of wankers!
Posted on 09/14/2007 9:12:37 AM PDT by John Jorsett
A smoker is facing years of pain after an NHS hospital refused to set his broken ankle unless he gives up cigarettes.
John Nuttall, 57, needs the operation to fix the ankle he broke in three places two years ago and which was not healed by a plaster cast.
Doctors at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro have refused to operate to rebuild the ankle because they say Mr Nuttall's heavy smoking would reduce the chance of a full recovery.
They have told him to give up smoking before they operate but the retired builder has been unable to break his habit.
Mr Nuttall says he is in constant pain from the grating of the broken bones against each other and has been prescribed daily doses of morphine.
He refused surgery when he first injured the ankle in a fall in 2005 because he was worried about catching MRSA in hospital. When he went back a few weeks later and the ankle had not set he said he was told he would have to give up smoking before doctors could operate.
Mr Nuttall, from Newlyn, west Cornwall, said: "I have begged them to operate but they won't. I have tried my hardest to give up smoking but I can't.
"I want to warn other smokers. We have paid our National Insurance stamps all our lives and now we are being shut out of the NHS."
A spokesman for the hospital trust said: "Smoking has a very big influence on the outcome of this type of surgery and the healing process would be hindered significantly."
Physician, heal thyself.
Mr. Smoke-too-much.
I’ll bet these bozos wouldn’t deny treatment to homosexuals even with their high risk of contracting AIDS. Funny how Communism works.
L
Soon they will be denied health care based on political affiliation. It’s what commies do//
This sounds suspiciously like Hillarycare.
So they got him hooked on Morphine and they expect him to quit smoking?
You know what I dont get?
Why these people ADMIT to smoking in their doctors office.
Sure, its hard to cover up.. but heck its not impossible.. ask me how I know heh.. I never admit to smoking to a doctor.. its none of his business if I am not in there for a smoking related illness.
These nutballs have made smoking the one and only thing that “causes” all illness in the world. How they can link smoking to fixing a broken ankle is insane.
Sorry, cannot find that link, but it was posted here at FR.
There is absolutely no excuse for medical professionals to act like this. They need to have their medical licenses revoked.
Sounds as if the the UK National Health sees problems with this patient. I worked with a man here in the US who was a heavy smoker. He broke a bone in his foot and had a terrible time getting it healed, if ever. Multiple operations, etc. I lost track of him so I don’t know the final results of the work on his foot. He died a few years later of various smoking related problems.
Say hello to nationalized health services. Hi hitlery!
This is why the left wants to “provide” everything -
so they can withhold it if you don’t comply to their behavior requirements.
Smoke? Nope, no emergency room care.
Oh, and you better not be eating meat or driving an SUV either.
I think that says it all about healthcare in Britain. How many Americans actively worry about getting a Staph infection due to routine surgery? And yet it is a real concern over in Britain at the general clinics and hospitals.
I know, if it's government run, how can it be worse?
If this guy had been fat, instead of a smoker, two-thirds of FR would be saying “Get used to the crutches, tubby”.
Looking for confirmation and commentary...
Ping
It is wrong for doctors not to help the sick and injured ... I wonder how many unborn children these doctors have murdered over the years?
Even more funny that they'll give him all of the morphine he wants, but want him to quit smoking. Hilarious, even.
This is where we're headed, folks. Medical decisions made by a bureaucracy, rather than by doctors.
He must not be in all that much pain if he can’’t quit smoking.
If the doctors were to yank his script for morphine, I be he would quit smoking and get the operation.
The smoking alone is not reason to refuse to treat an unstable, painful ankle and morphine is not the appropriate long term pain medication. It sounds like some sort of sadistic way to make him come back frequently for pain med refills and punish him for non-compliance.
I have seen severe lower limb circulatory problems with long-term heavy smokers -- including a guy who wound up having his left leg amputated above the knee. If this fellow also has diabetes or arteriosclerosis or heart issues, it could make the circulation so bad that a broken bone would never heal.
I can tell you that if I could hear the ends of the fracture scraping together I would quit ANYTHING before I took morphine. And I've been there - broke my hand horseback riding and when I tried to take my glove off it was full of blood and the ends of the bone in one finger were rocking around all by themselves . . . fortunately my first class orthopod put me all back together and I can still ride, sew, play the piano and guitar, and touch type!
I prefer to select the best hand surgeon I can find myself, and work out the payments, rather than have the d#$@%$n gummint try to run medicine in this country.
Coming to a hospital near you.
