Paralyzed couple home for first time

Home for Christmas

DERBY, Kan. — Chuck Powell inched his wheelchair out of a specially equipped van, guided by his brother-in-law.

His chair made contact with the driveway of his house, and Chuck slowly spun around to see colorful "Welcome Home" banners hanging from the top of the open garage.

Then his wife, Marilyn, backed her electric wheelchair down the van's ramp.They turned to each other and took deep, shaky breaths.

"We're home, honey," Chuck told his best friend of 45 years. "We are home."
They held hands and cried. On Wednesday, the Powells spent the night at home for the first time since a February crash that paralyzed both of them from the chest down.

Feb. 17 was a nice day. The high in Wichita reached 78. Marilyn visited Chuck for lunch at his workplace in Wichita. They decided they'd go for a ride that evening on their 1500 Honda Gold Wing. They left their house between Rose Hill and Derby and rode for a while before heading to Douglass for dinner. Somewhere near Leon, Chuck turned on a paved road. The motorcycle that's taken them on so many fun trips hit a patch of sand put down to prevent winter accidents.

"We don't remember much, but we went off the side of the road," Marilyn said. "That's the last thing we remember until we went to St. Francis." Chuck and Marilyn, both 63, suffered identical spinal cord injuries in the crash. Marilyn also broke her left elbow, both wrists and a hip. Chuck fractured his right wrist and broke his neck, which surgery repaired.

Avid motorcyclists for years, they were wearing full riding gear that night — helmets, boots, gloves, chaps, the works. Their helmets stayed on during the crash. Chuck said they always wore the best helmets money could buy.

Luckily, Marilyn said, someone drove by fairly quickly. Chuck was in a coma for several weeks. When he gained consciousness, he learned he and his wife couldn't walk. "It was a hard thing to hear, that you're paralyzed, but after that settles in, you've got to settle for what you've got," Chuck said. Marilyn remembers when she woke up in an intensive-care unit. She started moving around. She discovered her legs didn't work.

"I wasn't able to talk yet, so I mouthed that I couldn't move," she remembered. "That was scary, when you realize what's happened." But with her husband in the same shape, Marilyn decided, "This is not going to get me down." At a time when many marriages don't last four or five years, let alone 45, Marilyn Powell said, "We've been pretty lucky. We've had a great marriage. We've done of a lot of things together. We work together and play together."

Sharon Archer, the Powells' neighbor for 33 years, said that whenever Chuck and Marilyn went somewhere in their truck, Marilyn would sit as close to her husband as she could, much like she would have dragging Main Street as a teenager. "It's always like they're on their first date," Archer said. "They keep each other going. If they didn't have each other to fight for, I don't think they'd be this strong. She's just a small-town girl who stands by her man."

Marilyn said Chuck felt guilty at first about the accident because he had been driving. But Marilyn told him, "I wanted to go for a ride that night." "Everything you do, you run a risk," she said matter-of-factly.

While Chuck and Marilyn recuperated and learned how to live in wheelchairs, their family, friends and neighbors got to work, too. They made sure the Powells had a ramp to use. They widened doorways, moved furniture so that two people in wheelchairs could get around. They took out a closet to enlarge and remodel the Powells' bathroom, putting in a shower that they can roll into on their chairs.
The bathroom has light blue walls. Marilyn and Chuck saw it for the first time Wednesday.

Friends took off cabinet doors and moved things around in the kitchen so Marilyn and Chuck could reach them. A shop teacher Marilyn worked with at Rose Hill schools made custom wooden tools she can use to open the oven door and the washer and dryer lids. Marilyn's former co-workers at the school's cafeteria cooked up a storm, providing the couple with meals for the near future.
"You ready for this?" friend Ellen Dyer asked Chuck and Marilyn when they arrived home from the hospital, accompanied by Marilyn's sister, Carolyn Foster, and her brother-in-law, Les.

The Dyers travel the country in an RV. They met the Powells years ago through motorcycling and stay at their house for a month or so two times a year. They've tried to pay the Powells for letting them use their land and hook up to utilities, Archer said, but the Powells always have said "no." When the Dyers learned of the accident, they were in Texas. Stan Dyer left for Kansas the next day. The Dyers have paid for much of the materials to make the Powells' home accessible, Archer said. Archer said she and her husband, Craig, have pitched in here and there.

