A letter emailed to Premier Berejiklian 12

A letter emailed to Premier Berejiklian, on 4/5/2021.

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The NSW Health Care Complaint Commission in action 5

One of our readers claims that, when he was referred to Dr Andrew Brooks, Urologist for help with what is called the “frequency problem,” – he was having to get up two or three times during the night to go to the toilet that made it difficult to get a good night’s sleep, that Dr Brooks’ diagnosis was that the problem was that his bladder had become small, down to a capacity of about 200 mls, and so was full more often, and that if he, Dr Brooks, carried out an operation on him, called a TURP, under a full anaesthetic, his bladder would soon grow to a more normal size, having a capacity of, say, at least 300 mls, and he would no longer have the problem.

But that when our reader underwent the TURP:-

Firstly, he still had the “frequency problem” exactly the same!!! Even when the capacity of his bladder was at least 300 mls some months later, as was confirmed by another Urologist, he still had the problem!!! (The likelihood is that it was always at least 300 mls – Brooks has always refused to provide copies of anything that might confirm that it had been 200 mls when he was first consulted, at least to our reader – but if he’d admitted that, he wouldn’t have been able to justify recommending the TURP, for which he got a fee of $3,200 for less than an hour’s work.)

Secondly, the TURP damaged him, causing his sex life to be largely ruined for the rest of his life, it is a consequence of the TURP, ALWAYS, and can’t be reversed!!!

All at a cost of more than six thousand dollars, even after Medicare rebates.

And that when our reader lodged a complaint with Sue Dawson and her people at the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, he was told he had no basis to complain!!! Their letter can be summed up in one of it’s sentences – “We have not identified a deficiency in the clinical care and treatment provided to you by Dr Brooks.”

In a letter Brooks provided to the Commission in relation to the matter, he wrote, “I would usually discuss the alterations in sexual function and the loss of ejaculation.” So it appears that even he didn’t claim that he had discussed these things with our reader??? Perhaps he thought that the Commission wouldn’t believe that if they were properly explained, that our reader wouldn’t have consented to go ahead with the TURP. But obviously  Ms Dawson and her people had no such concerns! They’ve obviously decided, typically, that even though nothing in writing exists to confirm this, that everything had been properly explained to our reader, but that he had responded with something like, “I don’t care if my sex life is largely ruined for the rest of my life, so long as there’s a chance, albeit only an 80% chance, (as it turned out, no chance,) that I won’t have to get up 2 or 3 times during the night to go to the toilet.” 

As we’ve said, our reader’s initial complaint about the clinical care and treatment provided to him by Brooks was dismissed, and readers, we’re almost willing to bet you any money you like that a request for a review, sent to Ms Dawson, on 18 April, 2021 will be similarly unsuccessful – allowing Brooks to keep collecting $3,2oo fees for less than an hours work, irrespective of the consequences for the patients referred to him. Does anyone believe that there haven’t been others, perhaps many others, who have had the same experience with Brooks as our reader had, and that there haven’t been others who have lodged complaints with Sue Dawson and her people, all of which have been dismissed – leaving Brooks full of confidence that he can do the same thing over and over again?

info@questionsmisc.info

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A letter emailed to Premier Berejiklian 11

An almost unbelievable decision” – a letter emailed to Premier Berejiklian on 30 April, 2021.

We’ll let you know if we get a reply.

Regrettably, we are yet to get any evidence that emails like this don’t go straight into the trash!

info@questionsmisc.info

A 6 May, 2021 update: We are yet to get any response to this email.

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NSW Health Hospitals and Facilities – dealing with

BALMAIN HOSPITAL

A letter emailed to this hospital on 22 Mar. 2020, using the ordinary email address, SLHD-Balmain@health.nsw.gov.au:-

23/3/2020

CONCORD HOSPITAL

A letter emailed to this hospital on 22 Mar. 2020, using the ordinary email address, SLHD-ConcordInfo@health.nsw.gov.au:-

23/3/2020

GOSFORD HOSPITAL

A letter emailed to this hospital on 22 Mar. 2020, using the ordinary email address, CCLHD-Feedback@health.nsw.gov.au:-

23/3/2020

WOY WOY HOSPITAL – no ordinary email address or email form found.

If you do a Google search on “Woy Woy Hospital,” this result appears:-

https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/nswgovdirectory/woy-woy-hospital

and if you click on it a page appears showing this website

but if you click on it, http://www.cclhd.health.nsw.gov.au/Pages/Contact-us.aspx, this appears:-

In other words, we have not been able to even find any way in which we can enquire as to  whether they have a Patient and Family Experience Unit?

