near death experience

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Originally Posted by BENT_8

Had knee surgery in 2003, upon release from hospital the nurses forgot to issue me with compression stockings and warfarin to prevent blood clotting.
12 days latter I was watching the Brisbane Lions destroy Collingwood in the AFL GF for the second year straight when I started to feel pain under my right side rib cage, felt like I had trapped wind.
Finished watching the game and went to get up and that's when I noticed I was short of breath.
Being a bloke I just brushed it aside as nothing to worry about.
Went to bed that night and couldn't lay down as it made breathing even harder, at about 5am my wife convinced me to go to hospital.
Thankfully we were visiting the in laws at the time and they lived in a country town with a very good hospital and resident doctor.
Doctor was called in, took one look at my bandaged knee and my breathing difficulties and told the nurse to get the helicopter on its way.
Turns out I had developed a clot which broke free, travelled to my right lung and ledged itself in there.
The rescue helicopter was already transporting a patient at the time so I ended up in a fixed wing plane on my way to Adelaide airport and on to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
By the time I arrived I could barely breath, couldn't move and was in excruciating pain.
My blood pressure was ridiculously high and my heart rate was up around 200bpm.
They gave me shot after shot of Morphine but it did nothing and at one point the DR suggested I spend some time with my wife and kids, I knew then that things weren't good.
If that wasn't bad enough they had to take me away to have a scan done, as they were wheeling me down there my oxygen bottle ran out and there was a frantic commotion as they hooked me back up to the nearest hard line.

In the end I passed out due to the pain and awoke hours later when they crashed my bed into the elevator door on my way up to a ward.

Breathing is something we just take for granted until you cant, then it gets real scary.

6 months on rat poison, weekly INR tests. All because someone overlooked the basics.
I should have sued them, but at the time I was just glad to be alive.
Actually, I wonder if I still can as at the time my lawyer (original knee surgery was a work cover incident) said the surgeon who did my knee was very nervous when he heard of what had happened.
Is there a statute of limitations with that stuff?

I asked my GP how deadly blood clots can be, he said I had a 50/50 chance as they either get trapped in the lung as was my case or go straight to the brain and cause a stroke/death.

I'd certainly be seeking some legal advice on the matter at least. Negligence is something that happens all too often in hospitals.