When it comes to Lyme, they can be as lame as a duck. In general, if there's not big $ in it for them, their sympathy evaporates.

For example, they needed an MRI that showed issues. My MRI was perfectly "normal" so I didn't have any "paper" proof. The fact that I had no feeling from my elbows down wasn't good enough.

There are too many, way too many loop holes to jump through unfortunately. And these ducks have so many "outs" that I personally feel that the stress of a lawsuit would outweigh to benefits.

Stress will wear down your immune system. That's something that you can't afford to do right now. It's hard, but sometimes you just have to have faith in the old saying "what goes around, comes around" and know that some day, some how, they will get what's owed to them.

And meanwhile, you will have regained your health and strength and not have wasted one more single second on them.

It's taken me a while to feel comfortable with the notion of just "letting go of it", but I assure you, if I had put myself through the stress and trauma of a lawsuit, I wouldn't be where I am today.

frenchbraid

Ex: If a patient did not begin to suffer pain because of a sponge left in their surgery site until 4 years after the surgery, the 2 year statute of limitations would not have run out. Instead, it would not begin to run until the date the pain began AND the sponge was discovered to be the cause of the pain.

Cave's plan has merit. Even if difficult to pursue all the way -- due to evidence & experts from the Steere camp that the other side would introduce -- if in the same month there were suddenly thousands of lawsuits filed against ducks across the US for failure to diagnose lyme, they and their malpractice insurance companies would take notice!!!

My ducks were in a University Medical School - which is particularly sensitive to the bad PR from a lawsuit. I don't want any money, but plan to let them know I am going to bring a malpractice action against 2 of theirs for failure to diagnose & treat lyme during the year I was under their care. My hope is they will agree in a settlement that if I drop the suit, they will provide specific education to their current and future students and continuing medical education programs for existing doctors about ALL the information we have about lyme & the different borrelia bacteria.

Focus on getting better.

Let go of the anger.

I understand your anger...I REALLY do...docs misdx'd my sis (the lyme patient) and gave her steroids, docs killed my dad with 3 IV abx. post op (on front of chart a huge list of "allergic to"), and my new grandaughter...given a (now known) neurotoxin (VERY recent abstract from pharmaceutical company), steroids, abx..what will be the outcome?

Let it go. You HAVE to.

I've been told it is 7 years for the statue of limitations. I considered suing after my dad, but came to peace accepting the fact that they did not know what they were doing!

"Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

There are some docs with good hearts and willing minds who aren't treating this because of the risk of being turned in by insurance companies...for diagnosing Lyme Disease or treating for longer than the "standard" two-four weeks. I know of cases where doctors diagnosed and started treating...and got reprimanded for it by the state board of medical examiners. Now, if a doctor diagnoses you with a treatable disease, it makes sense that he should treat it, otherwise couldn't he be accused of neglect? (correct me if I'm wrong....but this is just my thought). So if there's a risk of diagnosing and treating....he probably just plain WON'T diagnose you in the first place....and yeah that may not be ethical....but I've seen the look on a doctors face as he hinted to me that he was under a lot of pressure not to keep treating me....he was one who treated me for 4 months with IV Rocephin and then told me he KNEW I needed to continue with it, but to find another doctor who would treat me with it because he could not keep me as his patient. He had gone over the "standard" two to four week protocol...and his career was at risk.

It may not be the doctors, in some cases it might be, but in some cases it might not be.

My thought is PLEASE don't sue the doctors, it will only make doctors even more wary of getting involved with a lyme disease patient....we need doctors to feel like they can jump in and be involved when it comes to lyme disease....if they're all getting sued by us...chances are they WON'T want to do that. Heck, I WOULDN'T. So...unless its a strict neglect case and your DANG sure it wasn't your insurance company threatening your doctor's job...please, please don't sue your doctor.

There are two issues here. The first is failure to recognize the disease and the second is failure to treat properly.

