Medical Mystery !!!

I have a story to tell, and a point to make, on February 27th 2010, my sister suffered from pregnancy high blood pressure, that caused her to louse conscience and start having seizures, biting her tongue and rolling back her eyes, a scene that I wouldn’t wish to anyone, and since she lives in Ben Ashore Area we decided to take her to the nearest Clinic; Al-Mukhtar, at 08 in the morning upon arrival to the clinic, no one was at the ER “ God only knows where the staff that gets paid to provide care at the ER were?” anyhow; after the scream of desperation of my sisters father in law, some showed up and took my sister straight to ICU, were she stood until the surgery time, where they had to deliver a pre-mature baby girl, to save my sisters life. (I consulted a good number of Doctors on the matter and they confirmed that it was the right thing to do in these cases to ensure the safety of the Mother, and I have no negative comments on the subject), now while my sister was in coma and her body was puffed up, she looked so different and pale, they (AKA ICU staff) said that inserting the needle of the serum in her neck will be better than the arm, and will have a faster effect which means a good thing, and who are we to question Doctors orders, so we didn’t comment, they know better!!!
Now within the same time we had in that clinic 2 family members ( my sister and her premature little daughter ): Case # 1 was under observation at the ICU. Case # 2 was also in the infants ICU, she was so small and very premature, but alive, the Doctor suggested that we give the baby 2 shots of some kinda hormonal serum to help the growth of her organs, which we did!! But they gave us no guaranties on the survival of the baby, (I also consulted a good number of Doctors on the matter, and they all told me that premature babies do survive in such kind of cases but with an intensive care and a long treatment schedule, and they treated a lot of other similar cases and they are grown up and some are married today). ICU, most of the people who have a non medical background will imagine an Intensive Care Unit to be extremely Sterilizer, Clean, Quite with sliding doors that make no sound and that include also the people who go in that unit.
Of course most of the people living in Tripoli know how this clinic look like from the inside, it’s an old Ex-residential building transformed into a privet clinic, bedrooms transformed into check-up rooms, other rooms transformed into ICUs’, wooden old doors and very unmaintained bathrooms, the sounds of the slams of the wooden doors can actually scare you in your standard, regular healthy day, imagine if you were sick, in pain and in a coma, or even worst a premature baby that just came into this world, well let’s say that the slamming of the doors was the smaller, digestible part of the worst, of course the baby needed to stay in an incubator, I researched this medical device online and what I found is that “ These plastic boxes keep baby warm in one of two ways: They may be set to stay at a certain temperature, or a probe that monitors the baby’s temperature may be connected to the incubator to heat or cool the air as needed. Incubators also protect premature babies from infection, noise, and light, and may provide humidified air to maintain skin integrity in very premature babies”, ok now that was very informative, because our baby was in an incubator that had 2 holes on one of the sides which were supposed to have gloves on the inner end of the box, but of course because this Clinic had the only incubator in Libya as stated by the Administration, it had to be malfunctioned, one the 3 day of life of this baby, the Doctor on shift asked for blood plasma for the baby, who blood type was A+ like her Daddy, now; why do you think they needed the plasma?I researched and researched for so long and the reasons might be one million but just know that plasma contains antibodies and antitoxins, antibody, which are used against the introduction of a bacterial poison, or toxin. The bottom-line is that the baby died that same day.
The staff; I had not seen most of the Doctors but as pretended by the Administration they are all high qualified Doctors, holders of the highest Degrees from the highest Institutions in Europe and US, ok I won’t disagree, but the Nurses, or who were once called “ Malaykat Al-Rahma” Angels of Mercy, in my 28 years of life and with the 4 surgeries I had, I have never seen this amount of nurses in one clinic, and the quality of their work, that was fantastically impressive, the patient room bells rang so many times till I personally wanted to go check on the patient who was ringing for help, but the fully dressed with lots and lots of make-up Nurses were too busy chatting and eating, and not willing to have a one minute break from the busy chat to take care of their duties.
During my childhood, one of my dreams was to be a Nurse, but the basis of this dream were different, I wanted to help others, and be able to relief them from their pain, but then I changed my path because I didn’t have a steady hand, and that would’ve been dangerous, but the most important thing is that I wanted to do it because it is a humanitarian profession, based on the pure wish of helping the next. Well this is not the case at Al-Mukhtar Clinic, the Nurses wanted to do something they like while getting paid, (being with their likes, chatting, eating, wearing scrubs and putting 5kg of make-up on their faces), God Bless Them!!!
Remember that needle in my sisters neck, it was inserted by one of those fabulous Nurses, after the relies of my sister and the payment of a total Amount of 8,000 LYD for 5 days of Lousy Medical service, my sister started to feel a strong pain in her neck accompanied nausea and high temperature, Nice isn’t it? Now guess what she had? AN INFECTION AND BLOOD CLOTS, What would you do in this case? I know go back to the clinic and ask the Doctor about the causes, which we did, and the cause was as we all expected. (and we are not holders of ant Medical Background what so ever). the Doctor again asked her to stay in for the night under observation which ended up to be one whole week of treatment with Heparin, with such an ugly mistake by a health care provider, the reasonable and ethical thing to do, to make-up for the mistake done by my own employees is ?! “ NOT TO CHARGE” , but yet again we paid 2,000 LYD, after leaving the Clinic my sister had to continue a treatment prescribed by the Doctor, and we are still fine with that this treatment costs from 2.500LYD to 3.500 depending on the Pharmacy, “ yeah that does sound cheap” and again we are fine with the 6 moths treatment, but the funny thing happened yesterday, when my sister went to buy that same mendicant form the pharmacy of that same Clinic, and was shocked when the pharmacist told her that it costs 10 Dinars and not the 2.500 or 3.500, Ladies & Gentlemen, what a scam?
Be aware,
MB