So on Monday night he spiked a fever to 103, fainted, obviously we were all very concerned and again he went back to the hospital. He and my sister requested a hospital transfer this time and were sent to a much better hospital one town south with an infectious disease specialist.

Tonight I went to see him and take the family dinner. He looks much better and they are expecting to send him home on Saturday night or early Sunday this time doing IV antibiotics from home. Turns out whatever bacteria this is will not respond to the slowness of oral antibiotics. So tomorrow they'll be putting in a new PICC line and start looking at getting him home. He'll be getting IV antibiotics for at least another couple weeks at home. As of this weekend it'll be one month from when he originally got sick. As you can imagine we're all ready for this to be done.

OMG I'm so sorry - I can't believe this is still happening. I hope he gets to go home soon. I'm glad he has a specialist.

 Quote: Melissa Thom

They called 911 but the hospital refused to take him because it wasn't bad enough and most likely just swine flu symptoms. The next day they went to his regular MD who commented on the lung scarring but everything else looked normal.

I haven't read the rest of the pages of this thread, so this might have been said, but:

I've worked in the medical field for over four years now, and I can't believe they said his symptoms weren't bad enough!! I just can't believe it. Someone on the phone over there was either very badly trained or just lazy. Difficulty breathing is ALWAYS a cause of concern, especially if you are ALREADY sick. It makes me so mad to read that they told you and your family that. We are a family care facility, but we always see patients on a walk in status if they're having symptoms such as difficulty breathing, just to make sure it really is nothing serious. We send people to the ER pretty often. You just can't take things like that lightly.

Anger aside, I hope he's doing better now and you and your family are doing well. You're in my thoughts and prayers. We are supposed to get H1N1 vaccines in this month, so you should call and ask your MD to see if they'll have any available.

Yes. We are aware that there have been several serious medical mistakes along the way.

The first was his family doctor not taking it seriously when he got well then suddenly became sick again. It's not how normal flu presents and is a sign of a complication.

Then added in was the refusal of the hospital to admit him despite the respiratory issues.

Add in the lung scarring for a non smoker. Apparently a CT scan would have identified this infection at a much earlier and more manageable stage.

The first hospital also did not take this seriously for his health but rather spent the first week trying to cover their own butts with the swine flu. They seriously took at some times 45 minutes to respond to being paged. They also waited until a drain was needed before they really started taking this infection seriously. When he was well enough to go home they blind transferred him to oral antibiotics without checking their effectiveness.

After being released from the hospital with the followup with the normal MD no blood was taken to check if the infection was indeed being wiped out. When he began running fevers and the office was contacted they actually advised him to just take some Tylenol and sleep it off. At this point they were aware he had been hospitalized for infection for the previous 10 days.

Finally on the admit to the hospital for the 2nd time they were actually going to send him home until his bloodwork came back showing a white count of over 30,000 which is normal if you're a leukemia patient or dying of an infection.

We found out today that part of the issue with the oral antibiotics had been that he was allergic to them. Because they basically unplugged the IV antibiotics, wrote a prescription and booted him out the door they didn't check to see if these antibiotics were effective or compatible.

Part of the reason I wrote this in the beginning was to help other people not get jerked around when things aren't right. So much of this could have been prevented and since we're now looking at close to $300,000 worth of medical cost we do have to wonder how much would have been prevented if someone had simply said. "Huh, lung scarring. That's weird, we should check into it."

Glad you're getting the word out. It's hard working at a medical office with doctors who truly take the extra time to listen to their patients, because so many other doctors DON'T. It makes the rest of us look bad. It's like watching those medical mystery shows on TV where the very last doctor they see years later finds out what the issue is on the first visit. I just don't know why they paid for med school if they're not going to help anyone. But maybe I'm just being really judgmental.

I'm very sorry for all of the mess you and your family have been through and I really hope everything gets better soon. Sounds like you're pretty educated on what normal and not normal symptoms are. If it weren't for that I'm sure you'd all be in even worse shape.

Again, get well soon to your brother in law and the rest of the family (as I'm sure this is going to take some healing for everyone, what a mess).