People need to question more

Justin Covington

You have one hour to decide between your life and your leg.” No, this is not the plot of the next inevitable “Saw” film. It is a very real situation my father faced almost a year ago.

My father had a serious infection in his leg. The doctor at hospital A said that his leg was unsalvageable. My father, being the stubborn man that he is, refused, and went to another hospital.

Hospital B, while not as final as hospital A, told him that there was little hope of him ever walking on it again.

My father was desperate. He called other hospitals, but the convoluted doctor referral system impeded his progress. He was also on a deadline. If the leg didn’t come off soon, then the infection would likely spread to his whole body, leading to his demise.

I visited my father while he was still in hospital B. While I was there, one of my father’s friends came to visit. He decided to take a break from the doctor search and handed me his laptop.

While he and his friend talked, I searched online, until I happened upon an article describing a new procedure to be used as a last resort before leg amputation. Interested, I clicked the link, read the article and gasped.

The patient described in the article was a middle-aged, diabetic, black male who had an infection in his leg. This was a close match to my father. The patient in the story eventually regained mobility after his surgery.

When I told my father, he gave me the biggest hug I can ever remember, and then began making plans to fly to Des Moines, Iowa, to stay in the hospital with the doctor who believed his leg was not a lost cause. I’m not writing this as a way to “LiveJournal” to the masses. I’m doing it to pass on the favor that was done for myself and for my father.

Many lessons can be learned from this story.

Americans in general are not skeptical enough. We don’t ask enough questions, which can allow us to be easily persuaded by those who we believe hold authority in society.

This overconfidence in leaders is also reflected in politics. Despite the system of checks and balances among the three branches at the federal level, we place the most stock in the president. This is in spite of the fact that the president can change very little without the Legislature, and even when policies are implemented, their constitutionality is checked by the Supreme Court.

The lofty, unrealistic expectations placed on prominent members of the community only make it that much worse when such a person doesn’t reach all of their goals.

My father’s ordeal also reinforced the usefulness of the Internet. It took an article being uploaded to the Internet and a Google search to find what two doctors at two different hospitals did not.

This is not a knock on doctors or other medical professionals. To be fair to the doctors at hospital A and hospital B, the procedure used at the hospital in Des Moines is relatively new and complex, and one of the doctors that pioneered the procedure works there. Had it not been for the careful eye of a doctor who saw a spinal cord injury in an X-ray done for sinus problems, I would likely be paralyzed now.

Doctors receive years of training, but no amount of training makes a man infallible.

Asking questions and doing research is critical to many facets of life. While we shouldn’t spend all of our time pondering the repercussions of our actions, we should spend enough that we feel comfortable with the decisions that we make.

After all, it could save you a leg.

Justin Covington is a State News guest columnist and a political science senior. Reach him at coving27@msu.edu.