But how do you put a value on a life?

My mother was always a fighter. When she was eighteen, between the time World War II started in Europe and Pearl Harbor, she broke her neck in an automobile accident. No one thought she would survive. She was allergic to the plaster cast, so her doctors came up with the weight method of treating broken necks that is still used today.

Last January, my parents met my sister for lunch. Then they went to a birthday party for a friend, which was held at a florist shop. The florist shop had a ledge that my mother didn't see. She fell ... and broke her femur. (There had been someone warning people about the ledge, but he had left seconds before my mother entered the shop.)

She was rushed to the hospital, and operated on the next morning. She was in the hospital a few weeks, where my folks celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, and where my mother surprised everyone with her progress. Her doctor had said she wouldn't walk for six months, but she was walking in less than three weeks. As I said, she was a fighter.

She came home and was doing well. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, she began growing weaker. Her home therapist thought her medication might be causing the problem. Her doctor didn't seem worried.

When she couldn't even hold a spoon, it was back to the hospital. We couldn't understand why she had been doing so well and then took such a sudden turn for the worse. Nothing was making sense, even though the admitting physician seemed surprised at her level of medication.

My mother continued to deteriorate. Her lungs became fibrous and failed, so she was put on a ventilator. The hospital staff prepared us for the worst. One nurse said, I suppose to be helpful, "It's not unusual for this to happen with ex-smokers."

I flashed back to the 1950's, when health food stores were few, far between, and expensive. My mother knew and shopped at every one of them in Oklahoma City. She talked to the proprietors and studied alternative health methods on her own - long before such things entered the general consciousness. She knew which vitamins and supplements to take, and she didn't believe in skimping when it came to her family's health, or her own. We grew up with salads, unsalted food, and simple desserts. And as you might expect, we grew up without tobacco.

"Ex-smoker?!" the family said, almost in unison. "She's a health fanatic." The nurse looked shocked, and never brought the subject up again. It seemed as though the lung problem had just become as difficult for her to understand as it was for us.

Frankly, I thought my mother would pull through. In fact, she showed signs of improvement just before she died, on April 11th.

Not Everyone Can Make a Mistake
One thing I'd always admired about my mother was her ability to get on with life after the deaths of others. When someone close to her died, she would spend some time alone in her room, and that would be it. Oh, I'm sure there was more to it, but that's the only thing the world would see - the immediate need to be alone.

Those of you who have been through a death in the family know planning a funeral, writing obituaries, etc., can have something of a therapeutic effect. In our case, it drew the family together to remember the past and put together a coherent service. I dealt with the funeral home, and they couldn't have been better about working with us.

The day of the funeral, one of my parents' neighbors of 40 years put into words the thought that was nagging all of us: "None of this makes any sense," she said. And it didn't.

My sister, who was closest to my mother, said she just had to know what happened. She had lost not only her mother, but literally her best friend. She eventually went through more than 1,100 pages of medical records (for which the hospital charged $.25 per page) and found the culprit.

The doctor had put my mother on a heart medicine, Cardarone. (The generic name is Amiodarone.) The drug has a "loading dose" of 1200 mg., which is supposed to be quickly reduced to 400 mg. My mother's dose was not reduced until she was readmitted to the hospital.

Here's what the admitting doctor wrote in the records regarding his surprise at the high dosage of medication my mother had been prescribed: "Suspect this is an error." In other words, my mother died of a drug overdose.

How did this happen? Was the doctor overloaded with work and just too busy to keep current on his patients? Could the doctor not be bothered with double checking his work? Was he multi-tasking one too many functions? As I write this, it's difficult to understand how so serious a mistake could have happened, and why my mother's doctor has not seen fit to talk to the family. He has no idea how much a simple apology would have meant to us.

Given the circumstances, we've met with an attorney, and medical malpractice suits are going to be filed against both my mother's doctor and the hospital.

How Many Are Too Many?
Recently, someone from a polling company called to ask if I thought too many lawsuits were being filed. I said I couldn't answer that question. The pollster kept restating the question, clearly looking for a "yes" response. But how, after my family's experience, could I give that reply?

Had my sister not been willing to buy and plow through 1,100 pages of medical records, our suits would never have been filed, and the doctor would never have to face the consequences for his careless but serious mistakes. How many people have been through experiences just like ours but never discovered the malpractice, never could explain why their loved ones died.

How many doctors make egregious errors but are never brought to justice? I once heard it said that doctors bury their mistakes. Perhaps, in fact, too few lawsuits are being filed.

How do you put a value on a life?