I have contacted one lawyer who will not take the case due to it not making enough money. We are contacting more. Apparently laws were secretly put in place at the time of covid in our state which make it difficult but not impossible to sue. The office I communicated with claimed it was not possible which is wrong and said it would only be an aggravated pressure sore case.
My father’s pressure sore has now progressed to stage 4 from I believe stage 1 now, while he was in 2 different hospitals and with 2.5 months of supposed home wound care. We are the ones who are doing most of the care and they never said anything about what was going on and did not care. I asked them numerous times why isn’t it healing.
I finally managed to take him to a wound care clinic amid myriad other crises who said and his hernia surgeon also says now, it is stage 4.
Are there any good elder care lawyers who actually care about righting a grave injustice over how much money a case will bring them?
My father entered the hospital mobile / able to walk with his walker, he was not incontinent, he was ok in his mind, and he had a mild pressure sore. They exposed him to covid and he went back a week later and then left with incontinence from covid, near insanity, immobility and a stage 3 sore which is now stage 4 due to improper home care. He is in terrible condition! This is wrong.
He also has now diastolic heart failure which numerous doctors failed to diagnose even though his legs were swollen and his gp abandoned him after this also failing to diagnose chf and refused to provide homecare.
He will be getting tavr surgery soon which will hopefully save his life and give him a better quality of life.
wth is wrong with this country that it is allowing this kind of negligence and malpractice with no consequences whatsoever? I am beyond disgusted. It is not only my father who has been harmed, we his children are the ones who have to try to fix this nightmare.
My brother wants to write the suit himself if no one will help my father. I would like to sue the federal gov as well for failure to respond appropriately to the pandemic and to warn people of the dangers. I am also a covid long hauler having constant back pain, fatigue and breathing issues after covid pneumonia last year.
This is a forum for caregivers to support one another and share their experiences and opinions on how to get through the caregiving journey.
You should find a forum that is specifically for legal issues, because this is not even remotely the place to ask how to file a lawsuit.
So, yes, you will be disappointed with all the answers.
I hope that you can find the care your dad needs to heal his wound, I understand that they are pretty painful.
My advice would be that you should continue to seek consultations with Lawyers. Do as many as you like. These consultations are generally without cost. In this way you may eventually come to the conclusion and acceptance that you have no law suit here, and can move on to healing.
You might also research to see if any lawsuits regarding covid-19 have gone forward, and if any have been won. If you find any (which I don't believe you will) you might consider contacting these people to see what worked for them.
You have said below that you have not come here for our opinion, but if you don't want opinions you should not have come to a Social Media Forum at all. Because you WILL get our opinions, whether you want them or not. This is mine: (So stop reading HERE if you don't want to read it).
I know that you already know your dear father and you, yourself are but two of many 100s of 1,000s of people in our country now suffering the aftermath of Covid-19. We were all witness to an overwhelmed medical community crying, their stories of how they could not provide even minimal decent care due to being overwhelmed by a pandemic. And I would bet you quite a lot you cannot find me a single person who has had a lawyer accept a malpractice case in which there was a "win", or one accepted on contingency.
I am so sorry for all that has occurred for you, your Dad, your family. However, it is also my opinion that you need professional help to learn to deal with the aftermaths of illness, and its ongoing issues. I mean a professional psychologist, not a professional Lawyer. You have some serious anger issues IMHO, and they will do you great harm. Anger destroys us from the inside out. (again, my opinion)
I doubt any of us here can be of any help to you.
I hope for your Dad's and your own healing and improvement. II am so sorry for his condition, for your ongoing long-haul symptoms.
So many are gone from us. So many have survived and are still suffering, including many who comment on Forum. American, as other nations, has no shortage of tragedies; but this one has been a big one.
You are 100% correct in the health care system in this country. In 2.5 years I am mortified at what I have learned and seen about our very broken health care system and how elders are treated and how they are looked at. This country should be ashamed. So as much as I have zero idea on how you would go about finding someone to take your case - I will totally validate what I hear in your question and everything you feel in regard to care.
