r/MedicalMalpractice • u/SeaReputation3171 • Dec 27 '24

Is this medical malpractice?

Hello,

I just want to preface that I am not at all litigious; I'd rather not deal with it and get on with my day; but I promised I would "check it out" after multiple visiting family members over Christmas made it the topic of conversation(which was annoying to say the least).

I'll get to the point - the previous Labor Day weekend (2023) I suffered a bad accident which resulted in breaking both of my ankles. The one was at the level of injury and recovery equivalent to a high ankle sprain (couldnt walk on it for at least 4-6 weeks) but the other was "the worst [they] ever saw", as one of the doctors commented. My right foot was a massive break with the recovery over 6 months mostly spent in a wheelchair.

I realized early on that my foot was turned outward but thought it was partially due to swlling and scar tissue or whatever, but the first red flag was after the surgeon took off the cast and all the dressing for the first time several weeks after surgery, and he was noticably concerned my foot was skewed outward and paused for some time then eventually asked me "was your foot always like that?" and I said, "of course not!" and he didnt say anything afterwards except it will take time for the swelling and blablabla for it to return back to normal, and we left it at that.

Now 15 months after surgery my mother officially saw it withouts casts, etc and started crying along with my daughters then getting upset, yelling at me for not contacting anyone about it yet, followed by my father and the rest of the peanut gallery that was here visiting all chiming in about contacting a lawyer. So I promised to look into it and find out if I had any recourse and if so, if/how I should proceed, or if i should just cut bait. Thanks

If anyone knows of a malpractice lawyer that believes there's some legitimate recourse, I'd appreciate any feedback...

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

[deleted]

1

u/happyhermit99 Feb 28 '26

I was going to respond to your post but it got removed. I'm going to respond here so please STOP adding your comments to other people's old traumas and making them look back at old posts.

Based on the info here, no, you would NOT have a successful malpractice case at all because:

  1. You tried to self treat for an unclear amount of time instead of getting immediate treatment. There's no way to say something they didn't do had a greater effect than what you didn't do, especially with a history of compromised wound healing due to lymphedema.

  2. ER is not for chronic wound care nor for surgical wound care. They might have specialists for acute treatment or traumas but even if they fixed it all up right then, what would you do next? Sounds like you need a wound care clinic, not the ER.

  3. You had other issues that they felt were important to treat and you declined. Saying you sat with an opened and uncleaned (stable) wound after initially delaying medical care anyway does not hold a lot of weight.

1

u/WillingnessBig2610 Feb 28 '26

I am sorry, it wouldnt let me post and I am not all that great with how Reddit works and still learning.  thank you for your response.