23/2/2020

WYONG HOSPITAL

A letter emailed to this hospital on 23 Mar. 2020, using the ordinary email address, CCLHD-Feedback@health.nsw.gov.au:-

23/3/2020

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The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission in Action 4

A new article has just been published, on 18 Feb. 2020, by the Daily Telegraph, about which we could write a book! It includes the following;-

And this, from it’s latest Annual Report, indicates that by far the most complaints, about 200 a month, are about Medical Practitioners.

And yet, and we’ve done this exercise countless times over the years, according to it’s own media releases, out of the 200 complaints about Medical Practitioners it receives a month, it never finds more than 1 or 2 a month have done not a very good job, with perhaps another 1 or 2 a month found to have contravened sexual boundaries, and/or prescribed or handled medications inappropriately – and a lot of these have ceased practice anyway.

We’ve just done this again with it’s media releases during 2018-19. There are a total of 45, 21 in relation to Medical Practitioners. 12 have been found to have done not a very good job, 3 have been found to have criminal records, and 6 have been found to have breached professional boundaries and/or mishandled drugs or mediations.

Readers can always do this exercise themselves, from time to time – simply click on this link.

What on earth has the fact that there are more older people got to do with the fact that Medical Practitioners may or may not be treating them properly???!!!

The fact is that THE REGULATION OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN NSW, so called, IS NOT WORKING! The doctors in NSW know they can almost get away with murder, quite literally. And, undoubtedly, one of the biggest factors, if not the biggest, is the poor performance of Sue Dawson and her people.

If one wanted to be really cynical, one could speculate on whether successive NSW governments, have given successive Health Care Complaints Commissioners the brief, “Don’t find too many health care practitioners haven’t done a very good job – otherwise our people may start to think NSW hasn’t got a very good health care system.” If this brief was given to Ms Dawson, it’s hard to imagine that they could have given it to anyone better to act on it.

In terms of the above, it seems quite clear that the claim that “82 prosecutions” i.e. nearly 7 a month, were “settled” in 2o18-19 is a lie. We’ve sent Ms Dawson an email about this – not that we’re expecting her to respond.

As for the claim that 359 investigations have been finalised, what this would mean is that 359 complainants have been told they have nothing to complain about. Ms Dawson and her people are geniuses at finding excuses, some quite bizarre, for health care professionals, making medical practitioners confident, except in tiny minority of cases, that they have nothing to fear about anything the HCCC might come up with.

It’s got to the point where, if you make a complaint to a Medical Practitioner about his or her treatment of you – and it’s happened to us once – the Medical Practitioner will goad you saying, “You know you have nothing to complain about, otherwise you would have made a complaint to the HCCC,” when they know and you know that if you did, they would have the last laugh.

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The Low Dose Naltrexone story

The Low Dose Naltrexone story is simple.

Briefly.

Normally, when a new drug is discovered, one of the big pharmaceutical companies, if they feel it’s worthwhile, takes out patents on it, then spends the money, (which can be considerable,) to have it thoroughly tested to the point where it gets the approval of the FDA, (the Food and Drug Administration in the US,) or it’s equivalent in countries other than the US, to treat a particular health problem or particular health problems, and having got this approval, with the patents they’ve got on it, they can have a monopoly on it’s production and sale for something like 20 years, during which they get the money they’ve spent and more, often much more, because, by and large, health care professionals only advise on and prescribe drug/medications that have this official approval.

Naltrexone was discovered in about 1965 and went through all this until FDA approval was granted for it to be used to treat certain addictions in 50 mg tablets, in about 1985.

BUT, from about 1985, i.e. for the last 35 years or so, it’s been discovered that taking small doses of Naltrexone, often only 5 mg, on a daily basis, can bring all sorts of health benefits, AND, by far the most significant claims for it is that it PREVENTS you from getting more health problems – which, of course is hard to prove, because if someone has been on LDN for 15 years and not got cancer, it can always be said that they wouldn’t have got it anyway. BUT, Naltrexone has been out of patent since 1985, so none of the big Pharmaceutical companies are ever going to outlay the money required to have the testing carried out to obtain FDA approval, because they are never going to able to enjoy the monopolies normally available to compensate them for their troubles, AND so health care professionals who only ever prescribe mediations that have FDA approval are never going to prescribe LDN – so far, despite extensive searching, we’ve only found 3 doctors who do, allegedly – 2 in Queensland, and 1 on the South Coast of NSW, more than 200 miles from Sydney.