In the failure to recognize, there are only two possible actionable items, the first is incorrect diagnosis by mis intepretation of test results. This is a good enough reason for the NY OPMC to pull a license. The problem is that the tests for Lyme are not that reliable. So This would be a hard case to prove EVEN IF there are positive test results (you can argue false positive)

The second actionable item would be the "purposeful misrepsentation of the disease, its degree of spread, the treatment and the repercussions of incorrect treatment".

This is a difficult matter in that the treatment guidelines ALWAYS refer to early disease and make NO mention of duration of the disease prior to treatment.

Even the top LLMD's say that if you catch the disease in the early days (right after disemination rash)all you generally is need is 6 weeks of ABX.

This is pretty close to what it says in the ID "how to treat a patient manual". So for early cases there is not really a case.

The "manual" also says that relapse occurs in rare cases... Since there is no mention made of prior duration of the diases, one could argue that this "rare" phrase applies to the later stage disease.In the case of relapse, "retreatment is needed" .

This would make a lot of sense in that if one assumes that rare is less than 1% and there are >100,000 infected, generally going by the limited number of people that are on this board, I think all of us "persistent" cases could be considered to be part of the "rare definition". So as far as that goes, I don't think that there is much of a case.

Now if we look at misrepresentation it is a different story. For this to be actionable, one would have to prove that the information that is distributed by the regional and national health authorities has been purposely or inadvertently biased to minimize risk and therefore the awareness by the general health community of the disease... resulting in the initial diagnosis differentials excluding lyme. This would have some precident based on the history of the AIDS epidemic information suppression by institutional officials......

Here is where there might be case, but not against the immediate doctors that treated you. Bottom line is that if your car catches on fire due to a engineering defect, you can't really go after the mechaninc that serviced your car when the instruction manual he follows is wrong....

If it can be proven that in the formuation of the CDC guidelines, which appears to downplay the risk factors and does not provide sufficient detail to treat the disease properly, was based on purposely selected data that supported this minimalistic approach then you have got them.

I think that with all the crap between the NIH Lyme program official and the Lyme action groups would easily support such a claim, however, I think that the CDC is to too smart to get this to stick to them since they rely on consutlants for the input information during their treatment recommendation formulation. But there is a different angle.

Everybody with late Lyme problems seem to have neurological problems. As far as I can see, that means ALL. It has been recognized for many years that the lyme bacteria is primarily a neurological disease, with the arthritic afflictions being a secondary and genrally minor issue in comparison.

Knowing this, why did the NIH and CDC base thier research and guidelines on advice and research from people who are NOT QUALIFIED to comment on neurological disease....

Why did the studies mostly focus on Arthiritic problems? Is is becasue once you have neurlogical problems you have a VERY difficult and EXPENSIVE problem to treat?

So here we go with the big questions:

Did the researchers:

State that they where not qualified to deal with neurological disease and teatment?

Did they openly state that thier expertise is limited to there field of certification?

Did they state that the treatments they devised were based on ailments related only to their field of expertise?

Based on what the CDC says in the guidleines, I think that the answer to all of this is NO. In which case, either the researchers should have there credentials and licenses pulled for inappropriate conduct OR the CDC should be held accoutable for knowing this information and flagrantly disregarding it, resulting in significant physical harm to the public.

If you look at the NY OPMC transcripts, the OPMC takes a very hard line on ANY MD who misreads test results, treats outside of their area of expertise or provides treatment (including stopping treatment) which are inadequate for the disease and disease state. License have been pulled for misreading with no resulting harm....
If they are this strict then what about a surgeon working on body areas that they are not certified for. What about a rhuematologist giving unqualified advise that will affect hundreds or thousands of neurological patients.... I think you get the picture.

BAD SCIENCE IS ACTIONABLE paticulalry if the public is hurt.

Bottom line is that one has to go after the BIG fish in the pond. Since they need a BIG reel, I think that this can only be done as a class action in either the US or some other jurisdition (all of which use the CDC in formulating thier own guidelines)

Anyways that what I think.

