Beware the Grieving Warrior

Beware the Grieving Warrior: A Child's Preventable Death. A Struggle for Truth, Healing, and Change
Larry Hicock with John Lewis

"This book is a riveting read not only because of its heart-wrenching outcome and local characters, but because of its potent topicality: According to data collected from Britain, Australia and the U.S., an estimated 10,000 Canadians die in hospitals annually as a result of medical error, another 10,000 from incidents like hospital infections and unexpected drug complications. It's something we always hear, but due to a naive trust in our medical system, rarely put into action: You are your best advocate."
- Hamilton Magazine

In early 2003, Ontario's deputy chief coroner ordered an inquest into the tragic deaths of two children due to post-operative complications in a Hamilton hospital. The cases may never have been reported were it not for John Lewis, a registered nurse, and father of 11-year-old Claire -- one of the two children.

Beware the Grieving Warrior describes John's fight, in the midst of immeasurable grief and sorrow, against hospital staff and administration who failed to acknowledge their neglect. By turns shocking and heartrending, infuriating and inspiring, this book offers a chilling first-hand account of the obstacles and resistance Lewis encountered as he wound through a hellish maze of bureaucracy, until he won his day in court. The story is intensely intimate and brutally honest. It is about the suffering that inevitably results -- for patients, their families, and for the health care professionals involved -- when the truth is withheld.

At Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Beware-Grieving-Warrior-Preventable-Struggle/dp/1550226738
At ECW Press
http://www.amazon.com/Beware-Grieving-Warrior-Preventable-Struggle/dp/1550226738
As eBook
http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/item/1554906733/Beware-the-Grieving-Warrior-A-Child's-Preventable-Death-A-Father's-Fight-for-Justice-eBook.html

CMAJ - Apology marks new era in response to medical error, hospital says
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/168/6/757

Grieving father John Lewis says there are no "real winners" in this case
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/168/6/757#273

Patient Beware
http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2004/06/patient.html

CMAJ: Medical errors, apologies and apology laws
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/180/1/11

Articles by J.E. Lewis at NIH
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=search&db=pubmed&term=Lewis%20JE%5Bau%5D&dispmax=50

Doctors find confession is good for the soul
http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/doctors-confess-their-fatal-mistakes/article185422.html

The foundation established in memory of Claire Lewis is called Revolution Hope.

Radiographics and the Thyroid

http://radiographics.rsna.org/content/19/5/1161.full
Navigating the thoracic inlet with radiography.
Discusses and presents images of thyroid conditions such as Cancer, Pyramidal Structures, Hemiagenesis and more.

Thyroid Health: Causes of Damage, Symptoms and Natural Solutions

On Hypothyroidism

Thyroid Imbalance: Causes, Symptoms, and Natural Solutions

On Hyperthyroidism and Hashimoto's Disease
Article by Dr. Zoltan P. Rona, MD, M.S.c.

Six Sigma and Medical Care

Does your hospital utilize Six Sigma in its planning and methodology?
Six Sigma Catapults Hospitals to Next Level of Quality
If not, the consequences can be very costly to you...and to the hospital.

"Lawsuit could set precedent about end-of-life decisions

Robert Cribb
Toronto Star
Staff Reporter
September 04, 2010

As her father lay struggling for breath in a Toronto hospital bed, Joy Wawrzyniak pleaded with doctors to intervene and save his life.

Medical staff instead stood back and allowed the World War II veteran to die, against his wishes and to the shock of his daughter, Wawrzyniak claims in a stunning $1 million lawsuit filed this week against Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and two doctors responsible for her father’s care.

While Wawrzyniak and her father, Douglas (Dude) DeGuerre, had repeatedly requested he receive life-saving treatment in case of a medical emergency, doctors unilaterally overruled those wishes without consent or consultation, the lawsuit claims...."
Lawsuit could set precedent about end-of-life decisions

Thyroid T3 Recovery from Fibromyalgia

What if... your doctor prescribed years of pain killers and antidepressants for your Fibromyalgia... when what you needed was thyroid supplementation?


