Where one, who is apparently a professional, chooses to use sectoral and industrial jargon, to pass across a simple message to both specialised and non specialised audiences, he/she exposes his/her vacuity on the subject under discussion. Where possible, professionals should strive to communicate in a language that can be understood even by riff raffs.
Karen hospital has had issues for a while now, from expired/banned drugs to incompetent staff and poor management. However it’s a family affair (recently two executives who are relatives just swapped leadership positions), also the owners are close to Raphael Tuju and by extension… So they are effectively untouchable.
Vile @johnpombe amesema. Spinal anesthesia is safe but the most catastrophic side effect is the ‘high spinal’ which is the equivalent of anesthetizing the entire spine. Most of our body functions from breathing to heart control are regulated by signals from the brain which travel down the spine. Sensory, motor, sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves all come from the spinal cord so if you block those signals with a high dose of numbing medicine or injecting the drug into the wrong spinal space, the results are life threatening!
Karen hospital should cater for all present and future medical care for this patient who was injured while under their care. We don’t even know the condition of her baby, did he/she survive? Nelima has every right to sue them for malpractice!
Karen Hospital almost killed my grandpa by first misdiagnosing him with a congenital heart anomaly, saying that he was born with a bicuspid aortic valve. The aortic valve has 3 leaflets, but they said he had only 2 leaflets and that over time he had developed a very serious condition known as severe aortic stenosis (blocked valve). They also said his coronary (heart) arteries were blocked which means he would need open heart surgery to replace the aortic valve AND a coronary artery bypass graft surgery (like what Ngugi wa Thiongo had recently) to fix the blocked blood vessels. Obviously when I heard that I started asking them critical questions which they couldn’t answer. For instance, 50% of patients with a bicuspid aortic valve have a concomitant thoracic aortic dilatation (aneurysm). Had they evaluated him for that as well? Because if he had an enlarged aorta that could burst at any moment, he would need something we call a Bentall procedure, which replaces the diseased aorta and aortic valve at the same time. Most importantly he was asymptomatic, so why operate on an old man who feels okay?
I asked to see actual scans of this coronary vessels as well as ultrasound images of the heart. They said they didn’t have the actual scans but they went ahead and did a second study which had conflicting results. I was fortunate to be in Kenya at the time so we went with grandpa to Aga Khan to see the head of cardiac surgery, a very nice Indian doctor…for a second opinion. Mind you all this time, my grandpa kept receiving relentless text messages from Karen Hospital saying that he needs to deposit 1.2 million for them to go ahead and book his operation. We were so stressed! At Aga Khan, the surgeon told us they were not equipped to evaluate his aortic valve with advanced ultrasound techniques! Wow. This is a major surgery which in America is evaluated well in advance before going to surgery. That The Aga Khan Hospital couldn’t meet the most basic standard of care that all our patients receive in the US was shocking. We never booked the surgery at Karen Hospital because we were all skeptical about the diagnosis. I had auscultated my grandpa’s heart thoroughly to hear the tell-tale murmur of severe aortic stenosis, it just wasn’t there! Long story short, he later came to the US for full cardiac work up and they found nothing. He didn’t even have the congenital anomaly or blocked vessels! Infact he had a perfect trifleaflet aortic valve with no evidence of narrowing or leakage. After that traumatic ordeal, I would highly caution anyone from visiting that hell-hole of a hospital. I’m being very kind actually. What bothered us most were the texts about wiring money ASAP. Why? They couldn’t even tell us why he needed such an extensive surgery, all they cared about was rushing him for an unnecessary operation.
Wueh. Today I have feared you. Some explanation from a nurse who cleans shoshos. Question I have is, was your grandpa sick in the first place? What was the reason for the hospitalization? Dont expect too much from these Kenyan hospitals. A lot of docs experimenting on patients. I remember talking to one Anesthesiologist once and he told me he does numerous procedures per week. Some of these procedures, even if the hospital has the equipment, how many such does the doc do per week. He might have trained yeah, but one slipup is all it takes. Maybe he did the last of such a procedure in Med School. And medics in Kenya always want to rush to surgery, based on your ability to pay. I told my friend not to mess with his torn ACL locally, afaa go to India, he didnt listen, still now limps 3 years down the line. That biking he was aiming for remains a pipe dream.
He was just being proactive in seeking a cardiac checkup from the famous cardiology power couple. That’s what led to the erroneous diagnosis. Imagine if my little nursing knowledge wasn’t there to help him navigate all the medical jargon. They would have cracked his chest open over nothing, and performed a botched operation killing him in the process. Our family would be left heart broken paying millions in medical bills and mortuary fees.
I wish Kenya had a body like JCAHO (maybe they do alteady) which monitors US hospitals annually checking for best practices and patient safety.
Except that the patient is immobile and her family members have abandoned her. It’s those same family members who should be suing the hospital for a botched surgery.
Looks like a wrongly administered drug from anesthesia, one move made other things go wrong, no one was competent enough to observe this and take corrective measures. Now it’s beyond repair. While a 23 million bill is not small, no one willing to put up that in loose change.