Unfortunately, Kaiser made repeated mistakes and Larry never got the kidney transplant he desperately needed. Now, Larry's wife Patty and his daughter Julie are left wondering how Kaiser could have messed up so badly that it cost Larry his life.
Kaiser didn't just mess up Larry's kidney transplant," Patty says. "I think Kaiser's mistakes led to Larry's kidney problems in the first place. Back in 1995, Larry was told he had to get off his blood pressure medication because it was killing his kidneys. But nothing was ever done about it. He kept trying to talk about it but his primary physician just ignored him. Larry didn't hear anything from Kaiser and his doctor did nothing."In 1999 Larry's doctor finally ordered an MRI. The MRI showed that one of Larry's kidneys was dead. His other kidney was in bad condition and required a stent immediately. Larry had the surgery and a stent was put in. He seemed okay for a while. Then, in January of 2003, Larry had surgery to repair an aneurysm. "His kidney didn't survive that surgery," Patty says. "Within 30 days of the aneurysm repair he was on dialysis."
Around that time Larry's daughter Julie was identified as a kidney donor for Larry. "We were set to go ahead with the transplant right away," says Julie. "We went to a Kaiser hospital in San Francisco, did the blood work and the interview, and were told Kaiser would contact us regarding the next step. They never did.
They kept rescheduling appointments and had excuses for not going ahead with the surgery. They said that if we did the surgery he would lose kidney function in the stented kidney. At least if we did the transplant he would have had my functioning kidney to help him."
Larry continued with dialysis, although he wasn't receiving it often enough. "He needed three days a week of dialysis, but for three years he only got dialysis twice a week," Patty says. "Meanwhile, Kaiser was messing up his Medicare Part D. Larry would sometimes go for a month without his medication because it wasn't approved."
"Kaiser just kept messing everything up," says Patty. "They had on Larry's record that he was diabetic. Larry was never diabetic. But no matter how many times we told Kaiser that, his report was never changed. They still listed him as diabetic.
The nurse at the dialysis clinic didn't know until June of this year that Larry had a donor for his kidney. She was amazed that he had a donor but was on dialysis for so long. It wasn't even in his records that there was a donor. In fact, his records didn't show that he was on dialysis until he had been on it for over two years."
Frustrated by the lack of care he received, Larry wrote a letter of complaint regarding his primary care physician. "He heard nothing back, but he did get a referral to a gastroenterologist out of it," Patty says. "Of course, he had been told a year before that he needed to see a gastroenterologist. But he went to Kaiser about it and they told him he had to make the appointment himself. So he went to the doctor who told him that Kaiser would have to make the appointment. But Kaiser kept saying it was up to Larry to deal with. No one at Kaiser actually knows how the medical system works."
Part of the problem is that there was no Kaiser facility where Larry lived. So patients on Kaiser's plan were seeing doctors outside the Kaiser system. "People outside Kaiser's system don't exist as far as Kaiser is concerned," Patty says. "You go to Kaiser and tell them what's going on and they just show you the door. They did nothing. You could phone Kaiser ten times with the same question and get eight different answers. And each person you talk to would swear up and down that the answer they gave you was definitely correct."
Another part of the problem was that Larry saw many different doctors. "Larry's doctor went on maternity leave," Patty says. "Kaiser told him not to get a new doctor, to just stick with his original doctor. But every time he went to the doctor's office, he'd see someone new. They'd order tests but no one was looking at the results. There were lab reports coming in and nothing was being done. Even reports about aneurysms went ignored. There was no discussion between his kidney doctor and his primary care physician. And no one at Kaiser had any idea what was going on. It's like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing."
Larry died July 10, 2006. "His lungs burst," says Patty. "What I've found out is that over time dialysis destroys veins and arteries and leads to heart disease. Earlier this year we were told that if you survive past five years on dialysis, you're doing well. Larry was at three and a half years."
"Three years ago my dad needed a kidney transplant," Julie says. "I was a perfect match, we were ready to go ahead, and Kaiser messed things up. Now my dad's not here."
"Larry's not the only person this has happened to," says Patty. "It took a large group of people to be messed around by Kaiser before they noticed. But it's important to talk about it. The more people know about it, the more Kaiser is exposed. They can't just sweep this stuff under the carpet."
"I watched my husband die and nobody at Kaiser would do anything," Patty says. "No one would help."