Can relate to a life-threatening misdiagnosis.

So he never got treatment, or even a second test? WTF?

Lsherm: Man, I would be royally pissed off, too, especially since they continued to offer him treatment after the misdiagnosis.

However, the Whitman-Walker Clinic is a "free" clinic in DC that specializes in care for gay and lesbian patrons and primary care for neighborhood folks. They get most of their funding via grants and donations (and they got all of it from those sources when this guy was diagnosed). It's unlikely this guy actually paid for his diagnosis. So maybe he should have just let it go. It's a charity, and sometimes charities make mistakes.

And if you're a medical professional and make a life threatening (or hell, a death sentence) diagnosis, isn't it proper form to call in a second opinion before telling the patient?

False positives do exist - hell, at least tell the patient of the % chance the test was f--ked up and if you're a strapped charity HIGHLY suggest they get a second opinion and provide a list of doctors (possibly via some sort of arrangement with the clinic)?

Wasn't this an episode of House?

um, subby is a forgiving soul.

Think about what you are forced to go through with an HIV positive test. Think of the stigma, think of the relationships you have to give up.

Think of the lack of freedom.

However, its a charity, it might be hard for me to take my anger out on poor people who need health care. Tough choice, really.

"Just kidding"

Holy shiat. Had he been on HAART for that time period too?

I'd be suing too. That's insane. And the way HAART farks with your body is harsh. It'll keep you alive, but damn.

/got needle stuck in 2006, and did a 30 day course of HAART. Would not wish that on anyone.

StreetlightInTheGhetto: And if you're a medical professional and make a life threatening (or hell, a death sentence) diagnosis, isn't it proper form to call in a second opinion before telling the patient?

Here's what I don't understand. It's common place to draw quarterly titres for HIV patients, IIRC. Why didn't this guy know that it was a false positive the moment they drew his CD4+ white count, or drew a viral titre.

BronyMedic: /got needle stuck in 2006, and did a 30 day course of HAART. Would not wish that on anyone.

Got a needle stick in 2008, skipped HAART entirely. Wasn't worth it for the relatively low risk of transference from a negative-tested patient with few risk factors since his intake screening.

The three- and six-month tests were still incredibly tense waiting for the results.

Dr. Mojo PhD: Got a needle stick in 2008, skipped HAART entirely. Wasn't worth it for the relatively low risk of transference from a negative-tested patient with few risk factors since his intake screening.

The three- and six-month tests were still incredibly tense waiting for the results.

I wasn't going to chance it. Patient skipped from the ER before they could get consent to run the test.

The mouth ulcers were the worst. Like I've had canker sores, but this was a whole new level. I lost a lot of weight, too.

Lsherm: Either way, he's getting a 20 million payout, so he wins. I'm just telling you how the clinic worked back in the day.

It says they settled the case so I doubt it's the full 20 million, but that still sucks for the free clinic. I do think they're responsible for the false positive, but I can't believe the guy didn't do any kind of follow up blood test or treatment or get a 2nd opinion or ANYTHING that would have let him know he didn't have HIV. The first thing I would have done is asked for another test.

Lsherm: Because Whitman-Walker is a free clinic. They don't provide comprehensive medical care. They focus mainly on tests to diagnose and treatment for GLBT clients who don't have insurance. At the time, they weren't a primary care provider, so they wouldn't run blood tests on HIV positive patients for maintenance. They would just treat if they had the money to do so.

They farked up.

I understand that, and I realize that was often thankless work.

But free clinic or not, if it doesn't at least come with a FIND A SECONDARY OPINION if they know there's a possibility of a false negative *or* false positive...

And according to TFA, that apparently wasn't there. Hell, he was monitored there, they arranged for him to get housing, but they had no funds or ability to run a second test to make *sure*?

It sucks when people have damn good intentions but miss the details, and that seems to be the case here. In spades.

The test at the clinic, he would later discover, was negative. But a clinic employee mistakenly wrote in Hedgepeth's files that he had taken two tests at the clinic and that one of them was positive. Then, a doctor at the clinic failed to carefully review Hedgepeth's chart and instead began counseling him about the virus.

