| Topic: | Re anyone dying as their allergies were not known | |
| Posted by: | Isabel Wooller | |
| Date/Time: | 13/04/10 21:30:00 |
| Just to add my teeny bit to this: a family member was very ill with cancer recently. She was a severe celiac case (allergic to gluten). We told repeatedly all the medical staff, left prominent notes, etc. : all to no avail, as they kept putting food in front of her that contained wheat flour (think thickenings) and made her extremely ill after a major operation. It ended by her refusing all hospital food and subsisting -barely- on tea, fruit and yogurt, supplied by the family members. Turns out that meals are not produced at the hospital kitchens - we are talking very large North London hospital here - but, probably in the interests of "efficiency", are outsourced offsite and lorry-delivered to the hospital every day and re-heated: so the hospital and team have no control whatsoever over what is put in front of patients, and as for catering for what is a fairly common allergy - forget it! Ergo, whether or not your condition is on a huge database shared with all the planetary system or just a scribbled scrap in a filing cabinet, chances are it will still make no difference to your treatment. And I agree entirely that the range of uses for this will grow and grow - not just insurance companies, think employers: it would begin with "special case employers", say the army, doctors, emergency services... |