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suffered for a few years with terrible rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease and had had a few staph infections. They drained his joints and some of the incisions never completely healed. Last Feb. 11th, he was at home with incredible pain in his upper body. I nursed him at home, and finally when he couldn't make it to the bathroom without falling down, we knew it was time to go to the hospital. Naturally we waited for four hours to get a room, even though we called his doctor ahead of time, but that didn't do any good. We called another of his doctors while we were waiting and Jim practically had to beg this doctor to get him into a hospital room. This broke my heart. So, the ambulance picked him up at 1:30 p.m. and he didn't get into his final room until 8:30 p.m. I talked to him during the next day, but nothing extensive because there was always a nurse in his room. He said he had something to tell me, and I said I would call early Saturday a.m. But at 5:20 a.m., the answering machine went off, I knew immediately it was about Jim, and when I called back, they told me the nurse went into his room at 3 a.m., and gave him his morphine shot. She checked back at 5 a.m.,and he was unresponsive. They worked on him for a half hour and he was gone. His sister (a nurse) and her husband went to the hospital with me that afternoon, to ask why someone with heart disease was not hooked to a heart monitor. His doctor said that if someone doesn't present specifically with a heart concern, that it is policy to not hook them up. So we were all very angry, but his son spoke to many lawyers and they said that this particular hospital has 15 law firms working for them to wear people down - they will drag everything out for 10 years if they have to, bankrupting and driving crazy the person pressing the lawsuit. So we decided not to go ahead with it. My problem is getting over all of this, and dealing with my extreme anger and feeling so ripped off. Also, it is Valentine's Day and we would have been celebrating. Sorry for the very long post but I just had to vent and DU people are such good people. thanks, Julie
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