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My mother in law, a healthy 50 year old, recently died of an unspecified infection. They still don't know what it was or why antibiotics weren't helping. Ultima
by codezero 10y ago
My mother in law, a healthy 50 year old, recently died of an unspecified infection. They still don't know what it was or why antibiotics weren't helping. Ultimately, her lungs gave out after more than a week on life support.
Was it a superbug? Dunno, and nothing in her medical record leaves any indication that it might have been, the world just moved on.
- apathy 10y agoCondolences, it's rough when someone close is taken suddenly. Can't brace yourself for something you can't see coming. Part of the problem is the sheer volume of such cases -- where did the infection come from? Why did it get worse so fast? Was it bacterial, viral, fungal? The diversity of microbial life on earth is so vast, and the rate of evolution so quick, that any one center is going to be hard pressed to keep up just cataloging new strains, let alone figuring out what sequence of drugs to try. This is why it is a national tragedy (at least in the US) that we don't put more emphasis on funding the CDC. Other countries do better or worse, and particularly some states like Minnesota do a lot more. But I can reasonably guarantee that the possibility of humanity being devastated by an easily transmitted bacterial or viral vector is greater than anything a YF-22A is likely to ward off. A centralized repository and clearinghouse can do so much more than any one center, even the richest hospitals, because it can (in principle) see everything at every center. Just needs enough funding and oversight to get the job done. I recognize that nothing can bring your MIL back, but perhaps if the CDC were given a bit more respect (instead of being a political football to defund abortion and legalize Confederate flags, as at the present), you might have some answers and the next person in that situation might pull through. No guarantees in life, but it seems like a higher expected return on investment than many government priorities. JMHO. Sorry for your loss, and the open questions around it.
- dv_dt 10y agoThere was an article a few years ago about the fall of the medical autopsy rate. Because it's unclear how we fund it, and most people aren't in a position of knowledge to request it (or in a financial position to pay for it), the rates of autopsy to find a considered cause of death have been dropping precipitously.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoAtul Gawande talks about this a lot in "Complications" [1]. A great book about medical procedure, and specifically about the process of learning, trial and error and the whole feedback loop of working with disease. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Complications-Surgeons-Notes-Imperfect-Science/dp/0312421702 https://www.amazon.com/Complications-Surgeons-Notes-Imperfec...
- codezero 10y agoWe shelled out for a private company for an autopsy, but post-mortem, lots of things happen to the body that make identifying a source of an infection really hard – basically, it didn't tell us anything new :(
- jessaustin 10y agoWhen my grandfather died with cancer and fibrosis, one of the main complications involved in getting compensation from EEOICPA was the fact that his county doesn't have a coroner. They have a "medical examiner" who is based 70 miles away and never visits, plus some nurses he employs. As a result, death certificates in that county are only signed in extraordinary circumstances. The federal bureaucracy doesn't accept unsigned certificates for the purpose of establishing a cause of death. The county medical examiner is paid a flat yearly fee, so guess how many autopsies he performs?
- lgleason 10y agoI mother died from this in her late 60s after a operation on her back. It was MRSA and we made sure that made it on the death certificate.
- danso 10y agoWhat was the process for that like, if you don't mind me asking?