Results tagged “hospital”

The family of the 15-year-old girl who took a stray bullet to the skull last Monday has something incredible to be thankful for today: doctors expect the teen to make a full recovery. After performing brain surgery to remove the bullet from Vada Vasquez's skull, doctors put her in medically-induced coma and cautioned relatives that she would most likely suffer some degree of brain damage. But now surgeon Narayan Sundaresan believes that although the bullet damaged her left temporal lobe, the area of the brain responsible for speech, she still "can make a full recovery."

The 15-year-old Bronx girl who was put in a medically-induced coma after taking a stray bullet to the skull has spoken for the first time since the incident, eight days ago. A source tells the Daily News that Vada Vasquez's first word was "Mom." Her condition has been upgraded to stable and a spokeswoman at Lincoln Hospital says, "She's improving. She's in stable condition and recognizes family members."

A Mexican day laborer is hospitalized with brain damage after being attacked somewhere in Williamsburg or Bushwick by three black men shouting "wetback." Mario Vera was riding his bike back home to Bushwick with groceries from a lower Manhattan food pantry when the young men hit him in the back of his head "with something hard" while yelling anti-immigrant slurs. The assault happened on September 23rd, but wasn't reported until last Friday, because Vera is an undocumented immigrant afraid to go to the police. (NYPD policy prohibits officers from sharing law-abiding immigrants' status with the Feds, but it has been known to happen.)

Police believe drag racing caused a spectacular crash on Francis Lewis Boulevard that left two teens and 11-year-old boy hospitalized. Two cars, a BMW and a Lexus, were seen speeding around 11 p.m. last night when they knocked into each other, sending the BMW spinning into a parked van. Witness Peter Boudouvas tells CBS 2, "I saw one car bump the car on the left, took 2 or 3 spins, van moved 30 feet up. I jumped out, called 911 and asked nobody to move." According to ABC 7, police had to cut down a tree to get through to the wreckage. Another witness says the BMW was "doing 60 to 70 mph...Things like this happen all the time." The 18-year-old driver of the BMW and two male passengers, ages 18 and 11, were rushed to Booth Memorial Hospital in Queens. The 11-year-old is in critical condition, and the 16-year-old driver of the Lexus walked away with minor injuries. He was given a breathalyzer test (it came back negative) and is being questioned by police, but he's already in violation of the law for driving without a licensed adult in the car.

While smoking is already banned inside hospitals, the NY City Council is considering a bill that would prohibit puffing away outside hospital entrances and on hospital grounds. The AP reports, "The measure seeks to ban smoking on hospital property and within 15 feet of any hospital entrance or exit. It would apply to public and private hospitals, as well as residential health care facilities and diagnostic and treatment centers." However, if the bill passes, those 15 feet from hospital grounds should get some ashtrays ready: When smoking was banned on a Buffalo health facility's campus, the smokers moved across the street—and in front of residential houses. One smoker admitted he was going to throw his cigarette butt in the street; when a TV station reporter asked, "Why can't you throw butt in garbage can?" the smoker answered, "I will. I didn't think of that."

The narcotics officer who lost his leg below the knee after getting pinned by a crashed car got a much-needed boost from a fellow NYPD amputee. Officer Eric Grimes was leading drug suspects into a police van in Brooklyn on Tuesday when two cars collided and jumped the curb, crushing his lower left leg and foot. When he awoke from surgery at Kings County Hospital later that night, a surprise visitor was waiting for him: Officer Rachid Elkadi, whose right leg was amputated below the knee in May 2006 after an off-duty motorcycle accident. Elkadi spent an hour with Grimes to show him that his amputation didn't have to be a career ender; Elkadi himself returned to work a year after his accident. Now a "field intelligence officer" in Queens, Elkadi spoke with the Daily News about his bedside visit: "[Grimes] let out a sigh of relief and said, 'You are a breath of fresh air. I needed to see you.' He asked me how my life has changed. I said, 'You are not limited to anything.'"

