Can you sue a VA medical center and/or a physician there for malpractice?

[voliny13]

By hiring in incompetent medical hack to be my primary care physician, the VA has ruined my life, health and marriage. I got trigeminal neuralgia from a double root canal 6 years ago and when the dentist had no clue as to why my pain was getting worse by the hour, he said go to the ER. I showed up there passing out from the pain but they thought I was having a heart attack! So for the next 2 years, they said I had to try every drug available for TN after which they would send me to to the state pain clinic if the drugs didn't help. They not only didn't help, the nerve damage spread from an area the size of your thumb nail to the entire side of my face and into my eyes. When I asked to now be sent out for treatment, they refused, blowing me off for another 3 years until I finally was told that my state's senator would intervene and within 2 weeks of writing him, my doctor called me, told me I got her in trouble and before hanging up on me, said my appt. at the pain clinic was next week! Unfortunately, the Oxycontin they got me hooked on has done irreversible damage to me in that I can no longer read a book (I'm a librarian and book collector with 5 book shelves full of books it took 20 years to collect - now I can't get through a paragraph without falling asleep and have no memory at all: I've tried to watch the same movie for the past 3 days and can't remember what I've watched so have to start over. This is just a small example of the damage they have done to me. I also have liver disease from the statin they insisted I take for the past 5 years. The list is almost endless so does anyone know if it's possible to sue for damages? It seems like an air-tight case but are they protected by the law? Why would our brave servicemen and women be treated this way?

[abraham90]

"The Oxycontin they got me hooked on"

You mean the Oxycontin you got yourself hooked on, right? I had major bowel surgery last year and was on Oxycontin and Vicadin for a year and yet magically *I* didn't get hooked, kind of like millions of other people who take pain meds and aren't weak enough to become addicted. So please stop passing off your own weaknesses on other people.

The only way you can sue is if you can prove they weren't following standard medical practices in their care or if they were malicious in their care. You can't sue them just because it didn't work out.

Also, since you're a drug addict who probably abuses your OCs by taking more than prescribed, you can't blame them for ill side effects of YOU abusing it.

But go ahead and hire a lawyer if you want. Just keep in mind that the US government can afford better lawyers than you and from what you've stated you don't really have much of a case, so good luck with that.

[mace]

I'm not going into all the details of your case, but medically speaking there is a lot of unanswered questions that any attorney would tear you apart on the stand. You are the one abusing drugs. I know you have been taking a lot more than ordered if you can't get through reading a paragraph. That is total abuse on your part, not the doctors. When you take more than ordered, that fact alone would destroy any case you would have about drugs destroying your liver. That's just one small example. I don't think you have much of a case myself. I also think there are laws that protect veteran hospital doctors but not sure of that.