Fortunately, there are three websites readers can go to for help with all this – www.ldnresearchtrust.org and www.ldnscience.org, which includes this section, www.ldnscience.org/patients/ldn-buyers-guide, for those who want to be on LDN, but who haven’t been able to find any doctors or pharmacists to help them, which, in our experience,  is mostly the case.

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Being on Low Dose Naltrexone 2

We’ve put up SO many posts on Low Dose Naltrexone over the last 18 months – do a search on “Low Dose Naltrexone” on this blog and 27 of them will come up on this blog alone!

Of course, our main points have been:-

  • That Low Dose Naltrexone is being talked about as perhaps the biggest medical breakthrough in the history of mankind, and, if not, certainly one of the big 5.
  • That while it’s said that it takes an average of 17 years for medical breakthroughs to become common practice, advising on and prescribing Low Dose Naltrexone may, for special reasons, NEVER become common practice.
  • We’ve sent out at least 50 emails to various medical specialists in Sydney, seeking to locate any that advise on and prescribe Low Dose Naltrexone, and are yet to locate even one.
  • This may be because there are huge vested interests – the big pharmaceutical companies and the private hospitals to name just two – who want there to be more sick people, not less.
  • That Low Dose naltrexone is almost ridiculously cheap, especially compared to lots of other medications.

And now, in just the last two days, our attention has been drawn to a website called www.ldnscience.org on which there appears to be lots more valuable information, including a link to the website www.buyldn.com which has an ordinary email address – sales@buyldn.com – which claims to be an organisation that offers to provide Low Dose Naltrexone in various packages WITHOUT involving doctors or pharmacies.

We’re really excited to find these websites, although, at this stage, there’s much more for us to explore and learn about them.

Incidentally, if you use this  link to help you find doctors in Australia who advise on and prescribe Low Dose Naltrexone, you’ll find that they’ve only found three – two in Queensland, in Caboolture and Morayfield, and one in New South Wales, in Milton, over 200 kms south Of Sydney, by road – which doesn’t surprise us at all.

As you will see, we’ve done lots of work on Low Dose Naltrexone, mainly because of the encouragement and with the help of one of our readers, who claims to have been on it for more than 16 months, and to have been helped with a number of health problems, (when of course, the main claims for it are that it prevents you from experiencing new health problems.)

We believe that, when it’s never even been even suggested, as far as we know, that Low Dose Naltrexone might cause any harm, that, for so many health problems, doctors should be suggesting to patients that they give Low Dose Naltrexone a go for two months. In terms of our reader’s experiences, if patients did this, it would be most surprising, if at the end of the two months, (which is going to cost them less than a hundred dollars,) if they didn’t feel they were experiencing enough health benefits to make it worthwhile continuing to be on it.

To make a comment, ask a question, or to join our mailing lists, email us at info@questionsmisc.info.

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A new type of professional 3

We believe what we read once, and that is that, “What technology enables, happens.” And that the technology that has come into existence in the last 30 years or so enables an almost infinite number of new developments – none more so than something in which we’ve recently developed an intense interest, and that is that there will start to be people who earn a good living, (perhaps as much as doctors,) by being experts on what’s on the internet on everything, but particularly on health and welfare matters.

And we’ve also read recently that more goes up on the internet in 2 days in 2020 than went up in a whole year just a few years ago – and surely that’s going to increase and increase.

So these people will spend their time researching and researching what’s on the internet, and in providing clients with what we’re calling “the best information articles in the whole wide world” on various matters, (there only needs to be one on each matter for the whole world,) particularly health and welfare matters. Which will provide us, the people, with two alternatives – either, to carry out the research ourselves, which will always be open to us, or, to pay someone to carry out the research for us.

So why is it not happening? or if it is starting to happen, why is in not happening more quickly?

We believe the answer to this is simple – there’s not the demand there should be for such professionals, because we, the people, are too haphazard in looking after our health and welfare, we’re content to wait around in waiting rooms, to get advices verbally that are inadequate, to say the least, and never in writing, which makes it difficult to get second opinions, just as we and our forbears have been doing for thousands of years – which makes it difficult for anyone to make any money out of it.

We recognise that there are three types of help that doctors provide.

