{"id":917,"date":"2012-08-08T04:38:16","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T04:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ctcps.org\/blog\/?p=917"},"modified":"2013-01-22T18:05:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T18:05:21","slug":"two-arms-two-choices-if-only-id-known-then-what-i-know-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/?p=917","title":{"rendered":"Two Arms, Two Choices: If Only I\u2019d Known Then What I Know Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Kerry O\u2019Connell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Disabled by faulty arm surgery and harmed by a hospital-acquired infection, a patient wishes he\u2019d been better informed.\u00a0<br \/>\nI sat in an orthopedic surgeon\u2019s office in Golden, Colorado, in 2004 as we discussed my left elbow. Just two days earlier, I\u2019d fallen off a ladder in my driveway and dislocated the elbow. I\u2019d also fractured the radius bone in my forearm nearest the elbow.<br \/>\nRepairing the elbow and the radius bone now would be complicated, the surgeon told me. He offered me a choice.<br \/>\nOption one was to forgo surgery. If I went that route, I\u2019d have a very loose elbow, would be unable to fully straighten my arm, and would probably develop early arthritis.<br \/>\nOption two was surgery. The surgeon explained that he would try to screw the fractured pieces of my radius bone back together. But it might not be possible. In that case, he\u2019d saw an inch off the end of the radius bone and install a cup-shaped piece of titanium in its place.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/content.healthaffairs.org\/content\/31\/8\/1895.full\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kerry O\u2019Connell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Disabled by faulty arm surgery and harmed by a hospital-acquired infection, a patient wishes he\u2019d been better informed.\u00a0 I sat in an orthopedic surgeon\u2019s office in Golden, <\/p>\n<p class=\"readMore\"><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/?p=917\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[83,397,123,398,152,81,112,126],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patient-safety-activism","tag-adverse-event","tag-evidence-based-medicine","tag-hai","tag-health-reform","tag-healthcare-aquired-infections","tag-medical-error","tag-medical-ethics","tag-patient-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ctcps.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}