Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in New Jersey
medical.....
Aug. 2005 my mom went into the hopital by ambulance because one night she could not breath, her lungs had filled with fluid. they had to take her to surgery to empty her lungs. the doctor came out of surgery and told me and some others with me that they emptied her lungs and that all this was a result of her having breast cancer, stage 4, diagnosed that day. When she was brought back to the room she had no use of her left arm. With all the initial shock of her sickness and all that was happening, we did not know anything on how or why she all of a sudden could not use her left arm. It was lymphedema but she did not have any breast cancer surgery, just the fluid in her lungs. She suffered so much alone with the breast cancer that spread other places as well and not having use of her arm made everything all the more worse. Was the doctor at fault for her arm condition? she had full use of it before she was admitted.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: medical.....
I would have to get an expert to look over her and the records to determine what caused her arm condition. What did the doctor say about it?
Call attorneys on Monday
Please accept my sympathies for what happened to your mother.
I agree that the first question is what the doctors said at the time. They doctors should have commented even if the best answer was that they didn�t know.
I encourage you to go to seek out an attorney ON MONDAY through this webpage, your local Bar Association, or your local Yellow Pages. In general, the statute of limitations for medical malpractice is two years. A lawyer needs time to investigate a possible claim, which means getting medical records, and discussing those records with expert physicians, you are short on time regarding investigation of an August 2005 incident.
It is not possible, without review of the medical records, to know if there was carelessness
While I suggest you call lawyers beginning Monday, I would not undertake an investigation of this matter, although other attorneys might.
Your mother had advanced disease when she went to the hospital. She presented with malignant pleural effusion. Ordinarily, this would be handled with a chest tube and not urgent surgery. As it is difficult to second-guess the complications that the surgeons would find, a jury may give the benefit of doubt to the surgeon.
This is only my opinion, and in light of the unusual nature of this complication, and the limited amount of time you have, I urge you to speak to a medical malpractice attorney or attorneys beginning Monday.
When you speak to attorneys about this hospitalization, you must also discuss whether there was a �failure to diagnose� cancer. Meaning, that an attorney needs to consider the possibility that a breast cancer was missed on a screening mammogram two to five years before this incident, or that a primary care physician was negligent in not ordering a mammogram according to standard screening protocols.
Again, I expressed my sympathies for which your mother has gone through.
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