Friends from the Powells' Gold Wing Road Riders group also labored to get the house ready. Marilyn and Chuck said the words "thank you" don't seem enough. "We didn't realize that we had so many friends," Chuck said, breaking down in tears.

The Powells plan to live independently. As they navigate their new lives, a nurse will stop by twice a day, in the morning to help them get out of bed and ready for the day and at night to get ready for bed.

They'll continue with physical therapy. They were excited to be home last week, but they also were nervous about living outside a hospital where the patients are just like them. But Marilyn was proud of something she accomplished on her own the day she came home. "They were going to help me wash my hair today, but I did it myself," she told her friends.

Wanda Russell, a registered nurse at the rehabilitation hospital, helped Marilyn curl her hair. Doing that by herself is one of Marilyn's goals. Staff at the hospital said they didn't remember ever caring for a couple paralyzed from the same spinal cord injuries. "I've been doing this work for 30 years, and it's the first time I've come across it," said case manager Barney Hoss.

Marilyn said Chuck knows what she's gone through, and she understands what he's gone through. They've always been close, she said, but the accident probably has made them even closer.

Their bedroom now is in what was the living room of their house. Two twin hospital beds have been pushed together so the Powells can sleep next to each other. The beds were donated through the hospital by former Wichita State University baseball player Carl Hall, a former Shocker baseball star who was paralyzed in an accident last year.

The staff worked hard to help them get out of the hospital by Christmas, he said.
"I think Chuck said that's the best Christmas present he's ever had," Hoss said. "It's a Christmas present for us, too."

SOURCE: The Republic

Nissan Recalls 28,000 Jukes and 34,000 Sentras for Possible Stalling Problems

In two actions, Nissan is recalling about 62,000 vehicles for stalling problems, the automaker told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Nissan said that 28,000 Jukes from the 2011 model year were being recalled because a defective weld could allow the turbocharger boost-sensor bracket to break. That could cause an idling engine to stall. Nissan said the engine shouldn’t stall when the vehicle was under way.

The automaker told the safety agency that it first learned of the possible problem in November 2010, but its investigation and monitoring of what it called field data didn’t suggest that a recall was needed until earlier this month.

Meanwhile, almost 34,000 Sentras are being recalled because the zinc coating on the battery-cable harness is thicker than specified. This could cause a voltage drop that could damage the electronic control module, causing the engine to stall and making it impossible to restart, the automaker said.

Nissan told the agency that it began investigating the problem last February and recently concluded that a recall was necessary.

A Nissan spokesman could not be reached to confirm whether either condition had resulted in accidents.

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source: New York Times (Jensen, 12/16)

$36 million settlement closes out lawsuit in NY bus-trailer crash that killed 4 in 2005

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The owners of a Canadian charter bus and a tractor-trailer are paying $36 million to settle a lawsuit over a 2005 highway collision in western New York that killed four people and injured 19, attorneys said Wednesday.

The settlement with Coach Canada and two Pennsylvania trucking firms heads off a string of trials that were set to begin this month.

The bus was carrying a Canadian youth hockey team from Windsor, Ontario, when it swerved off Interstate 390 about 30 miles south of Rochester and slammed into the truck parked on the side of the highway on Jan. 29, 2005.

Killed were Richard Edwards, 46, who coached the Windsor Wildcats women’s hockey team; his 13-year-old son, Brian; and a third passenger, Catherine Roach, 50. Truck driver Ernest Zeiset Jr., 42, also died.

All the other 19 bus passengers suffered injuries, which ranged from broken bones to brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. They included the coach’s wife, Sheila, and their daughter, Kelly, a player on a team of women ranging in age from 19 to 21.

Two insurers for Coach Canada are paying $22.5 million — almost two-thirds of the settlement — and three insurers for truck operator J & J Hauling Inc. of York Springs, Pa., and trailer owner Verdelli Farms of Harrisburg, Pa., are contributing $13.5 million, said Glenn Pezzulo, an attorney for the tractor and trailer companies.

“There was going to be one trial after another until they were all done,” Pezzulo said, starting with a Dec. 6 trial for Traci Butler, the team’s assistant coach. Court papers noted she suffered a brain injury, broke several bones and became partially deaf.

