Six Year Old Beats Liver Disease

I just read a great success story of a young boy in the UK who was diagnosed with was diagnosed with the liver disease Biliary Atresia Type III. The child, named Ben, was just 4 years old when he underwent a liver transplant.

After receiving a new liver, tests were done on the original with the results coming back as positive for cancerous cells in the removed organ. Now at age 6, he is both strong and healthy - a real testament to the countless operations he as already gone through in his short life.

Ben's Mom said "He is my hero. He just gets on with it. He is always very matter of fact about it." She added "We're trying to raise awareness even with GPs, (General Practitioners) who won't necessarily know about the disease. It's an extremely specialist subject."

From the story which can be accessed here, these are some startling bullet points on liver disease:

• 2 children are diagnosed with a liver disease each day.
• Currently more children have a liver disease than childhood leukemia.
• There are more than 100 forms of liver disease and most are life-threatening.
• In most cases doctors do not know the cause or have a cure.

Is Hospital Staff Incompetent or Just Stretched Too Thin?

After a recent incident at a hospital concerning a family member, I can’t help but wondering what the state of our healthcare system will be in a few years…

A loved one we recently wrote about on the Dirty Tractor Blog was suppose to be recovering nicely from surgery, when all hell broke loose in the middle of the night a few days ago. As we slept peacefully at home, our family member bled profusely throughout the overnight hours. The hospital staff called a single surgeon, who without looking at the patient, said they are doing fine and the bleeding was a normal part of recovery. No family member was called about a possible problem.

The first issue I have a problem with is the surgeon the night-shift nurses called was the one who performed the procedure – of course he’ll say everything is fine, he doesn’t want to face the fact that an operation he performed might be not be correct (and besides that, there is an ego and reputation to uphold).

On top of the wrong professional getting the one and only phone call about the situation, family members should be notified if a loved one is in severe distress. In and out of consciousness, the patient was alone, helpless and could do no more than lie in a pool of their own blood and fluid. I was under the impression that normal hospital protocol dictates a family member must be called in a life or death situation.

Convinced everything must be OK, and not thinking much harder about the event, the RNs, CNAs, LPNs and other staff continued on with their work, doing no more than changing a soaked and dripping bandage every once in a while.

When visitors eventually arrived in the morning, they stumbled upon a horrific scene, which would traumatize anyone not familiar with hospital life. Upon hearing the screams and becoming aware of the dire situation, the patient’s roommate apologized repeatedly – wishing he had known what was happening so he could at least have tried to help.

Only then, when visitors arrived, the staff finally began to pay serious attention to the patient, ultimately keeping them from bleeding to death. Suddenly doctors were called and a swarm of healthcare professionals rushed into the room to address what happened during the night.

What was the staff doing all night long? Why would a patient be neglected during their most critical hours?

The answer, I believe, is not incompetence or apathy – it is a matter of understaffed shifts and overworked employees – a crucial health issue just beginning to show its effect, with no improvement or solution in sight.

In the U.S., it’s no secret there’s a nationwide shortage of nurses. But the lack of manpower (or nursepower) is not the only cause of hospitals with too few professionals for the beds they have filled. The squeeze of heavy malpractice insurance coverage and revised Medicare/Medicaid regulations on hospitals and doctor’s offices bottom line was already being felt before the economy took a dive. Now, treating uninsured patients and/or people who simply can’t afford to pay their post-care bills is causing facilities to take a hard look at what parts of their business they can squeeze some profit out of; or in some cases, at least break even. Most unfortunately, in some facilities the amount of nurses on shifts is being looked at, as are as CNA/LPN support and specialty areas such as IV teams. All this leads to even more work and responsibility for the few remaining staff on a floor.

What does the future hold?

Sadly, the economic downturn is not helping anyone get degrees in the healthcare field. What was a bad situation with the shortage of nurses will surely get worse when nursing schools see a drop in enrollment. And as far as people paying their bills or getting insured? Well it will be a few years before the unemployed become employed. To top it all off – and this is the biggie – right about now is when the gigantic population of baby boomers starts to need healthcare in a big way, putting an enormous strain on a system already in distress.

As of now, my family member has been stabilized (again) and might make that full recovery we thought would happen. Even though things got bad, they would have been a lot worse if this all would have happened 10 years from now.

Something needs to change.