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Submitted 11/11/08
I am a Registered Nurse. The following is regarding a
devastating error that happened to my father. He finally passed away
last month. He had prostate cancer and had a radical prostatectomy in
approximately 1983. The margins were clear, no further treatment.
Several years later, approximately 1987, he told me that his PSA had
slowly been increasing and his urologist was \"watching\" it. He asked
if this was ok. I was working closely with several urologists at
Scripps Clinic at the time and asked them. The answer was, if he had
had a radical prostatectomy, it should be zero. I relayed this to him
and suggested he find a different urologist for another opinion. After
additional testing it no metastasis was found, it was decided to do
radiation treatment to the prostate bed. This was done in
approximately 1987. My father had most of the series of radiation
treatments, and had just 1 or 2 left to go when the radiation
oncologist approached him to apologize and explain that an error had
occurred in the calculation of his radiation dosage. He had already
received much more (by 2 -3 times) radiation than he should have. It
was their error in calculation. He was sent to Stanford for continued
follow-up and the hospital/radiation oncologist settled with him for
their error. Over the next twenty years, the effects of the error took
their toll. He had multiple bowel, rectal surgeries as the tissue
deteriorated and became infected. He had a colostomy and multiple
revisions. He had a cystecomy after the bladder tissue did the same
thing. His ureters were eventually affected and he had stents to keep
them open to the urostomy. His hips degenerated but could not be
repaired because the bone was too diseased for a prosthetic. He became
wheel chair bound. His penile prosthesis became chronically infected
with various fistulas and he eventually had a penectomy. He had
chronic infections and fistulas and gradually became weaker and
weaker. His wife became a caregiver, cleaning and changing ostomies,
dressings, etc. He needed assistance to transfer from wheel chair to
the hospital bed that they had at home. Finally, he died at 2:00 AM
during some procedure at the local hospital just a few weeks ago. He
\"lived\" for 20 years after this devastating mistake.
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