Lishka, The strategy of hundreds of lymies bringing suit for misdiagnosis isn't to punish the doctors. The intent would be to get the attention of ducks' malpractice insurers -- who are often subsidiaries or sister companies of our health insurers.

Our health insurers haven't been listening to us or our LLMDs. But if their malpractice insurer sister companies start having to pay defense costs because of failure to diagnose lyme, then those insurers will influence the health insurers to permit and even encourage lyme diagnoses.

Regarding suing doctors for not diagnosing Lyme, I have 2 thoughts on that. Lyme suits would certainly raise the awareness of the medical community. But from what I am now beginning to understand about the disease, it may not necessarily lead to an increase in diagnosing the disease. It is too insidious in that it mimics too many other diseases and apparently, can be misinterpreted or missed on a Western Blot. I agree with Dave's post about the CDC, and until the CDC comes up to speed on their guidelines for diagnosing the disease, most doctors will rely on that and too readily rule out lyme.

My second thought is, depending on what you expect to accomplish with your suit, it probably will be a tremendous waste of time and energy on your part. Be aware that legal fees in PA for medical malpractice suits on a contingency basis generally run about 40% if it goes to trial. On top of that, the attorney will take out for their expenses (postage, phone bill, photocoping, costs for experts, etc). Your pecuniary (financial) losses you can recover can only be those losses you incurred because of the delay in diagnosis. For instance, if you had been properly diagnosed you would have incurred costs to treat the disease so those costs are not recoverable. You can only recover costs of additional treatment you had to undergo because of the delay in diagnosis. I can tell you, separating out the treatment and allocating which treatment is above and beyond what you initially required to treat the disease will be a hard concept for a jury to understand and do.

Most of your financial recovery comes in the form of "pain and suffering" both present and future. Many of the physical complaints of the victims of Lyme disease can be subjective at best. For instance, when you have a herniated disc and complain of pain in the back radiating down the leg, you can produce MRI results to support your claim. What can you produce to support your claims of disabling fatigue, flu-like symptoms, "brain fog", joint pain, and all the other aches, pains, and symptoms that cannot be confirmed through standard medical tests. Again, a jury may have a hard time, either believing that it is as bad as you say it is. Or they might just think you should buck up, after all don't we all feel tired sometimes or have our aches and pains. Or worse yet, they may not believe you at all.

What I'm trying to point out is that, in the long run, after the trial is done, assuming you prevail, there may not be enough financial recovery for you to recieve any money out of the suit. The only one who stands to make money in this deal is the lawyer.

From a practical standpoint, Lyme disease presents a very complicated trial issue. Your case would ultimately rest on a battle of the experts. You can bet that your doctor will rely heavily on the CDC guidelines. That alone will hold a lot of weight and be very persuasive with a jury. The doctor will also use any negative test results they obtained, as well as pointing out that your clinical symptoms point to any other number of medical conditions to establish that they were not negligent. You are really rolling the dice trying to litigate a medical malpractice claim for failure to diagnose lyme disease. And personally, without knowing the facts of your case, I don't like the odds.

Although, as I said before, there is some merit in suing the doctors for failure to diagnose lyme and the need to raise awareness that there is a pervasive problem here that is not being properly diagnosed under the CDC guidelines, it seems to me that you will be spending a lot of time and energy in, maybe, and that's a big maybe, of merely getting the satifaction of telling your doctor "I was right and you were wrong".

Fighting "the system" is very, very taxing...been there, done that (schools to get nec. education for our son with ADHD, severe LD and seizure disorder). Cost us in excess of $25,000 for 1 year. Needed to pull him out of system (wouldn't talk to anyone in school, anyone, all day long) and get him into private school while we fought.

YES! IMO, this is the most meaningful statement in this thread.

For those inclined to take the legal route, don't sue your doctor. Go after the medical boards, government agencies, and insurance companies who control his ability to diagnose and treat.

Equally (more?) important, campaign with these same institutions to raise awareness, support, and funding for Lyme.

