Boston Scientific Stimular - lead to ER removal and MRSA

Dee I would sue that pants off your initial Surgeon. I have heard of some bad reactions but yours takes the biscuit. What a disgusting way he treated you. As far as I can see, it was his responsibility and should have done the correct follow ups.  He is also responsible for your bills.  

Look, I am not all that in to suing everyone for this and that but you have a genuine case here. Call Shine Lawyers. 

I used them here in Australia after an accident at work which lead to 6 surgeries and had my Stimulator put in my abdomen in February 2017. It worked brilliantly for the Neuropathy in my leg but unfortunately my body was not happy and I developed horrid pain in my lower back where my leads were placed and shooting pains in my right side where the leads threaded up and joined the stimulator in my abdomen , sooooo 6 weeks ago, after developing an abscess on the scar on my back, it was removed.   I am so relieved. It’s a shame though because it did work.  

That was not the reason I used SHINE though, (that was 4 years ago). My surgeon is brilliant and he always saw me immediately when I had a problem, no matter how busy he was.  

But, this is not about me, sorry Dee, but you need to talk to talk to SHINE.  Just give them a call, you gave nothing to lose.  They do not charge if there is no case so you will not be out of pocket.  Good luck ok, and keep us updated.  Xxx

Dee,

?Sorry to hear about your problems.  I agree with Disley66's suggestion to contact a medical malpractice attorney.  I don't know where you're located, but if it's here in the States, there are 1000's of attorneys who specialize in representing patients who have suffered because of malpractice by an uncaring Doc and/or hospital.  Don't use your personal attorney; you need someone who deals only in medical malpractice.  They have access to other Docs who can/will testify in your behalf that the surgeon who did your installation butchered the operation and the follow-up, and that the hospital was at fault for not preventing MRSA.  If I had to bet, your BSS was placed by a neurosurgeon, and many of that breed think they're God because the type of work they do is so demanding, and requires a longer training period than any other specialty.  Any attorney who specializes in medical malpractice will be glad to take your case against the Doc and hospital on a contingent basis, so it won't cost you a dime.  Of course, in return for you not having to pay their hourly fees, they'll take 30-40% of whatever you end up with as a settlement.  My bet is that the professional liability insurers of both the Doc and hospital will settle out of court because they don't want you testifying in front of a jury about what you've been through.  I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not offering you  legal advice here, but my guess is that your settlement will be over $1,000,000, out of which you'll net a good chunk of money.  Contact an appropriate lawyer soon in case there's any statute of limitation on how long the Doc and hospital can be sued after the debacle.

?I will offer one piece of experience on the flip side of your situation.  Following laminectomy surgery on my spine (L4-L5-S1 area) several years ago, I still had pains in my feet.  That surgery did eliminate the numbness I had concurrent with the pains in my feet, so I consider it to have been partially successful.  Because I still have the neuropathy in my feet, the same neurosurgeon talked me into trying a Medtronic Spinal Cord Stimulator (SCS) about a year after the original surgery.  They do a trial installation  over a few days before doing the final installation.  I had worse pains coming from the trial SCS than were coming from my feet, so I aborted the SCS trial after 2 days of being unable to sleep.  They removed the temporary lead that was inserted along the spine during the trial.  Last year, the same neurosurgeon suggested I try a newer SCS that operates at a higher frequency than the Medtronic he had previously installed.   After doing some research on this website, I concluded that I couldn't be guaranteed any success.   I read too many instances of folks having much different experiences when they installed the permanent SCS, compared to what they had experienced during the trial.  Secondly, even if the newer SCS were successful, you have to have the internal batteries replaced every few years, so that means more surgeries, with chances of things going wrong.  I say this is the flip side of your situation because I don't fault the neurosurgeon for the inability to totally resolve my peripheral neuropathy in my feet.  He's been careful to explain the risks against the possible outcomes, and he always mentions that he can't guarantee the outcome of anything he proposes.  I fault the Medtronic SCS as being unable to solve my problem; not the neurosurgeon.  Another factor is that I have never had any back pain, even though I have issues with my spine.  I'm very fortunate compared to many folks I've read about on this website, who can't sleep because of back pains.  Thus, your symptoms may be entirely different than mine, so my suggestions above need to be run past a malpractice attorney.

?Hope these thoughts are of some value to you, and that something can be done to rectify the horrible medical treatment that you've experienced.  If I were on a jury, you'd get my vote for a huge settlement.

What about the battery, any problems with it?

Brenda

I would love to know more about yours, My husband had 2 failures. Boston Sci Pushed through his skin

Brenda

Well I can speak from the doctor's point of view, I am a retired board certified pain management doc/ board certified anesthesiologist too.  I can see exactly where your doctor's practice differed from my own and from the pain doc I see for myself now.  Who on earth, when a patient who had been on cruise control for a week, suddenly develops a draining wound tells them to take a picture of it and send it to them??  I guess this is medicine in the age of millennials?  That's just too loose, diagnosis by cell phone is ridiculous and you should have been seen then, and had your fever taken by them.  Trusting a patient to take their own temp with a possibly broken old thermometer and a cell phone pic to make your diagnosis is absurd.  Once you went from having just the pocket he put in to the 4/6 cm wound, you had passed out of his range of knowledge.  Anesthesiologists don't know anything about packing wounds.  You should have been immediately sent on to a wound care specialist, especially since this wound tracts straight into the epidural space.  Now, somewhere along the way your blood brain barrier was crossed which is why you needed the blood patches, but you didn't have symptoms of this at first and as you saw the symptoms of a hole in that are very graphic ( BAD headache, nausea, vomiting).  I think that your infection caused some scarring and that emergency removal ripped the blood brain barrier, the dura, giving you that hole that needed to then get patched.

Of course, had he seen you when you called with that initial leakage, would this whole cascade have been avoided?  I think so, given that he took a good look at your wound and stuck you on a round of antibiotics.  I am sorry that some doctors don't like to do the follow up work, they just want to do the procedures.  Medicine is more than putting in devices, it's following up after you put the device in, not moving on to the next device! Ugh...

LOL, I have one reply being moderated. I'll be less judgmental in this one.  You are a lucky person and I think you should get a lot of credit for being your own best advocate as a patient, demanding your best health care.  More patients should be like you.  You really dodged a big bullet.  

As for what you do now, I can only see two options.  You can play around with medications.  I too suffer with neuropathy and have had some luck with gabapentin. There are lots of other choices out there, certainly pot is one, Lyrica is another popular one.  I know that I am trying a couple of nerve blocks for the CRPS in my foot ( a type of neuropath), but my last resort option is the implantable drug pump.  I know, you are thinking, is she nuts?  Suggesting another implantable device???  But, a lot of PM docs insert these themselves. You seem to like your PM doc.  Once your system has calmed down from the whole MRSA debacle, perhaps your PM doc would be wiling to try this for you.  The trial is very simple, he just injects whatever drugs he is planning on putting in your pump--a narcotic, muscle relaxant, anti-convulsant(gabapentin), whatever combination he decides, and then over the next 24 hours you evaluate how you feel.  If you feel markedly better, then I would say go for the pump since the neuropathy is so agonizing.  That's my plan.  I know it is scary, but I bet your PM can do it. 

Hugs

Lynn