It is all the little things missing that could “ prevent” things from becoming bigger issues for people - just your mention of pressure sores - I was in an award winning stroke hospital for three weeks this year and not one person put pillows under mom to avoid pressure sores - I did - and I moved the pillows (had my mom not had a private room or this was earlier in the pandemic - nobody would have done it - just the sheer fact that hospitals don’t provide alternating pressure mattresses or require them in hospitals - SNF - memory care etc etc it’s basic 101. So I hear everything your saying above and it comes from the sheer letdown of how care is provided - it’s not from not understanding that your parent is aging or in denial that he has health problems - NO matter how sick he is or was does not negate the fact that he deserved to be seen and care for properly. Wishing you luck - write to your local leaders etc. this neglect in our broken system has to stop. I’m sorry what your family has had to go at alone - it is hard and there isn’t much help or guidance for those who want to protect their loved ones
Please read the question, I did not ask for someone’s “opinion” on how it was really just normal aging that caused all of this to happen to my father. I asked for advice on how to pursue a lawsuit. If you can’t help with concrete advice about that then you should not bother replying. I am guessing that since it is so difficult to pursue a malpractice suit in the first place, especially in the case of an older person, maybe no one here has experience with it.
I would not expect any advice at this point partly due to the mostly useless replies I have already received on both my posts. I have also noticed a lot of similar replies on other questions asked here and I would encourage the moderators, if there are any, to try to create a site which is a lot more helpful and which actually directly answers questions with concrete advice, not with long, opining opinions which waste everyone’s time and try the patience of people who are suffering.
"I am caring for my father, living at home with age-related decline, anxiety, cancer, depression, heart disease, incontinence, lung disease, mobility problems, osteoporosis, parkinson's disease, and urinary tract infection."
try to concentrate your time and efforts on helping him the best you can.
You mention in ur first post that Dad has had health problems the last two years. You list Parkinsons as one of them. You also say in both postings that his doctors have not been too good in diagnosing his health problems. Not saying that COVID did not make his existing problems worse but his problems were not caused by COVID. With his health problems COVID is going to hit him harder. Its going to take him longer to bouce back especially with all his health problems.
You admit he already had that pressure sore. If its at the base of his spine they are very hard to heal. No tissue there. I do admit that you should have had homecare for the wound. At least to show you how to care for it. This could have been done thru Dads PCP, he could have ordered it. Homecare is usually ordered after a stay in the hospital and/or rehab. Its not ongoing. Medicare does not pay longterm. To be truthful, they may have suggested Palliative care.
CHF does not get better. A valve will not correct a heart muscle that can't pump correctly anymore. The only cure is a heart transplant. Parkinsons does not get better and Dementia goes hand and hand with it. So if he was already showing signs a hospital stay and COVID could make the the Dementia progress faster.
I also doubt if any lawyer will take your case. Your Dad is a very sick man. Maybe try and put that anger aside for his sake. Your energy needs to be in caring for him and enjoy having him with you as long as possible.
If Dad can't afford to pay for help, then see if he fits the Medicaid criteria. Maybe you can get an aide thru them a few hours a day to give you a break.
He does not have a lung condition such as copd etc. he has life long asthma which is well controlled. At the time of his covid infection pleural effusions were diagnosed and it was never made clear what was causing them, both covid pneumonia and chf were listed as causes. He does now have diastolic congestive heart failure, which went undiagnosed by MULTIPLE DOCTORS, most notably his gp of 40 years who is a quack, who has also committed malpractice more than once and who abandoned him in the middle of all of this refusing to rx desperately needed homecare.
After covid he now cannot walk by himself at all, even with a walker and help it is very difficult, he is bladder incontinent and he continues to have severe mental issues as well as numerous other problems- this was an overnight change btw starting with the sars cov2 infection, when he became very weak and could not make it upstairs and then started with the incontinence urinating non stop for 24 hours and at the same time he became very mentally confused, and NO it was due to a uti, covid caused all of this.