     

The Brooklyn Museum has taken four of their eleven human mummies to get CT scans at North Shore Hospital on Long Island... and they're updating their Flickr account with photos and live Twittering. Surely so much technology can't be good for the mummified soul. They tell us that "Through the CT scanning, Brooklyn Museum curators hope to learn more about each of the four mummies and the ancient civilization in which they lived. The Mummies that will undergo CT scanning are a Royal Prince, Count of Thebes, who is more three thousand years old; the Lady Hor on view in her elaborately painted cartonnage since 1993, some two thousand years old; Thothirdes, over 2,500 years and; and a mummy about which little is known, that dates back to the first century C. E." And so far today they found out that Lady Hor is a really a man, baby.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission seems poised to green light the final hurdle in St. Vincent's Hospital's controversial plan to raze the landmark 1963 O'Toole building in Greenwich Village and replace it with a new hospital and residential towers on both sides of Seventh Avenue. The commission has already approved St. Vincent's designs for the hospital tower, and during a meeting yesterday, revised designs that shorten the tallest residential tower from 266 feet to 218 feet were deemed "fundamentally appropriate." The Rudin Organization plans to create some 375 residential units on and around the spot where the O'Toole building stands; the developer will pay St. Vincent's $310 million for the property, which the hospital will put toward the $830 million cost of a new medical tower. If the LPC approves the residential development next month, then it's the city Planning Commission and the City Council's turn. But die-hard opponents like Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation tell the Post, "It's a massive change that's being proposed and I think there are some fears and concerns about the scale of development and whether or not they match the character of Greenwich Village."

A Brooklyn woman is being held on $20,000 bail for a series of robberies at Manhattan hospitals. According to the Post, police say Melissa Fonseca went to "Lenox Hospital three times, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center twice and New York Hospital once. Dressed in street clothes, the Brooklyn woman would allegedly wait until the patients left their rooms and then pounce -- grabbing their wallets and purses. She used the patients' credit cards to make more than 60 purchases at such stores as Victoria's Secret, the Gap, Banana Republic and Sephora." Fonesca has previously been arrested for stealing credits cards and a wallet from a downtown office and a credit card from Beth Israel.

       

What is it about dilapidated hospitals that are make them so beautiful? Today the Kingston Lounge's Richard Nickel, Jr. posted photos from a trip to one within the Fort Totten landmark district near Bayside, Queens. A little history lesson: "Built in 1864, the year in which the primary purpose of the Fort shifted from defense of the mouth of the East River to casualty support and hospital care, the facility served the Army in various capacities until 1974, when it was emptied and abandoned. Sometime before 1920 a cafeteria annex was added to the rear of the structure; at some point prior to abandonment, the hospital appears to have been repurposed for office and administrative use, and the basement for storage."

Almost 1,000 patients will need new blood tests after Bronx-Lebanon Hospital found that six patients' blood samples were mislabeled. The NY Times reports that "six patients being treated by outpatient clinics at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center had received inaccurate test results last year." While the hospital calls the mixed-up results "isolated incidents" for six patients on six different days, the hospital "decided to retest every patient tested on those six days, plus all the patients tested the day before and the day after." And that encompasses 920 patients—including children—who were at the hospital's clinics on 18 days between April and December 2008. Spokesman Errol Schneer told the Times, "We regret any inconvenience that’s been caused to any of our patients, and we will be addressing the matter through retesting and also through providing them with round-trip MetroCards." He added, "It’s not just a New York City issue; the issue of medical errors is one that’s being addressed throughout the country."

Remember last week's story about the brain surgeon who was AWOL from North Shore University Hospital when he was supposed to be operating on a prepped, anesthetized patient? It gets worse. At least four families are suing Dr. Paolo Bolognese (pictured) and his colleague Thomas Milhorat, who has just stepped down as chairman of the department and, at age 73, will no longer be operating. The plaintiffs in one case are the parents of a five-year-old girl with Chiari malformation, a rare defect where the lower part of the brain descends into the spinal canal, as well as 'tethered cord syndrome." Their lawyers argue that Dr. Bolognese's $100,000 operation to treat the tethered cord "was unnecessary and experimental," and that the girl "was being used as a human research subject." They say she didn't even have tethered cord to begin with, and that the surgery made her problems incredibly worse. Her grandfather tells the Daily News, "These doctors must be stopped. I have cried a thousand tears over her. They must be shut down." A hospital attorney insists that the two surgeons are "expert in this area, and when all the facts come forth, they will be vindicated."