During the next four years, no further blood tests were done, and Hedgepeth continued to believe that he was HIV-positive. He became depressed, according to the court records, quit his job as a caterer, began using drugs and alcohol, and twice was committed to psychiatric wards because of suicidal thoughts.

Hedgepeth continued to be monitored at Whitman-Walker but was never medically treated for the virus. The clinic also arranged for Hedgepeth to live in a facility with HIV-positive people.

In June 2005, Hedgepeth decided to seek alternative treatment from the Abundant Life Clinic in Southeast Washington. The clinic conducted a routine blood test and discovered that he was not HIV-positive. A month later, Hedgepeth was referred to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center to take a follow-up test, which confirmed that he had not contracted the virus.

Clinic #2, it's implied, referred him for a follow up test. At least.

I understand funds being available for monitoring but not treatment, for placement. But seriously, this was 2000 when he was misdiagnosed.

Galius_Persnickety: So he never got treatment, or even a second test? WTF?

Yes, WTF indeed. Because if he took the viral load test, and it showed zero antibodies and zero virus well, you know he just wanted to sue sue sue for the jackpot at the expense of the community free clinic, that ingrate.

BronyMedic: Dr. Mojo PhD: Got a needle stick in 2008, skipped HAART entirely. Wasn't worth it for the relatively low risk of transference from a negative-tested patient with few risk factors since his intake screening.

The three- and six-month tests were still incredibly tense waiting for the results.

I wasn't going to chance it. Patient skipped from the ER before they could get consent to run the test.

The mouth ulcers were the worst. Like I've had canker sores, but this was a whole new level. I lost a lot of weight, too.

No, I don't blame you at all. Mine was in an assisted living home for mentally ill patients, and I worked in the health care department. We had access to the patient jackets that clearly showed my guy as being HIV- (they're all screened at intake), and his risk factors were nil -- he had a higher risk of killing himself from constantly ordering pizza with his diabetes than he did doing IV drugs or having unprotected sex, I don't even think he knew how to have sex. Still, it was scary as shiat, especially because the HIV+ prevalence in the place was around 10% of the population.

StreetlightInTheGhetto: Lsherm: Man, I would be royally pissed off, too, especially since they continued to offer him treatment after the misdiagnosis.

However, the Whitman-Walker Clinic is a "free" clinic in DC that specializes in care for gay and lesbian patrons and primary care for neighborhood folks. They get most of their funding via grants and donations (and they got all of it from those sources when this guy was diagnosed). It's unlikely this guy actually paid for his diagnosis. So maybe he should have just let it go. It's a charity, and sometimes charities make mistakes.

And if you're a medical professional and make a life threatening (or hell, a death sentence) diagnosis, isn't it proper form to call in a second opinion before telling the patient?

False positives do exist - hell, at least tell the patient of the % chance the test was f--ked up and if you're a strapped charity HIGHLY suggest they get a second opinion and provide a list of doctors (possibly via some sort of arrangement with the clinic)?

Hello! Bill Clinton has been re-elected, Priincess Diana died in a car crash, and there are life-saving antiretroviral medicines which completely stop the progression of hiv.

Kevin72: Hello! Bill Clinton has been re-elected, Priincess Diana died in a car crash, and there are life-saving antiretroviral medicines which completely stop the progression of hiv.

HAART doesn't completely stop the progression of HIV in someone with an already established infection, it just greatly slows it. And that's if you don't have a drug regiment resistant, or multi-regiment resistant strain that's starting to show up in the US and Europe thanks to poor compliance and practices with HAART therapies.

In addition, it does horrific things to your body in long-term users. It's still preferrable to death, but let's not pretend HAART is perfect, here.

There was an episode of Deep Space Nine that covered this. Quark is misdiagnosed with a fatal disease and sells off his own body so that he may settle his debts before he dies. He later gets the good news that he's healthy, but the buyer of his bones still wants his merchandise, and so Quark is bankrupted.

BronyMedic: Holy shiat. Had he been on HAART for that time period too?

I'd be suing too. That's insane. And the way HAART farks with your body is harsh. It'll keep you alive, but damn.

/got needle stuck in 2006, and did a 30 day course of HAART. Would not wish that on anyone.

