Reply #12: I used to live in Toronto and I had a very bad experience: [View All]

My wife fell and broke her ankle on a Sunday night about 10 years ago. We had to go to Toronto General. There they did the xray, gave her a few shots, reset the bone, xrayed again, and put a cast on it, telling us to return in a week. She began feeling a lot of pain after a few days and called back. They told us it was normal, to stay off it--she stayed in bed most of the time--and to show up on the date that she was originally given. When we did go in, they xrayed, then cut off the cast--it turned out that there was much more damage than a broken bone and now it was infected. It was almost a year before she could fully walk on it again after two surgeries and six months of rehab. She also couldn't work the entire time so she had to collect disability--about 1/4 of her normal salary. I actually had to leave school for a year because our money got so tight.

What really made us mad was the fact that she could not sue for malpractice to at least cover her lost wages because of the added time due to the mistake--properly treated, it should have only been 6 weeks. We talked to four different lawyers. The law there requires the malpractice to be "blatant" and mis-diagnoses does not fall under that. All of the lawyers told us that it is very hard, almost impossible one said, and takes a very long time to sue in the medical areas up there unless it is a private practice. Basically that mistake cost our family one year of my schooling and $75K of her salary.