on any kind of proper care or relief and shot himself in the head when his wife went to Kitchen to make breakfast. She found him and called me.

I have been devastated and so has his family. I swear if it is the last thing I ever do I will help his wife sue the VA.

My advice to anyone who uses the VA is to be careful.

[SANDMAN]

Pete,

I know your probably upset / mad but remember to take a moment and look back on the good times that you shared.

Peace be with you and your brother .

Sgt Sandman

[broncovet]

Pete..

I am very sorry for what they did to your brother. Sue them if you like, but at least consider "hitting the VA where it hurts". A lawsuit is no big deal for the VA..Im sure they get hundreds or thousands per year. I understand the VA 300-400 lawyers on staff at any given time to:

1. Represent the VA's interest over the Veterans interests..even when it is the VA's job to "care for the Veteran, and his Widow"

2. Deal with lawsuits, like yours and others.

Instead, or in addition to suing the VA, I recommend "hitting them in the media basket". The VA is very nervous about funding..they need public support for more funding next year, because some of the politicians actually listen to their people. Contact

20/20 or CBS again, or even get someone to post your video, telling your story, on youtube. (Sometimes those utube videos get a million or more views. Get in touch with your local TV. ...newspaper..tell people the truth...tell em aboout the shredding..tell em about the backlogs..the denials..everything. I will back you up.

[Pete53]

Publicity is not an option

[Wings]

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Pete, I support your decision, of course. I, like others, suggest you call a few of our better known attorneys: the fist consultation is always free. Hang in there. ~Wings

[free_spirit_etc]

OMG Pete! That is so sad. And I am so sorry that your brother reached that stage of desperation.

If I may make a suggestion, you may want to wait a little while before pursuing anything legal. I am not saying wait forever, but just give yourself some time to heal a little bit - and get a little stronger - before inviting the legal people into your brother's death.

I say this because I, too, contacted a couple of attorneys after my husband died. I did not seek a wrongful death case, but did ask about medical malpractice. (NON VA hospital)

My husband was given a pain patch. Then they were SUPPOSED to keep track of how much pain medicine he needed IN ADDITION to the patch, to get the proper dose. One problem was that the nurses kept encouraging to NOT wait until he was in pain to take more pain meds. So they kept giving him more medicine (though he wasn't actually in pain), documenting that he "needed" more pain meds (when, in fact, he didn't) - and as a result they TRIPLED his pain patch the following day.

They were SUPPOSED to discontinue the other pain meds when they tripled the pain patch. But they "forgot" to. He was really getting loopy, yet the nurse still encouraged him to go ahead and take a pain shot (when he said he didn't want one) under the premise that it was better to not wait until he was in pain.

After that his breathing got real slow and he started gurgling. I ran and got the nurses. They ended up having to give him Narcan - which basically makes you go through withdrawal super fast.

After that, it was like something inside of him broke. He was already weak - and they kicked his butt with an overdose and a Narcan trip. That is when he started saying he still had the Will to survive, but he didn't think he had the strength anymore.

Quite a few people in the medical field told me that the overdose was completely uncalled for. Though the nurses said it was the doctor who FORGOT to discontinue the pain shots when he tripled the patch, others told me that actually, when the doctor messed up - the pharmacy should have caught it, and when the pharmacy messed up, the nurses should have caught it. There were too many people who should have caught it.

So I talked to a couple attorneys about medical malpractice. I did not ask for wrongful death - or allege that it had anything to do with his death. I merely asked about medical malpractice - as it should be easy to prove that they really messed up.

I was told that though the medical malpractice was easy to prove, that the case wasn't really "worth" anything. I didn't really even care about the money. I just wanted some acknowledgment that that was really some pretty poor care. But the attorneys want / need a significant amount of money to pursue a claim. Though that is understandable, it was really hard to hear that the case wasn't worth very much, because in essence, my husband's life wasn't worth very much.

It was explained to me (in a not totally compassionate way) that if malpractice causes you to suffer for years, then your case might be worth something (i.e. all those years of pain and suffering). However, as my husband had a terminal illness - he wasn't expected to live very long anyway - so even if it caused him to suffer, the case would only be "worth" the amount of a few weeks of suffering.

Well - to me - the rest of your life is a LONG time. If you don't have much time left, that time becomes more valuable. You don't really want anyone screwing up even one day.

But that wasn't the way the attorneys saw it. To them, my husband's life wasn't really "worth very much" by that point.

So if you can - give yourself a little time to get strong enough to deal with people looking at your brother's death through legal eyes. Sometimes the legal point of view can be downright harsh.

Free

[Pete53]

Free thank you very much for your comments. I know that the Lawyers look at suffering and death differently than family and friends and I accept that. I am very sorry for how your husband suffered and his poor treatment.

My Brothers case is more based on seeing if an 1151 claim could provide benefits for my sister in law. We have discussed it and I plan to review all the paper work in Feb and make a recommendation to her.

Its not really so much about the money and the benefits anymore as she is ok on that score its to make someone accountable and perhaps make the people who handled his illness to not do it again.

Even as little as 2500 will make a record that is a mark against a Doc and maybe in the end that is all that is needed. I think that if an apology was made that would stop it also.

I am moving on to work on a plan I have to try and recruit Doctors who are retired to work on IMO's for Veterans for standard fees and to link them to Lawyers and Service Organizations where the Service Organizations and Lawyers screen the Veteran and even advance the Fee's and also train the Docs as to the VA Language.

My first candidate is a recently retired MD who flew jets for the NAVY has a Law Degree and trained to do Medical Opinions for Corporations.He does not know it yet but I plan to approach him about it next week.

Thanks to all who answered my posts and threads and especially to those who made comments in Mike's On Line Obituary.If the VA cvan have QTC why can't Veterans have something similar?