Angelo Patane: Why I help medical malpractice victims

Hello. My name is Angelo Patane. Why do I help victims of medical malpractice? The answer is simple, but it requires a story.

When I was about 10 years old, I was diagnosed with scoliosis. Scoliosis is a disease of the spine. It causes your spine to curve. I had a double curve, or “S” curve, where the top half of my spine curved to the right and the bottom curved to the left. Every six months from the age of 10 to the age of 17, I went to Children’s Hospital and had x-rays taken. Each time I would meet with an orthopedic doctor, who carefully measured and monitored the curves to see how they were progressing.

Sometimes scoliosis stops short of where it will cause significant problems. In my case, my spine continued to curve and twist as I grew. My doctor said that if my scoliosis continued progressing I would end up as a hunchback, I’d be in excruciating pay, and my internal organs would get all twisted around so that my lungs and heart would have trouble.

Just after my 17th birthday, my doctor said I needed a spinal fusion to not only stop my spine from curving and twisting, but to also straighten it out. So, in December 1985 I had the surgery.

My doctor cut my back open from about an inch below my neck to about two inches below my belt line. He straightened my back out as best he could and secured it in position by using screws and hoots to attaching titanium rods to my spine. He then took some bone chips from my pelvis, made a paste out of them, and spread that paste along my spine. The idea is that the bone paste eventually hardens, keeping the spine straight. This is what is called fusion.

My entire back was almost entirely fused. I was fused from T-4 to L-4. I spent two weeks in the hospital, two months bedridden in a body cast, and another eight months in a hard, fiberglass brace. (Today the procedure is similar, but the recovery time has greatly improved. Most people are not confined to a body cast.) My spine was so curved that after the doctor straightened me out I was over four inches taller!

Over the years I had a problem here or there with my lower back. Stiffness, pain, spasms. But nothing major. A few years ago, though, I began having really bad lower back pain, stiffness, and spasms. It was so bad that sometimes I could not stand up straight and I was visibly leaning to the right.

I went to see a specialist. I brought my x-rays from the 1980s and 1990s for comparison. He took some more x-rays. He examined these and told me lower back (L-5) was fractured. He said sooner or later I would need to have the very lower portion of my back fused. It would be the only way to cure the problem, but that I “should live with it” as long as I could before having the surgery. He said once I had the surgery, my ability to bend would be severely limited.

What he said next made me really think, and it is the reason I am writing this introduction. The doctor said that the surgeon who had done my surgery had done a wonderful job. He told me that it was unusual for someone to go 20 years without any major problems. He said the I am having were completely normal, because for over 20 years the very lower part of my back was the only part of my back that could bend. It was doing all the work and had endured more wear and tear than normal.

All this caused me to do some research on scoliosis and spinal fusion. Since scoliosis is usually detected in the teen years, most patients who have spinal fusion for scoliosis are teens or young adults. I learned that many of these young people did not get what they bargained for after their surgery. Many of them had severe problems and complications that ruined their young lives.

It was then that I realized that the very competent and dedicated surgeon gave me a gift. He allowed me to grow up and live my late teens, 20s, and 30s like any other person. I could lift weights, play sports, go backpacking, work in the yard, whatever.

All this made me thankful. But it got me thinking. What if my doctor had made a mistake? What about those who are not as lucky as me? What about people who are let down by doctors? What about people who end up worse after they see a doctor?

Because I have been fortunate enough to receive excellent medical care, I decided to help people who were not. I decided to help people who should have been living like me, but due to medical errors cannot.