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How can a doctor not know a patient has gangrene?
MY great grandma has broken her hip 2-3 times. She fractured her neck and its well now, she has a sore on her foot that won't go away, the doctor said just leave a sock on it and let it get will but it isn't. She can't walk because her foot. She doesn't talk to anyone and she barely eats. we try to talk to her and she doesn't talk, sometimes we try to get her to eat and she doesn;t eat. She just lays down, not saying anything & sleeping or slouched staring into space. She doesn't want to get up and she's always cold even though it's literally 105 degrees outside and its not cold inside. She always has cover over hear head. She stays with my aunt for a half a week & my grandma for half a week. She didn't like for people to change her diaper, feed her or anything. She cried aboiut pain in her leg and the doctor said that there was nothing wrong, my aunt is a nurse and she didn't know there was something wrong.
Her doctor says that there is nothing wrong with her and she even has therapy for her foot problems. My great aunt is her primary caregiver, but my grandmother has my great grandmother most of the time. We took her to the hospital today without my great aunt knowing and we just found out that she has gangrene. She has been in so much pain for weeks that she really doesn't eat anything and she stays depressed.
I think that the doctors ddin't care for her right, because when we visited her in the hospital and the hospice, they acted like they ddin't want to change her or bathe her. And she was always dirty. When she was in the hospital and a hospice they never even told us she had gangrene, I guess they didn't know. I don't know how. How could her doctor not know what was wrong with her? All of the hospitals and foot therapists she been to and they didn't know?
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I can't say if the doctors knew or if they didn't know. The only way to know for sure is to have someone review all the medical records to see what is recorded.
What I do know is that gangrene is hard to reverse if not caught in the early stages. The general fix, so to speak, for gangrene is amputation of the effect limb. This is a major operation.
I would be second guessing the doctors here; but assume they did know. We are talking about your Great Grandmother. How old is she? You talk about Hospice care. What is her general health? Is she in Hospice for some other terminal illness? I couldn't quite make that out from what you wrote as you spoke about hospice care and her care takers being your Grandmother and Aunt. Staying with them half a week each. I realize Hospice does home visits so this is why I question?
If your Great Grandmothers over all health is such that major surgery is more life threatening than the gangrene itself then the doctors may have chosen to go with comfort care; which is what hospice is. Here again the only way to get this answer is to question her doctors.
To do this you will need what is known as a HIPPA release. HIPPA is a Federal Law that guarantees medical privacy. Your Great Grandmother must give her doctors written permission to release any or all of her medical information. Without this written permission the doctors will only speak to you in general terms or whatever may be laid out in a living will.
Without this HIPPA release you really do not know what the doctors know and don't know as they are unable by law to discuss her medical condition without it or a medical power of attorney.
Unfortunately this is the law today. If you and your family want others in the family to be able to help care for each other. Then you all need to talk to your doctors about what information can be released, when it can be released and sign forms all doctors have in their office to cover them under this law.
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