Headed for Stanford

[Jackie]

Wow! That's so tragic and so sad. The doctor in this case though seems to care a lot more than mine did. Surgical mistakes happen and it is terrible when they can't be undone. We are so dependent on doctors doing everything right. Literally, you put your life in the doctor's hands when you go into surgery.

Bucko, yes, I too wonder why they didn't see the sponge right away. The surgeon also said something that I have never quite understood. This was 2+ months after the surgery when the sponge was found (by a graduate student) on a cat-scan... She said she didn't understand HOW it got there because it was "the kind of sponge that is normally not used there". (I guess she meant inside the abdominal cavity.) I don't know how she could tell from the marker what kind of sponge it was. I still don't understand why she said that...

Anyway, after she admitted all this to me on the phone, she really clammed up & wasn't open to discussing it anymore. She wanted me to believe that my complications had nothing to do with her mistake. This is not the attitude you want from a surgeon.