1. They've spent untold dollars proving that smoking is bad
2. They've spent untold dollars proving that cigarettes are seriously addictive.
3. Then they ignore point #2, reference #1 and say, "Why don't you smokers just quit??"
Nobody wants to pay for smoker's ills, but nobody wants to actually *help* smokers overcome their addiction. (They'll do it for alcohol addiction, prescription med addictions, illegal drug addictions, but not for smokers.)
Honestly, I think they want to eat their cake and have it too. They want all the revenue from smokers and also want to cut us out of that same money.
But if you get AIDS or any number of other unspeakable diseases from careless sex acts, you are *so* covered!
(Right now I have my prescription for Chantix sitting on my bathroom counter; just waiting to get the courage to try it! I'm *so* afraid that it won't work!)
Listening to the phone calls of terrorists is the death of our precious civil liberties, but this isn’t.
Why would you think two-thirds of freepers are jerks?
The process is hindered even more my refusing this man health care you hypocritical limy bastard
of wankers!
Not sure what to say about this.
It wouldn’t be accurate to suggest we are shutting people out of care based on whether they smoke as a policy, but clearly it is happening.
As somebody that is strongly anti smoking, I still couldn’t ever support this.
They really don't want to know what I'd be doing with a container and some gasoline after getting treated like that.
It is a scientific fact that nicotine constricts peripheral blood vessels. Many people who end up with amputations have to have them because their blood supply stops being adequate to their feet. It really is justified for a surgeon to say he cannot cut the man’s foot, when he knows that the man’s circulation will not support enough blood supply for healing. The patient will end up with an amputation.
One terribly sad part of the situation is that nicotine withdrawal makes the pain of this peripheral disease process much worse, as the blood supply increases. The pain is like the pain of a foot that “goes to sleep” when the numbness is wearing off, (which lasts only for a few minutes for healthy people, but is constant for the diseased) or the pain of a caffeine-withdrawal headache - again related to the expansion or contraction of blood vessels.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!
Why these people ADMIT to smoking in their doctors office.
Tough to hide when they conduct blood tests to see if you are lying to them. When they do in the UK with known smokers.
In the Doctors defense, they are only following orders from the NHS beauracrats (sp?) and policy setters.
Refusing treatment for a broken ankle IMHO constitutes torture and is not justified to try to get a man to quit smoking.
“Sounds as if the the UK National Health sees problems with this patient.”
Ahh so the solution is to refuse treatment.
I have seen severe lower limb circulatory problems with long-term heavy smokers —
*****
I was the head nurse on a men’s surgical ward back in the ‘60s and many of my patients were in for treatment of peripheral vascular disease - having repeated amputations. This was back in the day when patients could smoke at their bedside, and the only relief that these men had as they watched their legs getting progressively shorter, was their cigarettes.
Not at all.
If however the persons injury was a direct result of their weight and failure to lose weight would result in a chronic problem and many repeat operations to fix the same problem, caused by the persons weight, then we could be justified in telling the tub of goo to lose weight or get used to the cruthces.
This persons injury is not related to his smoking.
Only if our tax dollars are paying for the operation, which is precisely what is going to happen with HillaryCare.
Geez, thats a bit extreme don't you think? Torture?
It's not like they put panties on head or anything.
And lung transplants.
Then the NHS should pay back every cent the man has paid over the years + interest. That won't happen either!
I'm not a medical professional, just a lawyer who sees some medical stuff from time to time . . . but smoking complicates the heck out of a lot of surgery is all I can say.
No, but his chances for recovery appear to be directly related to his smoking.
Ditto with the overweight issue. My knees don't bother me any more since I lost almost 30 pounds. I had an old ACL injury that was beginning to cause problems . . . . all better now, just had to get some of the load off the joint.
My horse is much happier too with 30 fewer pounds to cart around.
There are a great number of problems that now face a successful procedure to both reset and then to properly heal the broken bones and re-establish the ankle joint for a pain-free future; what is being overlooked here is that this feloow is being dosed with a highly addictive substance in the form of morphine at the same time he is being asked to quit smoking.
If he managed to kick one habit he still has to face the sloughing off of another, more addictive one which reduces his ability to regain full engagement in the stream of life’s flow.
Furthermore, one solution to the smoking problem might be to have the patient receive nicotine by patches or gums, and hopefully refrain from cigarettes. It is probably some component or components of the cigarette smoke other than nicotine which impedes circulation to the legs. So switching to an alternate source of nicotine might satisfy the smoker's dependence on it, while at the same time improving the success rate of the surgery.
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