He would not be on HAART without viral load tests and CD4 counts which would have shown ZERO VIRUS and NORMAL CD4 COUNTS.

Kevin72: He would not be on HAART without viral load tests and CD4 counts which would have shown ZERO VIRUS and NORMAL CD4 COUNTS.

Yeah, I actually went back and RTFA after I posted that.

BronyMedic: Kevin72: Hello! Bill Clinton has been re-elected, Priincess Diana died in a car crash, and there are life-saving antiretroviral medicines which completely stop the progression of hiv.

HAART doesn't completely stop the progression of HIV in someone with an already established infection, it just greatly slows it. And that's if you don't have a drug regiment resistant, or multi-regiment resistant strain that's starting to show up in the US and Europe thanks to poor compliance and practices with HAART therapies.

In addition, it does horrific things to your body in long-term users. It's still preferrable to death, but let's not pretend HAART is perfect, here.

When taken regularly, it stops the hiv from being in the blood which stops it from attacking the CD4 cells which means the immune system is normal. The medicinces since 2004 ARE NOT THE MEDICINES OF 1995!!!! No they do not do 'horrific things to your body' though of course the side effects are side effects, THEY ARE NOT HORRIFIC OR EVEN CLOSE TO HORRIFIC.

"Thanks to poor compliance" is the words of some lazy a-hole with a death wish. Just take the damn pills, most regiments are once a day.

bifford: There was an episode of Deep Space Nine that covered this. Quark is misdiagnosed with a fatal disease and sells off his own body so that he may settle his debts before he dies. He later gets the good news that he's healthy, but the buyer of his bones still wants his merchandise, and so Quark is bankrupted.

Those sound like serious fictional problems.

http://efherne.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/aidspatient2.jpg

That guy looks like he'd feel sorry for Quark.

there's no such thing as HIV. it's a govt plot to see if by telling someone they're gonna die, they actually die

HIV -- damned if you have it, damned if you don't.

Having a false diagnosis like this dropped on you would definitely mess with your life. That said, I hope the lawsuit doesn't interfere with the funding of a clinic like this.

Hell, when I went to the hospital and the nurse told me they were running tests for cardiomyopathy, that was the scariest 8 hours of my life, waiting for the results. I couldn't imagine if they had misdiagnosed it and I had to live with that feeling for 5 years. Guy deserves every scent he could get.

I'm curious if the person did anything after the diagnosis that they now regret. It may not be the death sentence it was back in the days of Mercury, but it still is life altering enough to believe this patient with a misdiagnosis changed their lifestyle. Despite their personal hell they were mistakenly thrown into, I hope they have a new found appreciation of life.

bborchar: Hell, when I went to the hospital and the nurse told me they were running tests for cardiomyopathy, that was the scariest 8 hours of my life, waiting for the results. I couldn't imagine if they had misdiagnosed it and I had to live with that feeling for 5 years. Guy deserves every scent he could get.

Hopefully the penises weren't too funky smelling

BronyMedic: Holy shiat. Had he been on HAART for that time period too?

I'd be suing too. That's insane. And the way HAART farks with your body is harsh. It'll keep you alive, but damn.

/got needle stuck in 2006, and did a 30 day course of HAART. Would not wish that on anyone.

You were on prophylactic haart. For HIV+ they usually don't start haart until your cd4 is under 500. Admittedly guidelines may have been different back then.

/needlestick from aids patient with pcp pneumonia while a med student
//haart made me very jaundiced
///eyes looked like nitecrawler
//h

My doctor told me 6 years ago that my heart was shot and tried to give me nitro pills to carry... fark that.. gonna live til i die.. im still here and think hes a quack:) as most doctors seem to be...

'
So in modern day HIV diagnostics, you've got a screening test and then the confirmatory test, so you don't (or shouldn't) tell anyone they've tested positive until they've tested positive by the screen AND the confirmatory test (different methodologies).

So if the clinic worker mistakenly wrote in the chart he'd been tested twice, positive on one test and not the other, not sure if they wrote two different screen test results or positive screen / negative confirmatory - in any case, no one should be diagnosing anyone with HIV without a positive confirmatory test.