Question: The CFIDS Association of America engages in lobbying on behalf of CFS patients. They send out periodic emails to members which make it easy to email legislators and agencies on specific issues. Is there a similar activity anywhere in the Lyme community?

Suzanne

Since most of the conventional Dr.s follow the conventional guidlines for determining disease - The Drs. only have to prove they were operating with good faith and following these guidliens set out for them in their policies and practices....

They really have to scew up BAD to get nailed (leaving a songe in the body cavity is a good example).

Barb

PS- do ou know the precendent a win would produce? Every misdiagnoses could be prosecuted - and beleive me there are PLENTY of them out there.

It still was a horrendous thing to go thru. Many times I became soooo angry.

This is too taxing on the body, especially if the body is already "fighting" another situation.

Until you have gone thru this process yourself, you can't possibly understand.

It is a terrible, draining experience.

Worse than trying to get disability.

Been there, done that too (for son).

I read transcript of a case back east where a Lymite sued a Dr. for misdiagnosis. Ray Dattwyler testified as an expert. The patient lost and the Dr. walked.

Neil

Mon Jun 14, 6:10 AM ET Add Top Stories - USATODAY.com to My Yahoo!

By Laura Parker, USA TODAY

There are 73,084 working lawyers in Texas. Selina Leewright never thought that being married to one would cost her her job.

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But that's why Leewright, a nurse, was fired last summer by Good Shepherd Medical Center in the East Texas city of Longview. In dismissing her, hospital officials praised her nursing skills as "fantastic." But they told her that because her husband, Marty, worked at a law firm that does medical-malpractice litigation, the hospital could not continue to employ her. "I was dumbfounded," Leewright says. "They just assumed that my husband does medical malpractice, which he doesn't at all."

Leewright's firing was a measure of how toxic the battle over medical-malpractice lawsuits has become. Hospital administrators and doctors across the nation, furious over what they see as waves of frivolous lawsuits that have driven up malpractice insurance costs, are striking back against lawyers with hardball tactics that, in some cases, are raising ethical questions.

Some doctors are refusing medical treatment to lawyers, their families and their employees except in emergencies, and the doctors are urging the American Medical Association to endorse that view. Professional medical societies are trying to silence their peers by discouraging doctors from testifying as expert witnesses on behalf of plaintiffs. And a New Jersey doctor who supported malpractice legislation that his colleagues opposed was ousted from his hospital post.

While sharing their peers' anger over malpractice lawsuits, some doctors see such tactics - particularly the refusal of treatment - as contrary to the Hippocratic oath, in which new doctors acknowledge "special obligations to all my fellow human beings."

But Chris Hawk, a surgeon in Charleston, S.C., says the notion of refusing treatment to malpractice lawyers, their family members and associates not only is justified, it's necessary. "This idea may be repulsive," Hawk says. "It's hardball. But it's ethical."

Hawk, 57, says that a doctor's ethical obligation to treat patients applies only to emergency care. "Physicians are not bound to treat everybody who walks through their door," he says.

Doctors and lawyers long have been at odds over malpractice litigation. But soaring malpractice-insurance premiums, which hit doctors in high-risk specialties such as neurosurgery and obstetrics particularly hard, have fueled the debate. For doctors who blame the increases in their premiums on unwarranted lawsuits and large jury awards, the solution is clear: Overhaul the nation's civil litigation system, starting with limits on what jurors can award in damages.

Malpractice lawyers, led by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (news - web sites), counter that rising premiums have more to do with the insurance industry than jury awards. They say tighter regulation of the industry is needed.

The lawyers say that stifling malpractice litigation could deny Americans some of their rights to seek redress in court when doctors make mistakes.

The AMA is backing federal legislation, now stalled in the U.S. Senate, that would cap pain-and-suffering awards against obstetricians and emergency room doctors at $250,000. Meanwhile, the battles continue in state legislatures. All but nine states have restricted medical-malpractice lawsuits in recent years. But the AMA contends that only six states have passed "effective" legislation, meaning laws that cap money awards.

