Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Dennis Quaid's account of what happened to his infant twins when they were overdosed with 1000 times the recommended dose of the the blood thinner Heparin at Cedars Sinai in LA will curl your hair. (Mine straightened.) Read the LA Times story HERE.


"The first that Dennis Quaid learned of the medication error was at 6:30 a.m. the next day, he said, when he arrived at the Los Angeles hospital. Treatment decisions had been made without them, he said."Our kids could have been dying, and we wouldn't have been able to come down to the hospital to say goodbye," Dennis Quaid said in a 90-minute interview Monday, the couple's first since the overdose.At the door of the children's hospital room, he said, he was greeted not just by a pediatrician and a nurse but by a representative of the hospital's risk management department."



I feel sick. If this is what happens to a celebrity couple, imagine how the average "Joe" or worse, "Jose" gets treated?
I hope the Quaid children do not have permanent damage from this error.

6 comments:

ORION said...

As a former health care worker I know that it was (in the 70's and 80's ) more important to cover up mistakes than it was to confront them...
Truly scary.

Kim Rossi Stagliano said...

Pat, as a rule? That's scary. I know it's human nature to cover up - no one wants to admit a mistake. But my GOD - tiny babies? Bad drugs. Lying doctors. It's very depressing to me. It really is.

But I just rechapterized my book, and that has made me happy. As will some chocolate. Right now.

Leightongirl said...

Having had twins in a NICU myself, none of this sounds unfamiliar, alas, including keeping critical information about treatment from parents. That type of withholding happened to us over and over.

Anonymous said...

But watch him go and vaccinate the twins.

Tyhitia Green said...

Wow, that is scary. I don't have any kids yet and this stuff is scaring the hell out me! :*)

Polly Kahl said...

IMO what Pat said is more true today than ever before, not only in medicine, but in the field of mental health as well. We haven't improved since the 70s, we've only gotten worse.

Pass the chocolate please.