Wat `n skande dat mense so behandel word . THE STAR Dave Klette tied up on a stretcher at Steve Biko Hospital. Pretoria - When Dave Klette was admitted into Steve Biko Academic Hospital a week ago, doctors said he might have a fractured pelvis, but later told his family that because it wasn’t too bad he would be up and walking within two weeks. Three days later doctors at a private hospital in Pretoria found seven fractures on his pelvis, a broken knee and broken elbow. They also found he had a partially punctured lung. The doctors also found that when Klette, 61, crashed into a car and fell from his motorbike, he dislodged a critical nerve running into his pelvis from the backbone. “They told us they would need anything between 10 and 12 hours in surgery to fix him up,” his daughter Sharon Viljoen told the Pretoria News on Thursday. Her father’s pelvis had shattered during the accident on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 13. He also received injuries to both legs, wounds that were attended to when he arrived at the hospital. His family arrived an hour later, at about 6pm, to find him lying on a stretcher in casualty. Paramedics had tied bandages around his legs and thighs to stabilise his pelvic area, and these were taken off and not replaced when he went to X-rays eight hours later. “He was in a lot of pain, and when we realised that some of it came from just under his skin in the belt area and checked, we found one of his testicles had been pushed up in there,” Klette’s son Bruce Klette said. They told the doctors, who said a urologist would look at it. “Despite the pain, he was seen by a urologist only on Friday.” Klette was moved into the orthopaedic ward on Thursday evening, and from then on the family were responsible for feeding and bathing him, as well as cleaning and dressing his wounds. “We brought bandages and almost everything else with us because the hospital had none, and we tended to the wounds ourselves because they wouldn’t, and we feared they would become septic,” close family friend Ella Terry said. Terry was also responsible for changing the bed linen, which was sometimes wet with urine because a catheter had not been inserted. Nurses helped to restrain a disoriented Klette on Thursday evening, tying a sheet across his pelvic area, and pulling his legs apart to secure them to the end of the bed. But the family received a shock when they arrived to find him standing next to his bed the following morning, saying he was going home. “We got no response on why he would be standing when he had an unstable pelvis,” said Sharon. They calmed Klette down and convinced him to get back into bed. They fed and bathed him and raised the sides of the cot before they left. The following morning Klette was lying with his head where his feet had been the previous night. “He was uncovered, his pillow was missing, and other patients said he had fallen off his bed during the night. We realised we would lose him and started looking for a private facility to move him to,” Bruce said. It was later that afternoon, when they settled for a hospital with an orthopaedic surgeon on standby, that doctors acted on requests for a scan of Klette’s head, but did not provide feedback. “When the paramedics walked in it was like they were angels, and for the first time in three days I felt we had hope,” said Sharon. With no assistance from hospital staff, the paramedics prepared Klette for the move. He arrived at the new facility without any documentation from Steve Biko, so doctors treated him like a patient who had just come from an accident. In response to queries, Steve Biko Academic Hospital chief executive Dr Ernest Kenoshi said: “It would be criminal and unconstitutional to pass on records on a patient’s medical condition without the patient’s written consent.” The patient or relatives could approach the hospital. “We will gladly address (concerns) with them, as we do with any patient who may have concerns.” Pretoria News
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 17:37:13 +0000
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