"Recovery from "Fibromyalgia" with T3
Therapy after T4 and Desiccated Thyroid Failed

Fifteen years ago, I published a case study in which a hypothyroid female dramatically recovered from her diagnosis of fibromyalgia by swithching to T3 after she had failed to benefit from both T4 and desiccated thyroid.
Fibromyalgia researchers who work with their heads buried in the sand of failure will dismiss the case, as they did all those years ago, because the report isn't about a blinded study. However, as Carlton Fredericks, PhD noted, such reports are controlled. After all, the woman recovered quickly and dramatically with T3 after extensive treatment with two other approaches to thyroid hormone therapy failed. It is a failure of intellect that dismissive fibromyalgia researchers saw (and undoubtedly will still see) the study as "uncontrolled." By the very unfolding of the woman's case, the trial was indeed controlled.

This highly illustrative case of recovery from "fibromyalgia" through thoughtful administered T3 therapy has for many years been unavailable except through my office. The reason is that the journal containing the report was sold in 1996 to Haworth Medical Press, which didn't make the issue containing the report available to subscribers.

Today, however, Thyroid Science makes the case report available for perpetuity through its open-access webpages. For those who are curious about T3 therapy and its proper use, and how so-called "fibromyalgia" can be relieved with hormone treatment, we republish this case report. "

Introduction to the Case Report at THYROID SCIENCE

Do you trust your doctor?

Do you trust your doctor? Increasingly, many (Canadians) do not.
It may be wise to ask questions. Today, university medical education is often funded by Pharma (grants to chairs and departments, for research, dictating what shall be taught) and continued in the doctor's office during visits by drug company reps with high school educations and doctor prescribing info and personality profiles on their Bl*ckberries.

From an article at Maclean's

...horror stories have made Canadians wary, says Mario Canseco of Angus Reid Public Opinion, who oversaw the Maclean’s poll. “Not only do they worry that there will be mistakes, but they assume so,” he says. “Even if you’re happy with your GP, you see what’s happened to those around you. You think it may be your time next.”

For doctors, this is an unaccustomed, and not especially pleasant, spot to be in. For generations, physicians have enjoyed greater public respect and appreciation than practically any professionals—a reflection, perhaps, of their status in many communities as the most educated people in town. That’s changing, however, as post-secondary education becomes the norm and Canadians in general grow less deferential. “There used to be a very paternalistic relationship between doctors and their patients,” says Dr. Rocco Gerace, registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. “It worked both ways. Patients would essentially give doctors the decision-making ability, as opposed to considering options and then consenting. It’s changed dramatically, and I think for the better.”

That shift has been accelerated by the Internet, which puts not only diagnostic information but reviews of individual physicians at the fingertips of patients. RateMDs.com, a California-based site that went online in 2004, has doubled its traffic every year since, with Canadians as its most enthusiastic constituency. The site now has user-submitted ratings for over 85 per cent of Canadian doctors, and a surprising 45 per cent of its 1.2 million monthly visits originate in this country. The phenomenon speaks not only to patients’ doubts, but an appetite for frank criticism that Hugh MacLeod, chief executive of the Edmonton-based Canadian Patient Safety Institute, says will only grow. “For those in the system who think things are getting wild now,” he says, “put on your seat belts.”

All this crowd-sourcing raises an obvious question: are medical mistakes becoming more common? Or are they merely being amplified by proliferating media, both social and mainstream? Geoff Norman, a McMaster University psychologist who studies how doctors make errors, believes recent scandals played out in the media have simply caused patients to demand reviews and investigations, the coverage of which has fed impressions that things are going awry. Doctors are more willing to own up to mistakes, he argues, and he points to the publication in 2000 of “To Err Is Human,” a report by the Washington-based Institute of Medicine, as a watershed moment in encouraging practitioners to acknowledge their fallibility. “Now,” he says, “there’s almost like a legislative review process when something goes wrong.”

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/08/16/do-you-trust-your-doctor/
Print version
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/08/16/do-you-trust-your-doctor/print/