While police suspected fatigue and inexperience led to the crash, 24-year-old bus driver Ryan Comfort escaped criminal charges. He had driven for the bus company for two months.

Witnesses said he was driving erratically before the crash, but a grand jury declined to indict him. He pleaded guilty to a logbook violation and a traffic violation of failing to stay in the proper lane and was fined $300.

The bus was chartered in Windsor by the hockey team and was traveling to a ski resort when the crash occurred at dusk.

Authorities alleged Comfort lied about the hours he worked in another job during the three days before the crash and failed to report in the driver’s log book that he drove team members around Rochester in the six hours before they embarked on the ski trip. Commercial drivers are required to maintain accurate logs of their work hours and break times.

Comfort told police the bus “acted as though it struck something in the roadway, which caused it to veer to the right. ... I did not fall asleep at the wheel, nor was I influenced by any drugs or alcohol.”

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source: Washington Post (AP, 12/14)



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GM says 'couple dozen' Volt owners seek repurchase after fire tests

Crash testing of Chevy Volt

General Motors Co. said Monday a "couple dozen" Chevrolet Volt owners have asked the Detroit automaker to repurchase their extended-range electric vehicles in the face of a federal safety investigation into fires after crash-testing.

GM spokesman Greg Martin said the company was talking to owners about their concerns. He reiterated that the company will buy back the vehicles if customers aren't happy. He also emphasized the Volt is safe.

"Our actions will be guided by our customers' satisfaction," Martin said.

The company is working with Volt owners individually to understand their concerns. GM's preference is to give Volt owners loaner vehicles until the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration completes its investigation.

"We continue to find Volt owners by and large some of the most intensely loyal customers in the industry," Martin said.

"For those few who have requested repurchase, we're going to move fast" if their concerns can't be met any other way, he added.

On May 12, NHTSA crash tested a Chevy Volt in a side-collision impact in Wisconsin. The Volt battery caught fire three weeks later. NHTSA said the fire was caused by damage to the vehicle's lithium-ion battery pack and a coolant line that was ruptured.

As a result of that fire, NHTSA conducted tests on three more Volt battery packs last month at a Defense Department facility in Hampton Roads, Va. The tests intentionally damaged the Volts' lithium-ion battery packs and ruptured the vehicle coolant line.

One of those tests sparked a fire seven days after the test on Thanksgiving. Another of the tests resulted in smoke and sparking that lasted less than a second.

GM and NHTSA both say they have no complaints or reports of fires tied to real-world Volts. NHTSA's preliminary investigation could take six months or more.

More than 230 Volt owners, including former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, have signed an open letter defending the vehicle.

"We are keeping the keys to our Volts. We love our Volts and we feel safe driving our Volts," the owners wrote. "Volt owners feel assured knowing that government and industry are working together to define and communicate this process for electric vehicles, just as they have done for gasoline-powered cars in years past."

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source: Detroit News (Shepardson, 12/5)

An idea to tackle tort reform, defensive medicine in Georgia

It’s been 20 months since the Georgia Supreme Court threw out a key plank of the state’s 2005 tort reform: a $350,000 cap on noneconomic damages for medical malpractice. During that time there’s been some hopeful talk among supporters of the cap, but precious little action by legislators.

Here’s a thought: Why not scrap the medical tort system entirely, saving several billion dollars in the process?

Before every trial lawyer within 200 miles heads for my office, let me explain.

The idea is to replace the current legal system for medical malpractice with an administrative law system that draws heavily on the current arrangement for workers compensation claims.

No more lawsuits, no more juries, no more jackpot justice. Instead, patients injured while undergoing medical treatment would file a no-fault claim. Independent experts then would determine whether there was negligence and, if so, award the patient compensation based on national norms for the type of injury suffered.

The potential results: More patients receiving payments, in a fraction of the time lawsuits take today. Doctors no longer facing the specter of ruinous lawsuits. Even trial lawyers would stand to make more money on the whole.

“Our approach is basically fair compensation — quickly, and more of it,” says Richard L. Jackson, who is pushing this plan through his advocacy group called, well, Patients for Fair Compensation.

