Never finished describing what happened when we got back from our vacation … three weeks ago. Dang does time fly.
When we walked in the house, the first thing we noticed was that it smelled like cleaning products. There were a mop and a bucket sitting in the wet room by the garage.
The fishtank in the kitchen was a ruddy brown color. We could barely see the fish. One fish was floating. Half of a large can of fish food that we had just bought was gone.
Instead of coming home to relax, we came home to a CSI scene. We began to explore further.
One of the things that I noticed was that our coat rack had been moved. It was sitting to directly block the view through the windows by the front door. I also noticed that there was a piece of tape over the side of the kitchen window. Our neighbors told us that all the window shades were pulled. Our kitchen window doesn’t have a shade. I’m sure that something was taped over it.
Two of our security cameras were unplugged and the third one was pointed at the ceiling.
Something big happened here.
We paid the kid to walk the dogs. We were gone for more than a week. We had just purchased a package of doggie doo bags before we left and we had put a brand new roll in the holder on one dog’s chain. Not one bag had been used.
The girls came down from their rooms upset.
“Someone went through my drawers and messed my clothing all up.”
“Someone rearranged all the clothes in my closet.”
We went downstairs. There was a hole in the wall from one of the legs of a bar stool. The house abuser had said that one of the dogs knocked the chair over while playing catch with a tennis ball. The angle of the hole made it clear that the trajectory of the chair was from up to down – as if someone was holding the seat and forcing the chair downward. An Ansel Adams print hanging on the wall had the glass broken.
There was a run in the seam of the basement carpet and the carpet had been unraveled. Looking closer, there was a stain on the carpet all around the seam. A pair of my youngest daughter’s underwear was hanging off the barbell sitting on my weight bench.
We called the kid’s mother. She brought her son over to see what we were so upset about.
I brought him down in the basement and asked him what happened. He stuck to his story. The dog knocked over the stool and put the hole in the wall. I asked him about the stain on the carpet. The dog urinated on the spot. He cleaned it and then the other dog urinated there again. I told him it seemed that he spent an awful lot of time cleaning. He said that he just wanted us to come home to a clean house.
Like we left the house in that much of a mess?
Oh, and he was concerned about the Ansel Adams print.
“Was that cracked already? Sometimes I get clumsy and don’t remember falling into things.”
“Yeah, it was broken when my son’s friend whacked it with a baseball.”
“OK, good. I mean I’m glad that I didn’t break it.”
We walked back upstairs. It was then that I heard house abuser’s mom tell Mrs. WhiteCoat that we were overreacting. After all, there couldn’t have been that many kids over and if we had just called her, she would have taken care of it.
Whatever.
The next two days at home were spent cleaning up the house that our house abuser had so thoughtfully cleaned for us. We also tried to taken an inventory of the things around the house to make sure that nothing was missing. The only other thing I noticed was that the house abuser cleaned out most of the soda and all of the Red Bulls in the refrigerator in my garage. However, there wasn’t a single can in the garbage or in the recycling bin. Why was that? We soon found out.
The following day, Daughter WhiteCoat banged her head on a dresser and I went to the freezer to get an ice pack. The house abuser just got busted. A bottle of whiskey was buried in the ice maker. And we don’t drink whiskey. A little while later, my son brought up a “Rolling Rock” bottle cap that was in the seat cushion of his official Xbox 360 chair.
This weasel and his buddies were boozing it up in our house while we were gone.
House abuser’s school has a policy that all athletes must sign. Get caught with alcohol or get caught at a party where there’s alcohol and you’re off the team instantly.
We called back his mother and asked her if she wanted to come and pick up his whiskey and beer cap or if we should just drop it off at the school for him.
Thirty minutes later, he was ringing our doorbell. When we opened the door, his dad threw him inside by the scruff of his neck.
His first words were “I want you to know that I’ve lost everything.”
Never really got around to saying he was sorry. Never really admitted having a party. Just said that some of his “so called friends” took advantage of him and were drinking here when he wasn’t watching.
His dad said that he had “misgivings” about letting him watch the house and that junior let him down again.
Would have been nice to know about that before we gave junior the keys.
We were still going to go to the school about the alcohol, but figured that we’d let things go and move on with our lives.
And for the first time in three weeks, we can see through the fish tank again.
Next time we leave, we’re taking the dogs with us.
Demanding Perfection?
January 25th, 2012Want more evidence about how many people expect perfect outcomes in medical practice?
Look no further than the Wall Street Journal: “What if the Doctor is Wrong?” by Laura Landro.
As a substantive basis for the conclusion that initial treating physicians are “wrong” when they haven’t yet reached a diagnosis, Ms. Landro interviewed two patients who, in the midst of a workup, left the doctor who was trying to diagnose and treat their problems. Said patients then went to a “mecca” to have their workup completed where … amazingly … the problem is “discovered” and “properly” treated. Even though the initial provider in all likelihood would have done the same testing that the “mecca” performed after reviewing the results of the initial testing – had the patient stuck around long enough to have the testing performed. Even though the “standard of care” may have been to do things exactly the way that the initial provider was doing them. Nope, they’re wrong because they didn’t get to the answer sooner.
When reading about all these “errors” I couldn’t help wondering: Did Ms. Landro have a neutral physician review the patients’ medical records to see whether the care provided to the patients was appropriate? Did Ms. Landro interview the initial treating physicians to determine what the next step in their treatment plans would have been? If so, she kind of left those points out of her article.
I understand the idea that second opinions can be useful and I agree that misdiagnoses are sometimes made. Until we find a single test that is 100% sensitive and 100% specific for diseases such as cancer or complaints such as abdominal pain, there will always be misdiagnoses made. Even once a diagnosis has been made, there are disagreements about how to proceed with treatment. Some prefer one medication for treating certain types of cancer, some prefer another medication. Does that make one side “wrong” and the other side “right”? Hardly.
The title of this article and the slant of this reporting make it appear as if doctors are “wrong” just because they don’t make a diagnosis after the first round of testing. Did Ms. Landro even explore how often the “meccas” get their diagnosis “wrong” on the first visit? Are the “meccas” that much better?
If patients want to mortgage their house to get the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary for a “down payment” at MD Anderson (original link to WSJ article here) or some other “mecca” when they likely would have gotten similar testing done had they stuck with their initial providers, that’s free market medicine at work.
When journalists imply that excluding diseases on a list of differential diagnoses in the midst of a workup or coming up with “inconclusive” results during testing is “wrong”, shouldn’t we start looking into journalistic malpractice?
What if the Journalist is Wrong?
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