Althouse: "Don't be afraid to be a 'bad' patient."

September 9, 2010

"Don't be afraid to be a 'bad' patient."

The Woman with the Regenerated Pinky.

16 comments:

KCFleming said...: This option disappears under Obamacare, BTW.

Under Obamacare, health care panels will answer this question for you.; 9/9/10, 10:15 PM
KCFleming said...: In any event, the salient question is "When do you stop looking?" The you're back to square one.

How do you know if you're wrong, or the doctor is wrong? For example, 'chronic Lyme disease'. Real or not? Who decides.; 9/9/10, 10:30 PM
Phil 314 said...: I'd like to see an x-ray of her "new" pinky. How far below the tip is the bone. Since she maintained the proximal nailbed I'm not surprised she regained her nail. And yes you can get scarring and healing over the tip.

But if there is little padding over the distal end of the bone then she'll likely have continued symptoms and....

likely need more surgery in the future.

Pogo, as for your question "who decides" we both know the "real"question is "who pays". Who has the right/obligation to say "no"?; 9/9/10, 10:37 PM
lucid said...: @c3:

who pays is just one of the questions. the more essential questions, as pogo noted, are what is wrong and what will work to remedy or reduce the problem.

reducing this issue to who pays makes makes me think you're an obama supporter.; 9/9/10, 10:46 PM
Synova said...: Okay, I went and looked.

All I can say is... what a drama queen. I'd have slapped her.

(Well, no, but I would have *wanted* to, and I wouldn't have so much as pretended sympathy. And if she wouldn't leave me alone I'd go rent the movie Red Sonja and learn all the lines of the evil bitch queen as she rips her half-mask off to reveal... the SCAR!!! "I keeeled your parentssss, but loook what you deeed to MEEEEE!")

Also, while reading the article and looking at the pictures my thoughts were the same as c3. The nail base was there. Of course her nail grew back. Dur.; 9/9/10, 11:00 PM
Anonymous said...: There's something else I'd really like to see growing back on women.

Peter; 9/9/10, 11:35 PM
Synova said...: Peter, if you abrade the area and then cover it with MatriStem wound powder, that too will regrow.; 9/9/10, 11:38 PM
jaed said...: Eeuuwwww.

Synova, why would you have slapped her? She want to the hospital, got an opinion, asked for a second opinion, didn't like the options the doctor offered, and left the hospital. She didn't pester the doctors, and I didn't see references to any drama.

If she doesn't think a doctor is giving her the most appropriate treatment surely she has every right to leave and seek another doctor she likes better? That doesn't seem slap-worthy to me.; 9/10/10, 2:01 AM
Synova said...: Why would have I slapped her?

OMG... "I'm able to do everything I could do before. I wash dishes. I cook," she says,..."

She didn't even lose her finger to the first knuckle. SHE WAS NOT DISABLED. Darn good thing that she wasn't reduced to being a burden on her family for the rest of her life having lost the tip of her pinky finger.

She didn't even lose her finger to the first knuckle. SHE WAS NOT DISFIGURED. My son has worse disfigurement as stretch marks on his back from growing too fast.

My cousin got his thumb pulled off by a silage chopper... His thumb! My other cousin was born with only a pinky and a thumb on each hand.

I can sympathize with the pain, the tingling and itch... with the pinky-tip loss? Are you kidding me?; 9/10/10, 7:05 AM
Kylos said...: Having lost a similar amount off my pinky to a power saw - though with no bone damage - I had similar healing with no debridement or matri stem. Debridement might have helped reduce the scarring, though.

I'm not a doctor, but c3 seems right to be concerned about the bone end. It really just sounds like she opted to let the finger tip heal over on its own with a little help to reduce scarring.

In the end, though, she got the treatment she wanted, so she's happy; 9/10/10, 7:44 AM
ndspinelli said...: Doggedness is a trait one is born with; a quality society does not encourage, particularly in women. This woman should become a good attorney and the kind I would hire.; 9/10/10, 8:20 AM
Anonymous said...: Her husband, Ajit, called an ambulance, and as soon as his parents arrived to take care of their two young children ... they headed ... to the emergency room.

If you have time to wait for the babysitter, you don't need an ambulance. You can drive your own darn self to the hospital.; 9/10/10, 8:25 AM
Crimso said...: This whole thing reminds me of not one, but two (unrelated) Seinfeld episodes. The one where Elaine is tarred as a bad patient (remember the call she gets in the middle of the night from the AMA?) and Toby's severed pinky toe. Thanks, I needed the laugh!; 9/10/10, 9:59 AM
prairie wind said...: Peter, if you abrade the area and then cover it with MatriStem wound powder, that too will regrow.

If you abrade my area, you'd need MatriStem for the injuries I will inflict on you.; 9/10/10, 10:09 AM
jaed said...: PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT. OUCH.

;-)

OK, that makes sense; it's not as though she wouldn't have been able to wash dishes or cook any more if she'd lost the whole finger, let alone the tip. (Although in fairness this quote has been filtered through a reporter so we don't know its context, what the reporter asked her, whether she actually said it right after the part about its being shorter, etc. This could have been her response to a reporter's question about "Can you do everything you did before?" fifteen minutes after she said the rest of the quote.)

Also I think a *little* drama-queeniness is excusable when one sees a chunk of one's body lying on the floor. Even a small chunk. It does seem like a shocking experience.; 9/10/10, 2:35 PM
Synova said...: Fair point about the interview being filtered through the reporter.; 9/10/10, 6:27 PM