This month in Mississippi, where lawmakers have been at odds over the issue for years, the legislature limited medical-malpractice awards for pain and suffering - as opposed to actual medical bills - to $500,000. The measure was approved amid acrimony that Percy Watson, a lawyer and legislator from Hattiesburg, says was unlike anything he had seen in his 25 years in the state House.

Watson says that at one point he got a letter from an angry doctor he doesn't know, and that the doctor told Watson he would refuse to treat the lawmaker because of his opposition to limiting malpractice awards against doctors.

"But it's not only with this doctor, it's prevalent in other areas in the state," Watson says. "Some of my colleagues in Hattiesburg who were not involved in (malpractice issues) have been refused the services of doctors just because they are lawyers."

In South Carolina, Hawk says he first urged fellow doctors to refuse non-emergency treatment to lawyers, their families and employees in a speech at the state medical association's convention in March.

The state association declined to endorse his proposal. Patricia Westmoreland, a dermatologist and member of the association's board of trustees, says she supports limits on awards and sympathizes with Hawk's frustration. But she disagrees with his approach.

"It flies in the face of just basic honesty and goodness," she says. "It's prejudiced. As a physician, I take an oath to see people and take care of people, and to refuse to take care of a sick person is just anathema to me."

But Hawk wants the AMA to adopt his view as its policy. That seems unlikely - AMA leaders have been silent on the issue - but Hawk plans to argue his case in Chicago this week during the AMA's annual meeting. Hawk says his tactic is "analogous to hitting the lawyers with a 2-by-4. Now we have their attention. Now maybe we can make some progress."

Plaintiffs allegedly blacklisted

The bitter divide between doctors and lawyers has been exposed in a range of ways recently.

Earlier this spring, a Texas radiologist's Web site, DoctorsKnow.Us, set up a national database of patients and their attorneys who have sued for malpractice. The site's stated purpose was to discourage frivolous lawsuits. But patients and their attorneys suggested the site essentially blacklisted some patients from receiving doctors' services.

The site was shut down in March, after news reports detailed difficulties people listed on the site had in getting medical care.

In New Hampshire, Tim Coughlin, president of the New Hampshire Trial Lawyers Association, recalls an angry confrontation last fall with RickMiller, a neurosurgeon from Portsmouth, N.H. Miller told Coughlin, 40, that because Coughlin lobbied against limits on malpractice suits, Miller would refuse him treatment.

"I don't do medical-malpractice work. I'm just a basic urban lawyer," Coughlin says. "He told me he had made a decision. I told him I thought that was uncalled for. He and I disagree on political matters.

"He's known as the best neurosurgeon on the Sea Coast. If I had a brain situation, I would hope he would operate on me regardless of my position" on malpractice suits. "But he's told me he wouldn't."

Miller describes his position as "firing a shot across (the) bow" of the trial lawyers group. "If Tim Coughlin came into the emergency room with some life-threatening emergency, I wouldn't hesitate to treat him. But if he came into my office because he had a herniated disk and wanted me to take care of him as an elective patient, I would decline to see him."

Miller, who says he has not been sued for malpractice, says he pays $84,151 a year for malpractice insurance. He says that after he paid business costs and taxes last year, his take-home pay was $64,000.

"That's less than my malpractice premium," Miller says. "This puts in perspective how desperate the situation is. Attorneys who choose to speak out and try to derail efforts at meaningful tort reform do so at some risk - that they will not be able to come to the best neurosurgeon in New Hampshire. They'll have to go elsewhere, the same way that patients will have to go elsewhere if neurosurgery is no longer available on the Sea Coast."

The refusal-to-treat tactic has generated the most controversy in the conflict over medical malpractice. But more disturbing to many lawyers are the efforts to silence doctors from testifying as expert witnesses on behalf of plaintiffs:

* In Florida, Tampa General Hospital announced plans in February to revise its employee "code of conduct" by prohibiting staff from testifying on behalf of plaintiffs. (They may testify as witnesses for hospitals and doctors.)

