The Brockton Hospital Experience

There is so much more to Pam's story. You see, Pam started vomiting again a few years ago. It was so severe that we both were starting to think she was going to starve to death. She and I went to Dr. Kieval and I guess he did not take either of us very seriously because he did not do anything. I figured it was one of the meds she was taking and he did not disagree with the possibility. She went to a different doctor and was given anti-nausea medicine but she merely threw that up. Finally, after weeks of vomiting, she decided to admit herself to the Brockton Hospital.

The doctors at Brockton Hospital decided that Pam's vomiting was likely caused by her gall bladder. She had gone in at noon on Friday, yet the only thing she had to eat until the following afternoon was ice chips. Even those were halted by the time she was settled into her room on Friday night, so by Saturday she was STARVING! Sure she was on IV, but her stomach needed food! They spoke of performing an endoscopy on Pam, but that was no reason to deny her food. Since the procedure was slated for Saturday afternoon, why not allow her to have dinner Friday night? I thought food was not allowed after midnight the night before any surgery even if it performed early in the morning but that it was okay to eat up until then.

The following afternoon Dr. Kieval was there for the endoscopy. I was STUNNED to see that Kieval was to be there when they did the procedure since there was no real need for him to be there during the test! Why he was there was not apparent. After all, it was a Saturday afternoon and lupus events are not acute in nature thereby requiring a rheumatologist be on hand. It was obvious that Dr. Kieval had no intention of leaving until after Pam's endoscopy. While Kieval stood at the desk, the nurse gave Pam the paperwork to sign for the endoscopy and I watched her sign it. When the doctor who was supposed to do the procedure did not make an appearance by half an hour after the allotted time, Dr. Kieval left in search of him.

At 3:30 pm they finally did the endoscopy while I waited outside the room. I saw the room where they supposedly did the procedure and I saw where they turned off the overhead light once Kieval and the other doctor were in place. I overheard them saying how they gave her Versed, which I later learned was a hypnotic sedative that often brings on transient amnesia. Pam had to wait until after the test before she could possibly eat and she was anxious to get it over with so that she could do just that: eat. After all she was starving, having not even been allowed so much as an ice chip since the night before and it was now 3:30 pm!

The test only lasted five minutes, but questions remained. Pam later told me she remembered them giving her a form to sign consenting to the endoscopy. But wait! I had already watched her sign that long before she entered the room without me. What if they gave her the 5 mg Versed so that she would not remember what they did and then they had her sign a consent form for the Rituxan treatment? Being under the influence of a hypnotic sedative, it would be a piece of cake, and the Versed guaranteed that she would not remember what they had possibly coerced her into signing. Otherwise, why would they need a rheumatologist to be there for the procedure? Kieval waited around for a long time for the doctor to come do it. He did not give up or walk away and leave the other doctor to do the endoscopy as Pam and I both expected him to do. Kieval even hunted down the doctor when he was running late. So did Kieval then get Pam to sign the Rituxan consent form? He would have had nurses and the other doctor there as witnesses. Theoretically then, he could claim, "Yes, he gave her all of the potential side effects and yes, he explained it thoroughly." Was the 'procedure' nothing more than a cover while coercing Pam to sign the document?

Sure they could have done all of this during the night-time, but that would have involved night nurses and a doctor on night shift, which could pose a problem if the records were ever checked. (Why did you wait until the middle of the night to do this? This doctor and these nurses worked evening shifts.) Or maybe it was more simple than that. Perhaps endoscopies were not performed at night and that was their cover. Also, Kieval would have been expected to be there for the consent form since he was her rheumatologist, so it wold be important for him to be there. Kieval was supposed to make the whole thing look legitimate. He witnessed her signing the consent form and he gave her all the warnings and contraindications... not that she was supposed to remember any of it. So let's see... a drugged person who is starving is handed a consent form that will get her food and what does she do? Seems kinda like a police interrogation where you wear a person down in order to gain a confession, even to the extent of shining a bright light on them the whole time. Actually this is more reminiscent of Abu Gharib. I would hardly call this a real consent. But then, was that ever a question?

What was it Pam recalled signing if it was not a consent form for the endoscopy? Coincidentally, drugs like Versed and Ativan make one very receptive to suggestions. Having food withheld until you agreed to sign something would have the same effect.

HIDE-A-TEST?

A couple of days after the endoscopy, Pam was given a "HIDA" test. The test involved injecting a radioactive tracer into the vein by IV. (I thought that they gave her something to drink prior to the HIDA test rather than intravenously, but I cannot verify this. If that were the case, I would have to wonder when the IV component was done.) Afterwards a nuclear medicine technician positioned the camera above her stomach and took lots of pictures checking to see if the markers went to the intended site.

Oddly enough, the night before the HIDA test, they decided that Pam's white cell counts were so low that everybody around her needed to wear the germ-free masks and they even moved her roommate, leaving Pam in the room by herself. However, when Pam had been in the same hospital a couple of years before, and her white cell count had gotten so low that she required four blood transfusions, they did not say that anybody needed to be put on germ-free measures back then. First off, she was not having a lupus event at all this time and second off, her white cell count was nowhere nearly as bad as that other time where she required the blood transfusions based on her numbers. I am not sure what the real reason would have been, but it seemed as though they wanted her to be alone in the room. Perhaps something was about to compromise her immune system if it was not already compromised, such as the Rituxan treatment itself, or perhaps they just did not want anybody else in the room during the night and early hours of the morning.

So let me get this straight, they wanted to administer a test to make sure that certain markers reached the intended site using the HIDA test? Coincidentally enough, markers are also used to determine if Rituxan reaches its intended site. As I said, Rituxan is supposed to affect only specific cells, and markers are used to ensure those cells are destroyed by the treatment. The following day she had dry heaves while she had food in her stomach, which was definitely unusual for her. The nurse gave her the same anti-nausea medicine that they give to chemotherapy patients.

Rituxan is given in two sessions two weeks apart and would you believe exactly two weeks to the day after the HIDA test, Pam found herself at the Lahey Clinic being abused by doctors there? (The details of that are yet to come.) At any rate, while she was still in the Brockton Hospital there was one morning that one of the nurses brought in an IV of antibiotics but did not explain what kind of infection she had. A couple of days later she developed a new pain on her left side in the same location that her gall bladder was on the right side, but the doctors there did not do a chest x-ray. What, trying to save costs? They certainly did not worry about costs during any of the other multitude of tests! The doctor just said her body was likely feeling beat up from all that it had been through and shrugged it off. She was released the following morning even though she still had the new pain.

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