There's a movement pushing to have test results released directly to patients. Might have helped in this case. Just because it is a free clinic doesn't mean you can throw quality care out the window. That being said, I hope this guy didn't make too much off this case. Plenty of people get bad diagnoses every day and don't go on huge downward spirals over it. I'd be curious to know what his drug and alcohol usage was before his diagnosis, they present it like he was saint until his devastating diagnosis, but one has to wonder...

bborchar: Hell, when I went to the hospital and the nurse told me they were running tests for cardiomyopathy, that was the scariest 8 hours of my life, waiting for the results. I couldn't imagine if they had misdiagnosed it and I had to live with that feeling for 5 years. Guy deserves every scent he could get.

your not even being truthful. no one is THAT afraid of living. DON'T you believe that all is one and that there's no such thing as death?? like the rest of us NORMAL PEOPLE??

Shadowtag: Wasn't this an episode of House?

That was cancer. Same idea though.

I totally understand his thinking though.
Awesome news that he's clean, but the hospital should have triple checked their results before laying such a bombshell as a HIV diagnosis on someone in the first place.

MythDragon: CSB:

After I found out that my exwife was a farking whore, I went and got a STD screening.

After I had called back for the results, it went something like this.

Nurse: Everything looks good. Except for one thing that came back as positive.
Me: Well??
Nurse: The test shows you are positive for Hep B.
Me: That farking sucks.
Nurse: have you ever been vacinated for Hep B?
Me: Um...yeah about 4 years ago before I went to Korea.
Nurse: Oh, well if you've been vacinated the test will show up as positive regardless. Don't worry about it then.
Me: Maybe next time you could lead with the vacination part....

Wow. That nurse is a piece of work. You usually test for HepB using 3 different tests and the vaccination pattern of results is pretty common. They never should've presented it to you that way. Everything looks good, including the fact that your HepB vaccination worked, for farks sake.

biohazard76: MythDragon: CSB:

After I found out that my exwife was a farking whore, I went and got a STD screening.

After I had called back for the results, it went something like this.

Nurse: Everything looks good. Except for one thing that came back as positive.
Me: Well??
Nurse: The test shows you are positive for Hep B.
Me: That farking sucks.
Nurse: have you ever been vacinated for Hep B?
Me: Um...yeah about 4 years ago before I went to Korea.
Nurse: Oh, well if you've been vacinated the test will show up as positive regardless. Don't worry about it then.
Me: Maybe next time you could lead with the vacination part....

Wow. That nurse is a piece of work. You usually test for HepB using 3 different tests and the vaccination pattern of results is pretty common. They never should've presented it to you that way. Everything looks good, including the fact that your HepB vaccination worked, for farks sake.

A lot nurses tend to be a lot more concerned with who's farking whom, how annoying the patient is, and doing their job in the absolute most coldly efficient way possible, than having any kind of bedside demeanor. I can't call them all patient-hating, self-centered emotional trainwrecks, but it does seem to be a common trait - you're just the job they do so they can make the car payments, like any other job. Doctors are just on another plane of existence entirely and only briefly connect on a human level; otherwise you're just a chart and a collection of symptoms, a puzzle to solve.

/Paramedics are the only ones who always seem to give two shiats about their patients, for the half hour you're in their care.
//Medical people party hard though, they're awesome to hang with when you're not bleeding.

foxyshadis: /Paramedics are the only ones who always seem to give two shiats about their patients, for the half hour you're in their care.

Lies! Lies and slander, I tell you! The parts of our brains that care are systematically destroyed during paramedic school! They replace it with the doses of Dopamine, Dobutamine, and Milrinone, or something else you'll hardly ever use!

/am I a horrible person for being annoyed that you waited till three in the morning to call because you have had a fever of 101 for an hour, and haven't taken any tylenol yet?

BronyMedic: foxyshadis: /Paramedics are the only ones who always seem to give two shiats about their patients, for the half hour you're in their care.

Lies! Lies and slander, I tell you! The parts of our brains that care are systematically destroyed during paramedic school! They replace it with the doses of Dopamine, Dobutamine, and Milrinone, or something else you'll hardly ever use!

