I am Wolf Schweitzer, born in 1967, and in May 2007, my right middle hand started to exhibit a localized region of swelling that was painful. In September 2007, I started to get the first medical diagnostics and surgery.
The local doctors / hospitals seemed not overly capable of managing my locally recurring and spreading whitish small tissue growths in my right hand, that were very painful, and that had started to give me problems in 2007.
Over a sequence of several surgeries, a search for a possibly different tumor ended in a gastroscopy. Due to prior incidents in my life with a massive gag reflex, of which I had warned the gastroenterologist, he still seemed to struggle and ended up administering unorthodox medication, both in terms of dosage and combination, the aftermath of which entailed further complications and real diagnostic difficulties for a local center hospital and the doctors there. There also were issues with lack of my consent, and, as played out later, with the way they went about my patient confidentiality as well as telling stories that were/are simply not true – as not even accident insurance followed that hospital’s narrative or story telling.
I still remember objecting to some things they were about to do on me surgically, verbally, whereas one said “put him under that will shut him up”. That is also how I obviously knew to this day that they lacked proper consent, and from their inability to produce these forms later. They provided a psychiatric assessment in absence of consideration of gastroscopy medication, which was interesting to read but that overall failed to convince.
But all that did not alter the original issue of locally spreading small white nodules in my right hand though. Thus, following the advice from an orthopedic surgeon in private practice, a technically better setting was ultimately chosen in Mt St Elsewhere, at a real global reference hospital, where a relative of mine acting as my legal representative of sorts, me, and an extremely experienced orthopedic hand surgery specialist doctor ultimately co-signed the papers for amputation as best course of treatment after three days of repeating every thinkable step of examination and lab tests, as by then we all had determined that to be a more responsible course of action than extensively getting in the hair with (they know who, we have all their names) over nothing but possibly just a bit of unprofessional behaviour. Such things do happen though.
The aftermath around the previously locally involved and affected specialists or doctors apparently turned out to be, not surprisingly, considerable. They (i.e., those that involved themselves) could have, at any step along the way, acted responsibly, and they also could have acted according to the law, had they ever been inclined in such a way. As a recommendation generally, I would cautiously suggest clinical doctors to not administer unacceptably high and incompatible drugs, at least not without subsequent responsible and sufficiently extensive patient surveillance or monitoring. As far as I remember, I did file a critical incident report somewhere along the line. I had great legal advice, howevermuch the details of this aren’t up for grabs just now. I would also suggest such people to consider comprehensive lab tests of all that is really relevant, and not just insufficiently selective items. Furthermore I would suggest to take patient consent and information rather seriously, and to particularly not openly talk about putting a patient under against his consent or actually go through with such in front of the patient that then learns more about you than you were ever willing to give away. I would strongly suggest to not invent specialist diagnoses out of the blue, as tempting as it may appear, and, boy, were they tempted. Such invented stuff later may end up being declared to lack credibility by insurances, after review. While one may feel the ultimate itch and triggered to play a case as a moral game, or, view it as necessity to take biased views, to take sides, to overshare such views, it may turn out to actually be a very difficult technical game that would have required a fundamentally different and fundamentally professional and empathic legally correct approach from the get go and every hour thereafter.
As part of that consideration, I would add the suggestion to also definitely take patient data confidentiality at least a bit seriously, particularly if own diagnoses or guesswork constitutes thin ice at best. Maybe one could not even bill for their “services” if there was no informed consent. In any such wrongly valued scenario, all sorts of things could happen, and, boy, did all sorts of things happen. Maybe their course of action could draw in others in unprecedented and tragically fatal ways, or, hold on, maybe it really did?
Imagine that I would learn of some person poking around my medical file at that hospital that was not secured, and imagine they would read all the nonsense they had in there that lacked external review and what came of all that. That lacked rejection by insurance and so on. Then they would believe that and imagine all sorts of things and a big story. And imagine that that same person also poked around other people’s medical files, similarly not secured, and imagine over that then an altercation and ultimately a suicide occurring? Then that’d be really bad. Imagine then that I’d go ask that hospital to review the access logs of my medical files and that causing complications to no end.
And it’d be nice if that was all.
Only then, a few years ago, I checked in to the same institution to get checked for some inherited condition. I explicitly had told them that we needed that tag and label for our family so the other relatives could wave that tag label around as probable cause and get taken seriously and also checked, for orthopedic and cardiologic conditions, in their respective jurisdictions and healthcare systems.
And even though I had all the relevant criteria as these were/are all there, these people, they said, we cannot go ahead, just because we do not recognize any therapeutic relevance for me. But I had told them the actual reason. And so, like, they had to measure my full arm span. Measuring my intact left arm to spine and multiplying it by two resulted in an overly large span, part of that score, but they wrote that cannot be done because my right arm is too short. Someone must have uninstalled the + key on the pocket calculator of these doctors, highly unusual, as the + would be the only math operation that clinically practicing doctors would ever need and apply, as our physics professor told us back in the days. As one of the things one does as these people, they selectively made math operation + unavailable. Then they, three women folks doctors, asked whether I did have soft skin. I answered that my wife said so. They looked at each other and laughed and bickered, “his wife said so, what does a wife know”. Something in my face must have set them off then so the most exploratory looking of them approached me as I sat there, asking may I touch your skin, and after I quietly agreed she carefully rolled a bit of my skin between her fingers, and with wide big open eyes went, oh that is really soft, may the others … too?, and lo and behold the three of them, like in a bad movie, twisted my skin between their fingers going ah and oh, that now is really very soft skin. They wrote that they did not have any findings in their final report, totally different from what they had said when I was there.
As if wilfully staring the other way would make shit disappear. A bit later, as these conditions do seem not just go away just like that, and as their presence does not at all seem without conseqences, as was indicated by these medical doctors, our family still lacked proper probable cause to get their specialists do serious medical checks in their own health care systems and jurisdictions.
Then, in the year 2026 in January, my niece aged 21 died suddenly, sudden death, of all that could be gathered, and what was found at medicolegal autopsy, it was a cardiac death. Retrospectively, a lot of further evidence appeared, a medical studies ECG with R on T and various frequent VES and so on and so forth. That, not in a vacuum but after everyone here had “skillfully” downplayed these aspects, against clear explicit request, and against all better knowledge. I find it astonishing to experience a bit of what these people all take upon themselves, and what goals do they seem to pursue! I did send them that update but obviously no response, who knows if the future holds a communication or customer service course for these individuals. Obviously things tend to be genetic and that search may be ongoing – with first tangible results.
Then, in June 2026, I had my first own serious presyncope attacks with almost pulseless arrythmia during hard MTB rides. So I went for cardiology check and started to reduce maximal heart rate by being careful and getting an eMTB.
As if wilfully staring the other way made real issues go away!
Conversely, I do not think it is my specific duty to react to any of such possibilities, at all, or in a stereotypical way. Or, to conform to any expectation or standard when doing so. So whatever is going on, we don’t know what will happen in advance. I guess that is about where it’s at. Like, not always does the same type of elevator arrive, when a particular button is pushed.
At any rate, below elbow amputation is not only a social but also a technical subject. We recently wrote up the experiences with comparison and tweaking, of both body-powered and myoelectric technology, as a scientific article. Check here: publication [link].
You can send me an e-mail to wuff at swisswuff.ch.
