Professional negligence. That is a really bad thing for the person who has to live with the result if. Denis is a victim of this and is suffering for life. The following took place in Sweden and that makes it even worse as they don’t have any compensation to speak of. It is nothing more than pocket money, no matter how badly the neglect hits you.
It started in 1988. The family were farmers with a fairly large farm. Denis had never been this sick before, so he came out of nowhere. One morning he couldn’t get out of bed, his back was the problem. Once they finally got him up, he could barely walk and move. They took him to the doctor in the nearby town. The diagnosis was Ischias Lumbago. There is no doubt about that. The doctor was very clear on that. At that time they had 19 horses to care for and their 7 children were between 1 and 15 years old. With Denis totally knocked out with pain, the kids and my partner lasted a year. It was a tough year, believe me, and it was with a lot of pain that they decided to sell and move to a smaller farm, but it had to be done.
Denis did not improve. It didn’t help one bit that the doctor told them he would. After moving, in November 1989, he found a new doctor in the nearby small town. As his records were sent to that doctor, the same thing happened again. He was Ischias and there was no need to look further. The fact that he kept getting worse didn’t change that. Instead, he was given new painkillers all the time and sent to different physical training sessions. He ended up using canes to walk, but even that didn’t make the doctors feel like they had to look for another reason behind all the pain. Denis’ own doctor tried several times during this time to have the experts at the nearby large hospital give him a full examination, since he at least felt that he was not well. Ischias is very painful but he is supposed to come and go, he does not give the person suffering from it constant pain 24/7/365.
Nothing happened. They kept sending each other letters about how they treated Denis. New pills, getting stronger until he was shattered.
To top it off, Sweden was in big financial trouble in the early 90s and so was Denis’s family, and in 1992 they lost everything, the farm, their horses, everything. They were forced to move to an apartment in the nearby town. It was like ending up on the moon. It’s not easy for a farmer’s family to adjust to this new life, living on Swedish welfare with 7 children and still with a very, very sick man. Has he ever lived for a long time with someone that he suffers from? Trust me, it is very difficult and causes problems for the whole family.
Social Welfare started a war against this family. I guess they’ve never dealt with a normal family before. They were forced to move 5 times in 2 and a half years. Can you imagine how hard it was to find a place to live with a big family like that, trying to keep them all together, something they didn’t care one bit about? Sweden was in a great financial depression and so was the family.
My partner couldn’t find a job and after all those years as a farmer’s wife and mother of 7, looking after her own children, I had nothing to offer anyway. In the summer of 1994, she also fell ill. I guess all her worries finally got to her and she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. More pain in the family and she too ended up in a wheelchair for a short time before she started to fight back. I guess she was fighting for all of them and managed to find a house on the outskirts of town that she was renting. That saved them from going crazy. To be back in the country and with an outdoor garden! Even my Denis had a short time to feel a little better. Enough to get a job at the local football club as a handyman. For 2 years her pain was at a level that gave her the opportunity to work with something she loved. Soccer! Everyone was very happy for him but it didn’t last long and he got worse very quickly in early 1997. The same struggle to get him to the experts started again and finally in early August they got it done with a lot of help from their own local. doctor.
What do you think they found when they finally gave him a full X-ray? A tumor as big as an egg growing on her spine! It only took them 9 years to find it! It was a miracle it didn’t kill him every time he started to grow all those years. Well, they panicked and eventually sent him to the biggest hospital in Gothenburg to have the tumor removed. The operation lasted 11 hours and he survived but with much permanent nerve damage. I won’t go into details as that is very personal to him, you can guess.
He was only 48 years old when this happened. Anyway, the big damage was not having balance, she can’t stand up without holding onto something. His right foot is partially paralyzed and he needs support inside his shoe to be able to walk upright, but he still looks like Charlie Chaplin when he tries to walk. At first he couldn’t walk at all, but he’s a fighter, stubborn enough to move mountains. Doctors at the large Gothenburg hospital helped him file malpractice claims through hospital insurance. Well what can I say? If the family had lived in the USA, they would have ended up billionaires because of what those doctors did to Denis, but they live in Sweden so they ended up almost 2 million in debt for life.
You see, they don’t return the actual financial loss, just a small amount of money for suffering and pain. Denis didn’t get a single “sorry” from the 3 experts that caused all of this, as they never bothered to look for more. The family managed to warn the doctors, but that was it. They are very lucky to still have him with them and he is even luckier to see his grandchildren grow up. Being a grandfather is something big for him and he enjoys every minute with them.