Foreign Body of the Heart

For doctors practicing for 20 to 30 years, the chance of avoiding a malpractice suit is equivalent to a tadpole growing wings and becoming a monarch. Theoretically, lawyers go after doctors only when medical care is not up to community standards. No lawyer, not even the most outrageous, would consider suing a doctor who lost a patient because of a stab wound to the heart—if the doctor and patient were on top of Mt. Everest. At 30 degrees below zero, wearing 3 layers of mitts, a skilled surgeon without equipment and anesthesiologist would be helpless. Not that a few lawyers, okay, a very few, wouldn't consider a suit, whatever the circumstances, if they thought they could win a generous settlement.

For 29 years, I kept up with my changing specialty, asked for appropriate consultations, and was available when called, but a foreign body of the heart turned me into your average frog.

Mrs. Akin and her family were quietly pleasant when they appeared in my office for the preoperative examination and conference. A thin woman in her early fifties, she looked tired, wan. After her 3 children had grown, she had worked as a cashier in a convenience store until becoming incapacitated by fatigue and shortness of breath, evidence of heart failure secondary to calcific mitral valve stenosis and insufficiency. “Just glad to be …