If you’re feeling bad about your life, here’s something to help you out. Except for the part where you weep for the family and realize what sort of legal culture we live in.

Once you’re capable of moving past the Please-tell-me-this-is-a-Stephen-King-novel reaction, and other associated responses, don’t suppress the memory of the story, before you savor the irony of the woman’s attorney saying, “When the statute is named ‘Patients Right To Know,’ I don’t know how it could be clearer.”

Hah!

It is a virtual industry in this country to name a piece of legislation deceptively. For all I know from the article the entire move to make the amendment in the Florida Constitution was financed by the medical industry to make it easier to hide themselves.

As for me, I’m having a flashback to our last child’s delivery. The anesthesiologist utterly botched the epidural and we got what our obgyn slipped up and admitted was an unnecessary C-section. That night there were tornadoes outside and they could reach our doctor when they were making the decision. The staff was standing their in front of me furtively whispering, plainly trying to converse without me overhearing. Jennifer was crying because she was in pain, suffering from perceptual distortions of what amounted to a bad drug trip, and afraid we were going to lose Charis. They told me they had to operate. The doctor who had messed up Jennifer in the first place put his arms on me and told me I needed to let them do this and I couldn’t be present while they operated. I was shaking.

And my one point of rationality for those few minutes was that the Doctors were the professionals and I should trust them. I had to trust them.

Someone is going to be in my position who has read this story or something like it. And the next morning we’ll all read in the newspaper about a far different outcome. As for me, once everything turned out relatively all right and Charis was healthy, Jennifer and I dismissed the idea of suing out of hand. But I’ll never dismiss the idea again.

My point is that, if you’re a doctor, your life can be affected more than you know by this kind of press. You should make a point of standing against it. The hospital needs to give up their records.

If you’re a blogger, please link and comment on the article.

PS. I just realized how old this story is? I assume there was some sort of resolution and the hospital gave up her records. In any case, there is virtually nothing else out there about her this except this story.

PPS.  Here’s a collection of del.icio.us notes and here’s a google blog search. Finally, technorati’s list.