  • General information.
  • Diagnosis – being told what’s wrong with us. One of the saddest stories we’ve ever heard is that of a 26 year old who was, himself, a doctor, who admitted himself to the Westmead Government hospital with an illness, and after 48 hours, during which no one in the hospital could work out what was wrong with him, he was dead. We can’t help thinking that perhaps there may have been someone in the whole wide world who, in those 48 hours, could have been emailed with details of his symptoms who could have helped with the attempted diagnosing and treatment.
  • Surgery, injections and other things that only doctors can provide.

And that it’s mainly if providing general information that the new types of professionals we’re talking about can help.

One of our readers has told us that he has problems with phlegm in his throat when he’s trying to go to sleep both at night and even when he’s having a nap during the day – sometimes he can’t go to sleep until he’s cleared his throat up to 15 times. And so far he hasn’t been able to get any help with it. While he says that in some ways, it’s no big deal, he’d love to have access to the best information article in the whole wide world on this problem.

We anticipate putting many posts up on our blogs on this subject in the future, as we believe it’s inevitable that there will be more and more of the new professionals we’ve described – and, as we become aware of them, we’ll share the details with our readers.

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The “frequency problem” – having to get up 2 or 3 times during the night to urinate

The frequency problem is one that seniors often experience – it makes it hard to have a good night’s sleep.

Those who are experiencing it need to understand that different urologists provide two amazingly different and quite opposite explanations for it happening, and therefore different recommendations as to how to deal with it.

Explanation 1 is that patients’ bladders have been reduced in size to about 200 mls, and so, when there is 200 mls of urine in them, they are full. This reduction in size has come about because partial blockages in their urinary tracts have meant that their bladders have had to work harder and harder to eject the urine, which have made their bladders more muscular, and therefore smaller, reducing their size from the more normal 400 or more mls.

Explanation 2 is that patient’s bladders, although still more normal in size, have, for whatever reasons, become too weak to empty properly, so that considerable amounts of urine are left in their bladders after they’ve urinated, and so they are full again sooner.

One of our readers claims that explanation 1 was provided to him by Dr Andrew Brooks, Urologist, in August, 2014, and that Brooks went on to recommend that the partial blockages in his urinary tract be removed surgically, claiming that if this was done, his bladder would gradually become more normal in size, perhaps within 3 months, but certainly within 6 months. But our reader claims that, after he’d submitted to the recommended surgery, Brooks wrote to the referring GP as follows – “Unfortunately the frequency and urgency is not resolved. This is due to the altered wall compliance and loss of functional volume that occurs and occasionally does not remit following relief of the outflow obstruction.” In other words, the surgery, (which, incidentally, involved Brooks in receiving a fee of $3,200 for less than an hour’s work,) hadn’t done a scrap of good.

This failure led our reader to see another urologist, Dr Vincent Tse, some 8 months later, who claimed that the tests he’d carried out on the reader had confirmed that his bladder had a size of 400 mls, and that after he’d urinated, it still had 150 mls in it – which, of course, indicated that explanation 2 had almost certainly been the right one all along.

Readers, the moral of the above is this – if you have the frequency problem, have the capacity of your bladder checked and double checked, and if it has a capacity of more like 400 mls, and not about 200 mls as Brooks had claimed, avoid the Andrew Brooks of this world like the plague.

Brooks had his nurse carry out the “urodynamic study,” (for an extra $600,) which had “confirmed” that the capacity of our reader’s bladder was about 200 mls, and, typically, repeated requests to Brooks for a copy of this study, to which he was/is entitled to by law, have, to this day, been ignored. And when the assistance of the NSW Privacy Commissioner was sought, typically, it was a waste of time. When she wrote to Brooks asking why he’d ignored three emails requesting the copies, his reply was that the ordinary email address on his website, (since taken down,) was set up so that emails sent to him by patients were “weeded out” so he didn’t receive them, (this when technology advisers have advised that it’s not possible to set up ordinary email addresses in this way, and that at least one email sent to him – seeking details as to how to pay his $3,200 fee – had been acknowledge and replied to,) to which the completely and utterly useless Privacy Commissioner had responded with a response along the lines of, “Oh yes, Dr Brooks! that’s a perfectly acceptable explanation as to why you didn’t respond to your patient’s emails.” Eventually Brooks did provide copies of 2 or 3 documents to which our reader was entitled to by law, but NEVER a copy of the “urodynamic study” which our reader was seeking.

The suspicion is obviously raised, that if our reader had sought independent advice as to his bladder’s capacity, as we’re recommending, before he went ahead with Brooks’ surgery, that the claim that it was only about 200 mls was absolute rubbish, and that therefore Brooks’ surgery was NEVER going to work.