/am I a horrible person for being annoyed that you waited till three in the morning to call because you have had a fever of 101 for an hour, and haven't taken any tylenol yet?

Though if you're anything like my best friend, you get positively gleeful when you get a legit psych call and get to break out the good drugs, restraints, and judo training. Some days I think he drinks adrenaline for lunch.

foxyshadis: Though if you're anything like my best friend, you get positively gleeful when you get a legit psych call and get to break out the good drugs, restraints, and judo training. Some days I think he drinks adrenaline for lunch.

Psych calls are painful. The last suicidal kid I transported was 300lbs, and 6" tall. I'm tiny, by comparison. When he took off for the door, he plowed right through me. Trust me, BronyMedic flying down the ER hallway may be funny, but not for him. I hurt for three days afterwords.

I've never been one to hesitate on the inapsine (5mg of STFU! :3 ), ativan, or haldol. A multitude of sins can be cured with spider straps, kerlex, and triangular bandages.

And, if you get them too sedated, you get an intubation contact! YAAAAAY!

bifford: There was an episode of Deep Space Nine that covered this. Quark is misdiagnosed with a fatal disease and sells off his own body so that he may settle his debts before he dies. He later gets the good news that he's healthy, but the buyer of his bones still wants his merchandise, and so Quark is bankrupted.

That story is a rehash of a real-life case that went just like that. I don't remember all the details now, but a man believed he was dying and sold his body to a laboratory for money. When he found out he wasn't dying, he tried to cancel the deal, but the laboratory wouldn't let him. And here's where it gets better than the DS9 story: He sued, but the court sided with the laboratory. More, they determined that he actually owed them money, because he'd had two teeth pulled after making the deal, without their permission, thus unlawfully damaging the property they'd paid for.

/the law can sometimes be weird and ghoulish

bborchar: Hell, when I went to the hospital and the nurse told me they were running tests for cardiomyopathy, that was the scariest 8 hours of my life, waiting for the results. I couldn't imagine if they had misdiagnosed it and I had to live with that feeling for 5 years. Guy deserves every scent he could get.

When I was in hospital a few years ago, they first suspected I might have Goodpasture's Syndrome. They didn't tell me at the time what it was, and I'm glad. Later, they did a kidney biopsy to see if I might have cancer. I was also screened for adrenal cancer. It was a fun few months.

I knew a woman who was diagnosed with AIDS. She was put on AZT, which was the only treatment at the time. Soon, she slowly started to go downhill. She quit her job, sold her home, and prepared for her imminent death. (In these early days of AIDS treatment, this was the usual habit, since most victims didn't survive more than a few years after diagnosis.) In time, she moved into a hospice, and started wrapping up her life. There, they found she had an unusually high T-cell count for end-stage AIDS; in fact it was normal. A few more tests confirmed that she didn't have AIDS at all, or HIV, and that in fact, it was the AZT that was killing her. (This was also the early days of that treatment, and these side effects were known but not well understood, and often difficult to distinguish from the debilitating effects of AIDS itself.) By this point, she was on 37 medications, could no longer walk or dress herself, had difficulty even conversing with people, and had lost three years of her life.

In follow-up consultation, she recalled that the woman who first diagnosed her also told her that the love of Jesus Christ could save her life, if she would only accept His love, and recommended a specific fundamentalist church. It quickly became apparent that this was part of some self-appointed crusader's personal effort to infiltrate the personal lives of gays and lesbians literally fearing for their imminent death, and try to 'save' them.

Yes, a lawsuit followed. But she never got her old life back, and had to change course, due to how much time she'd lost, and never completely recovered.

I want to make it clear that I'm not blaming Jesus-freaks here, and neither did she. This was the insane act of one unbalanced person. But it also relied on the unwitting complicity of the hospital, who in three years of follow-up therapy never once did a confirmation test, even when they were uncertain, because they simply took the original diagnosis for granted. This was a time when many people were dying of AIDS, and AZT can produce similar symptoms. But a single test, as she moved from one handling group (the city's health center) to another (the treating hospital) would have made all the difference. And three years later, there was no way of knowing how many other people's lives were affected by that one screener, or how.