Look, it's not brain surgery—if you've got an important appointment, make a note of it in your calendar. Yet one big shot neurosurgeon at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island apparently had better things to do on April 10th, when he left his patient all prepped for surgery with nowhere to go. (To be fair, it can be difficult to get a good tee time at Fresh Meadow Country Club.) Dr. Paolo Bolognese, who reportedly makes about $2.4 million a year, was suspended for two weeks from the hospital after leaving his anesthetized female patient out cold on the operating table with her head shaved. It's unclear where exactly he was, and when staffers failed to locate Bolognese, they turned to chief of neurosurgery Thomas Milhorat ($7.2 million a year). But he refused to step in because the patient wasn't his. So Milhorat was also suspended, but the two MIA MDs seem to be making the best of it; a hospital receptionist tells the News they're in Italy attending a medical conference and, naturally, can't be reached.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection dispatched a Hazmat unit to an elementary school in East New York after unidentified students sprinkled novelty itching powder on at least two teachers' chairs. Some students were also affected; everyone who reported itching had to take decontamination showers, and the two teachers were taken to the hospital as a precaution. One victim tells the Daily News, "When I sat down, I could feel it through my pants. It was very itchy. It got intense. When it became uncontrollable, I had to stop what I was doing... It stopped me in my tracks." Mission accomplished from the pranksters' point of view, but one teacher isn't savoring the gag: "Somebody could have killed me. I feel it personally, because I have so many allergies." And a fifth grader reports, "My friend Emiliano was itching a lot. He felt bad. He scratched and scratched. I was glad I did not get any on me." The powder, which looked like tiny, prickly hairs, was deemed nonhazardous by the DEP, but a potentially devastating Whoopee Cushion explosion is still under investigation.

Yesterday, a judge gave permission to a grieving Bronx woman to have sperm extracted from her dead fiance. Johnny Quintana suddenly died on Thursday night, but days earlier, he told his family how he looked forward to having more children with his fiancee Gisela Marrero.

According to columnist Liz Smith, family members of Natasha Richardson were left with no choice but to take the actress off life support at 1:30 p.m. Richardson allegedly went brain dead sometime after suffering a critical brain injury while skiing in Canada on Monday and she was transported to New York yesterday.

Last night TMZ reported that Natasha Richardson's mother, Vanessa Redgrave, was seen entering Lenox Hill Hospital to visit her daughter sometime just before 9 p.m. Richardson, a Tony-winning stage and film actress was transported to New York yesterday after suffering a brain injury during a skiing accident in Canada.

As previously mentioned, sad news of actress Natasha Richardson being injured during a skiing accident yesterday was reported this morning. Richardson, wife of Liam Neeson, was at a Montreal-area resort taking a beginner's lesson when she fell. While she didn't have a helmet on, the NY Times has word from a spokeswoman at the resort who said “She didn’t show any signs of injury, she was talking and she seemed all right.” But now the 45-year-old Tony-award winner is reportedly in critical condition with a brain injury. The latest word is that she is "sedated and suffering from brain swelling -- but is not brain dead." And TMZ has just reported that she was boarded onto a private jet with a medic team to be taken to a new hospital that they believe is in New York City.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 8 to 3 yesterday to approve St. Vincent's designs for an $800 million hospital tower on the site currently occupied by the landmark O'Toole building in Greenwich Village. The vote came just a day after preservationists announced their lawsuit against St. Vincent's; some community groups have been trying, unsuccessfully so far, to stop the hospital from razing the 44-year-old building. The commission had previously rejected plans for a 329-foot hospital tower, but ultimately approved it at a height of 278 feet. But hospital officials still need the commission to approve their proposal for a 350-unit condo across the street; St. Vincent's plans to use money they raise from the apartments to build the hospital. Looking ahead to a surely prosperous future, developer William Rudin optimistically tells NY1, "Hopefully the economic situation we are in will have alleviated itself. And the economic stimulus would have kicked in and we'll see positive things happening in the economy and we think four to five years from now."

Last night, around 6:30 p.m., a fire broke out in a mechanical room at Mount Sinai Hospital at Madison and East 98th Street. While the fire was quickly put out, the smoke was so heavy that patients were evacuated from the east wings to the west wings. WABC 7 spoke to the daughter of a patient waiting for a surgical procedure later this week: She said the alarm went off, "Then the smoke comes, The smell was strong, like something was burning," and minutes later "we couldn't breathe." Though a nurse initially told them to stay, they were eventually evacuated. The patient said, "I want to go back. I want to do my surgery."

Plaxico Burress is at Giants Stadium to meet with team officials for the first time since he accidentally shot himself in the thigh. And the NYPD is investigating why NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, which treated the Giants star, did not report the shooting to the police. According to the NY Times, state law requires hospitals or doctors to contact the authorities "at once."