But, in an irony that’s quite incredible, if, as Dr Tse has claimed, that 8 months after Brooks had carried his surgery, the capacity of our reader’s bladder was about 400 mls, then everything that Brooks had promised would happen had happened – his bladder’s capacity had gone from about 200 mls to 400 mls, but, he still had the frequency problem! Work that one out, if you can, readers!

It all raises that probability that the capacity of our reader’s bladder was about 400 mls all along, and that explanation 2 is the more likely, about which, according to Dr Tse nothing can be done – no big fat fees for Urologists.

But there’s a postscript to all this. The same reader is claiming that, since he’s been on Low Dose Naltrexone, he never has to get up more than once during the night to urinate, and often doesn’t have to get up at all!!! Although he’s in his 80s, he says it’s as though he’s in his 30s and 40s again. This information has been passed on to various Urologists, in case this information might be helpful to them and their patients, but none of them seem interested.

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Dr Christopher Stephen James Grant, General Practioner – dealing with

One of our readers claims that when he saw Dr Grant, (use this link to be taken to his entry on the AHPRA website,) about a frequency problem he was experiencing – increasingly he was having to get up to 2 or 3 times a night to go to the toilet, which was making it harder and harder for him to get a good nights’ sleep – he referred him to Dr Andrew Brooks, Urologist, for his help.

Dr Brooks recommended and carried out a TURP operation, which our reader claims involved him in:-

  • Having an operation under a full anaesthetic, which always has it’s risks.
  • Two very uncomfortable days in hospitals.
  • Expenditure of more than $6,000, even after rebates from Medicare, including Brooks’ fee of $3,200 for less than an hours’ work.

none of which helped with the frequency problem in any way, AND, the TURP damaged him for life in a highly personal way, it can’t be reversed.

Our reader claims that, EITHER, Grant didn’t know that Brooks was a crook, one of the worst doctors on the planet, which was GROSS NEGLIGENCE, (surely we’re entitled to expect of GPs that they will only refer their patients to Specialists they know to be good???) OR, he knew what he was like, and still kept referring patients to him – for whatever reasons, perhaps so he would continue to get kickbacks from him, AND says that it’s hard to know which is the worst.

In relation to this, one of the four different people who have contacted us, over the years, complaining about the posts we’ve put up about Brooks, (when all we’ve ever done is put up our reader’s side of the story, at the same time sending Brooks more than 20 emails providing him with opportunities to let us and our readers know his side of the story,) happened to mention that Brooks, from time to time makes “contributions” to General Practitioners to help them in running their practices, which he described as a “norm” for the industry!!! Which obviously raises the possibility that Grant was continuing to refer patients to Brooks so he could continue to receive his “contributions,” (which most people would call “bribes.”) And Grant has been sent emails asking him if he’s ever received one of Brooks’ “contributions,” the emails haven’t even been acknowledged, let alone responded to. In fact, Grant has blocked emails from both our reader and us.

(Of course, we believe Brooks should be in gaol! – there would be lots of people in gaol for doing less physical damage to people than Brooks did to our reader. And we believe Grant should be in gaol as well.)

None of the things set out above would be news to any of those who have been readers of our blogs at all. So why are we repeating them? Because, we’ve been working on finding good health care workers and avoiding those who are not so good for more than 11 years now, and, increasingly we’re coming to believe that it’s all the fault of us, the people. There’s an old saying that, “We get the politicians we deserve,” and increasingly it’s becoming obvious to us that we get the health care workers we deserve. In fact, we’re starting to be surprised there aren’t more crooks out there – we, the people, are so slack in choosing which health care workers we choose to use. We bet, although we intend to look into this further, that none of the above, no matter how many times it’s put up on our blogs or elsewhere, has made a scrap of difference to Dr Grant’s practice, or Dr Brooks’ practice?

We, the people, have got to change. If we continue to use the Grants and Brooks of this world, we have no one else to blame except ourselves.

In relation to this, our reader advises that, when, some 5 years ago, he was tossing up whether to accept Grant’s advice and see Brooks, he DID send emails out to 2 or 3 other Urologists, and got a response from a Dr Paul Sved, (who he’s subsequently come to believe is one of the best doctors on the planet,) who expressed the opinion that there were lots of treatments for the frequency problem to consider before surgery – but, in the end, he decided to go along with the advice of Dr Grant, who he’d been using for 5 or 6 years, and thought was quite good. What a horrible way to learn how wrong he was!

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