I am upset, back in April I went to see Dr. Benjamin Venger a the Western Regional Center for Brain & Spinal Surgery. My back had excruciating pain & I had an MRI film with me to show broken vertebrae touching my spinal nerve causing numbness & pain to lower extremities. He sent me to the ER at Sunrise Hospital & I was given an IV with pain meds. I was admitted for spinal surgery & it was to be done that night at 7:30pm.
I was admitted into a room, and the nurses admitted me for surgery. My husband was eating food next to me, & placed his McDonalds bag on the bedside table. The doctors PA & hospital nurse walked into the room & saw the McDonalds bag & called Dr. Venger who then cancelled my surgery for that night because they said I had just eaten a meal, when in fact I hadn't. Dr. Venger later came into my room, mad as hell because he was told I ate food right before surgery. I was mad & called the nursing supervisor to report the nurse. So the doctor rescheduled the surgery for the next night. He said he had to fly to AZ to treat his patients down there & would fly back, but he had to do it all in a rush and blamed it on ME.
The next night, Dr. Venger, came into the OR bitching about how I messed up his day. He then did a spinal fusion on my lower back & I was taken to a room afterwards. After a day or two I was sent home. A week later the pain was worse than before surgery & it was excruciating. I went back to see Dr. Venger & he refused to see me, and his PA told me to live with the pain. NO this really felt like something was wrong. A month later the pain was so bad, I couldn't move, or go to the bathroom without excruciating pain. Dr. Venger made an appointment for me to see him & after an MRI before the visit, he tells me the fusion came apart & the vertebrae was pinging on the spinal nerve & I needed emergency surgery. He was leaving for Paris, France & was sorry he couldn't fix it. I waited a month to be seen by him & not his PA who kept telling me nothing was the matter with me!
So Dr. Venger then asked his partner, Dr. Michael Smith if he would redo the surgery. So Dr. Smith sent me to University Medical Center, Las Vegas, where he was on-call that night & called ahead to the ER to tell them to admit me for surgery. Surgery was done the next day. But wasn't done right again.
I had to keep going to the Wound clinic because the sutures petrified in my rectum & had to keep having them removed. It also felt like one of the rods was coming thru my rectum. When I kept complaining to the PA in wound clinic about the severe pain in my back again, she kept telling me there was nothing the matter with me.
A month later Dr. Smith refused to see me because my insurance expired & without insurance he wouldn't see me. He wanted me to be on a trial program with the titanium company. I never got any literature from them, nor was ever allowed to be seen by Dr. Smith again, even when complaining of severe pain. The PA kept telling me to live with the pain.
So I went back to work. My left lower extremity kept going numb & there was pain all of the time down to my toes & my feet. Now on my new agency job I received health care, but all doctors would do is to prescribe pain meds, no treatments of any kind to the point of having to wait until 2009 to be seen by a Kaiser doctor who had to redo the whole spinal laminectomy again in July. He told us that all of the metal from the previous surgery had collapsed & now I am stuck with permanent nerve damage as their is a metal screw attached to my spinal nerve from the previous surgery.
I had contacted Dr. Smith by mail many times, but received no answers to my letters.
Dr. Andrew Slucky of Oakland Kaiser wrote in his notes that I have permanent nerve damage cause by the previous surgery.
I had contacted every personal injury attorney in Las Vegas & local areas to file a claim against Dr. Smith, but no attorney would take my case. No one wants to go up against this medical practice.
Dr. Benjamin Venger lost his medical license between 2007 & now for fraud.
I'd like something to be done. I'm now permanently disabled as I went for 3 years without the proper treatment. I worked a steady case management travel nursing job while in pain. I never knew I could do that, but when I kept falling down on the job, that was the last straw. My left leg kept going numb & I kept falling down on the job.
I am still trying to recuperate from surgery, but am now unable to work. I'd rather be working as I had a great job, but I can't walk or stand for a long time, nor to sit all day at a computer.
Can someone help me?
0 comments