* Also in Florida, three doctors who were sued unsuccessfully for malpractice urged the Florida Medical Association to investigate a California doctor's testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs to "prevent the medical profession from being terrorized ... by similar 'experts.' "

John Fullerton, a San Francisco internist, has responded by suing the Tampa doctors for libel. He claims that he was defamed by statements the trio made in urging a review of his testimony. His lawsuit also alleges conspiracy, witness intimidation and violation of state racketeering laws.

* In Jersey City, the medical staff at Christ Hospital voted to remove George Ciechanowski as chief of staff, according to news accounts, because he backed malpractice legislation that many of his colleagues opposed.

Lawyers decry the refusal to treat lawyers and the efforts to silence physicians. The lawyers say doctors want it both ways: They want the legal limits on malpractice lawsuits, yet have no qualms about filing suits themselves.

When Hawk began his campaign against lawsuits, critics noted that he had filed one after his wife was in a car accident during the mid-1980s. Hawk's insurance company refused to pay the claim because he filed it three days after the legal deadline for doing so had expired, so he sued. A jury awarded his wife $525,000. But an appeals court threw out the case. It said Hawk's suit was moot because he had missed the filing deadline.

"I'm not saying somebody shouldn't have the right to sue," Hawk says. "I'm saying we should ... limit the awards, and in some way make the loser pay so that we don't have a lot of frivolous suits. An automobile accident is rarely a frivolous suit."

'I didn't do anything wrong'

In Texas, Leewright is considering whether to sue the Longview hospital for wrongful termination.

Leewright, 30, was hired on May 29, 2003, and assigned to work in the hospital's nursery. Leewright, whose fluent Spanish helped with Spanish-speaking patients, says she often was called to work extra shifts. "There was a nursing shortage. I wanted them to know I was a team player."

Leewright says she thought the job was going well. Then, on July 16, she was called in to meet with her bosses. She says they praised her nursing skills, but then told her that because her husband is a lawyer, she was being terminated.

A hospital spokeswoman, Victoria Ashworth, citing confidentiality, says "all personnel matters are private and not discussed with outside parties."

Leewright filed a complaint with the Texas Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which did not make a finding on the merits of her case but issued a notice of her right to sue. Documents filed in that case outline the hospital's practices regarding spouses of lawyers.

The hospital, according to one document submitted by its attorney, has an "unwritten practice" not to employ spouses of lawyers who represent plaintiffs in medical malpractice or personal injury lawsuits "because of the perceived likelihood of a conflict of interest."

The profitability of Marty Leewright's law firm provides a financial benefit to his wife, the document says. "That gives her an incentive to pass on confidential information that she obtains as a Good Shepherd employee."

Leewright says the hospital never mentioned its unwritten practice regarding spouses when it interviewed her for the job. She says she did not violate hospital ethics.

"I didn't do anything wrong," she says. "They assume I'm going to be unethical. They assume that I'm kind of sneaky and will try to refer cases. That's absurd."

It took her until November to find work at Longview's only other hospital. Marty Leewright says his wife's experience has been difficult. "All the nursing students know about what's happened to her," he says. "It's just like a cloud that follows her around."

You know there is the standing joke between doctors and lawyers. What is a doctor? Someone who flunked out of law school. And vice versa.

There are too many bad and greedy lawyers out there. Also too many bad doctors out there. The problem is that the Bar Association and the AMA need to really tighten up their standards to ensure that their members are fully qualified and remain ethical.

Our jury system also leaves a lot to be desired. It is the jurors who often times leave their common sense at the door when they deliberate cases. Thats how we end up with mega million dollar awards when someone spills hot coffee from McDonalds on their lap (an exageration here). How can you expect a common Joe to understand the medical testimony in a medical malpractice case. All the jury understands often times is an injured plaintiff and they feel someone must pay. (And juries can be very generous when they think an insurance company is going to pay)