Your plan to sue the Federal Government for "failing to respond appropriately" to Covid is even more ridiculous.
Your "lawsuit" would be laughed out of court.
It sounds like you're grieving for your father's loss of independence, and are in the "anger" stage.
Forget the lawsuit fantasy and focus on what's real, getting help for your father.
My DH and I have spent more time in hospitals this past year, during the pandemic, than ever before in our lives, exposing ourselves to the virus each time, but there were health issues that needed to be addressed each time. Had we caught the virus during one of those hospital stays or visits, would it have been the hospitals "fault"? I think not. It's the risk we agreed to take when we stepped inside the doors every single time.
My mother went to the hospital in 2011 for ulcerative colitis. Because they did not use pressure cuffs on her legs during her stay, she developed a DVT in her leg. At midnight on Christmas Day, she got an ivf filter surgically implanted into her aorta to prevent blood clots from traveling into her lungs and killing her. Some managed to get thru anyway and hospitalized her again 2 weeks later. She lived thru it. She's 94 now with advanced dementia and says she wants to die daily. We did not file a lawsuit against the hospital but I did file a complaint with the patient advocate. That and $5 bought me a cuppa Starbucks.
Covid was treated very seriously, too seriously according to many, with extended lockdowns which put many into bankruptcy, depression and suicide. We're still wearing masks, 13 months later, and getting jabbed with experimental vaccines nobody knows the long term effects of. And now "booster" jabs are being worked on for more strains, so God knows how many more jabs our government will expect us to line up for.
The entire world has suffered tremendously already and many have died. More will suffer and die, too, while scientists and medical experts furiously try to figure the whole mess out. Many mistakes have been made, too, namely by governors sending sick elders from hospitals into nursing homes and killing thousands of seniors as a result. No lawsuits can be filed there either, I don't think.
I am sorry your father has health issues from Covid and negligent care and all the rest of what's happened. And that you're having long term issues from the virus yourself. I hope you can find a resolution that will satisfy you and alleviate your anger, and that your dad heals from pressure sores and gets well. And I hope more than anything that God helps the whole world get through this miserable pandemic and back to some semblance of normalcy once again.
Good luck.
Bottom line -- it isn't worth it unless there's gross negligence, and sorry to say, your dad's situation isn't that. As others have said here, your dad had conditions already, and Covid just makes things worse. Medicine isn't an exact science, and doctors know even less than they normally do because of Covid.
The only person who would stand to get anything from this is your dad -- sorry, but you and your siblings cannot be plaintiffs. If your brother writes up a lawsuit without being an attorney, the chance of it being tossed out is in the range of 100%. The law is extremely complicated, and an amateur would fail just trying to get the proper language in the suit. Our lawsuit was tossed once just because our attorney didn't list the people we were suing to the judge's liking. That cost us an extra three months while waiting for another court date.
It's extremely common for an elderly person to go into the hospital in one condition and to come out far worse. My own mother was in the hospital with a septic leg wound in December, and came out with the wound healed, but she had three pressure sores (and still has one on her heel) and Covid. Her cognizance is down to about 10%, she doesn't eat anymore, and she's slowly dying. It's what happens sometimes, because they don't easily bounce back from hospital stays. That's why she's now on hospice care. I'm not sending her back to a hospital again.
You'd all do better to focus your attention on caring for your dad and stop wasting energy and money on something you'll never win. I know it's hard to watch, but your anger does nothing to help your dad.
Covid did not erase basic standards of care but I am sure you know that as well. They exposed him to covid which caused incontinence, near insanity, immobility and who knows what else. Then they proceeded to give him the worst possible treatment due to him having covid which included cruelty and which caused his pressure sore to progress to stage 4 which is grossly negligent.
Pressure sores can move rapidly in the elderly. Their overall health can influence outcomes. Your father has many issues and they might not all be the result of poor care. Some may be a result of age and overall health.