Yikes: The police are investigating whether a visitor sexually abused a 72-year-old patient yesterday afternoon at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights. The Daily News reports that a nurse allegedly saw 27-year-old Yakov Kramer "standing over the elderly man's bed." Kramer was arrested last night and a "cloth Kramer allegedly used to clean up the evidence was seized by the NYPD for testing" (a police source said, "He didn't know the victim - it looks like he just wandered into a room and took advantage"). The News called the home of Kramer's father, and a women said, "The whole story is wrong and stupid... He was in the hospital with his wife. She had an appointment. Something is very wrong if someone could be arrested at a hospital." The hospital's spokesperson told WCBS 2, "We cannot confirm any details. But we did receive the report and we are investigating."

After a long, bitter public battle, St. Vincent's hospital has won permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to raze the distinctive O’Toole Building in the West Village and build a 299-foot-tall medical tower. The hospital applied for, and was granted, a “hardship-status” exemption, which allows nonprofit landlords to demolish landmark buildings if they can prove that the building is preventing them from carrying out their charitable mission. Community groups, preservationists and local celebrities like Susan Sarandon have opposed the scope of the project, which also calls for a 235-foot-tall luxury condominium (in partnership with the Rudin Management Company). In a statement, hospital officials said they can now take "another step forward to building a 21st century, technologically advanced hospital for Manhattan’s West Side and Downtown."

In today's Times there's a bracing look at a day in the life of Dr. William Goldberg, the man calling the shots at the Bellevue Hospital E.R. on Mondays. "The E.R. is a window on society," said Dr. Goldberg. "Whatever troubles the city has, the underlying problems, we always see them here." By that measure, New York has some issues: "[His team] had a fairly average caseload for a Monday: a rectal bleed, a vaginal bleed, chest pains with anxiety and a forehead laceration...The chest pains case would refuse his medication. The rectal bleed would angrily demand that he be discharged...Three more stretchers would appear outside the door. Then the phone would ring: A head case was arriving. Seven minutes out. Dr. Goldberg would, at this point, permit himself a grin. 'O.K.,' he said — and the irony was deserved — 'at least it’s picking up.'"

The Landmarks Preservation Commission met again yesterday to deliberate on St. Vincent's Hospital’s “hardship-status” application, which, if approved, would let the hospital raze the distinctive O’Toole Building in the West Village and build a 299-foot-tall medical building and a 233-foot tall luxury condominium. Unlike previously rowdy sessions that featured protest from local celebrities, there was no public comment this time. Instead, the commission heard from outside experts like Michael Meola at the city’s Economic Development Corporation, who testified that no other sites “would be a viable alternative to the O’Toole Building.” Developer William C. Rudin added, “Now more than ever, the city needs a project like this as an investment in our future.” No decision was made yesterday, but Andrew Berman at the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation tells the Times, "A lot of people are questioning whether they will actually stick with this."

Susan Sarandon and husband Tim Robbins testified before the Landmarks Preservation Commission today in protest against St. Vincent’s proposal to raze the distinctive O’Toole Building in the West Village, as well as four other buildings to make room for a 299-foot-tall medical building and a 235-foot-tall luxury condominium (in partnership with the Rudin Management Company). For the former Bull Durham stars, all that would mean a lot of noise and dust soiling the air near their building, which is a block away.

More on that student prank gone horribly wrong: The Daily News has it that seniors at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies who served their teachers cake laced with laxatives got the idea from watching MTV’s prank-reenactment show High School Stories. Two teachers ended up in the emergency room last week after eating the tainted cake, which was prepared by a straight-A student and her two friends, and ultimately sickened a grand total of two crossing guards, a social worker and three teachers.

Teachers at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies in Boerum Hill were on the receiving end of a student prank that resulted in arrests and hospitalizations last week. When three seniors at the high school offered their teachers some slices of homemade cake, nobody suspected the students, which included a straight-A student, of filling the baked goods with laxatives as a zany end-of-the-year gag.

The New York Rangers are on the brink of elimination in their 7-game series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, but Rangers forward and "enforcer" Sean Avery is on a much more serious brink. Avery was hospitalized at St. Vincent's Hospital early this morning around 3 a.m. for a lacerated spleen and he remains there this afternoon. Which means Avery will be out for the rest of the season.