The group’s name is straightforward enough, except that Jackson isn’t only or mostly a patient. He’s a longtime health-care executive whose Alpharetta-based medical-staffing company, Jackson Healthcare, employs doctors in all 50 states.

Nor did he come at the issue of tort reform only or mostly from a legal perspective. Rather, his interest is reducing the practice of “defensive medicine” by doctors eager to avoid lawsuits.

During the 2008 presidential primaries, Jackson told me by phone this week, his firm surveyed its doctors about various candidates’ health reform plans. “What happened,” he said, “was we kept hearing the defensive medicine issue being a huge problem. We didn’t ask them about it. It just came out unsolicited.”

Jackson took another survey of 3,000 doctors nationally about “totally unnecessary medicine for the purpose of avoiding a lawsuit.” A whopping 92 percent said they had practiced it in the previous 12 months, and the respondents attributed 34 percent of all health-care costs to defensive medicine.

“I was really caught off-guard by that,” Jackson said.

Last year, he hired Gallup to poll 500 doctors. A similar proportion of them said they practiced defensive medicine, to which they attributed 26 percent of health costs.

Even using that lower estimate, Jackson said, defensive medicine may account for as much as $650 billion in health spending nationally and $13.25 billion in Georgia. That’s roughly $100 a month for every American, or almost 4.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Reducing that cost is what sparked Jackson’s interest in medical malpractice reform. But he believes it would be good for patients, too.

“Patients really don’t have access to justice in our [current] system,” Jackson said. If a claim is for less than $150,000, “you can’t find an attorney to represent you. They have to basically go for the big deals. And that’s why they’re so vehemently opposed to caps and those kinds of tort reforms, because it eliminates the ability to go after the big claims so they can fund the other ones.”

Jackson’s group is awaiting a final actuarial study, but he said he is confident that four times as many patients as today will receive some sort of compensation, which, combined, will total two to three times the current sum.

The “extra” money, as well as the funds to operate the new system, would come from existing med-mal insurance premiums, with savings from lowering costs of administration and not having to defend against lawsuits.

The next step will come soon, as Georgia and Florida are the first states where Jackson will try to get legislation passed. I’ll withhold final judgment until there’s an actual bill with actual details. For now, it’s a promising solution to a vexing problem.

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source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Wingfield, 12/1)

Jury awards former workers at Lear's Arlington plant more than $280,000

Three women who say they were fired by Lear Corp. for filing workers' compensation claims have been awarded more than $280,000 in lost wages and damages by a Tarrant County district court jury.

The workers, who were terminated in October 2009, plan to petition Judge Donald Cosby for an order reinstating them to their jobs.

By a 10-2 verdict, the jury sided with the claims of Phyllis Carolina, Karen Rogers and Ronda Alexander, all of whom said they suffered serious injuries while working at Lear's Arlington plant.

Carolina was awarded $124,666, Alexander, $82,814, and Rogers, $80,000.
"It was a victory for workers in corporate America's war on the middle class," said Jason Smith, a Fort Worth lawyer who represented the women.

Lear, based in suburban Detroit, manufactures seats for the sport utility vehicles produced at General Motors' Arlington assembly plant. Lear spokesman Mel Stevens said he could not comment on "any litigation until it is resolved."

Lear has had a troubled relationship in recent years with workers at the Arlington plant, who are represented by United Auto Workers Local 129. After being shut down for 11 weeks in 2009 while GM was in bankruptcy, the company and union came to a standstill in contract negotiations and the company locked out the workers for several days until the GM plant manager intervened and a settlement was reached.

More recently, Lear has outsourced some work from Arlington to one of its Mexico plants and threatened to move even more work south of the border.

Lear executives, in testimony from depositions presented during the trial, said the Arlington plant had the highest workers' compensation cost of any of its U.S. plants.

"It's a very physical job," said Smith, adding that two of the women had injured their rotator cuffs and the other had injured her neck. "They have a lot of injuries out there. [Lear] could do things better ergonomically."

Maverick Gayden, shop chairman of the union that represents Lear's more than 500 manufacturing workers, called the verdict "very good news."

Gayden said the cost of the penalties could force Lear management to pay more attention to the working conditions and the state of labor relations with its employees at the plant.

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source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Cox, 11/5)

Analysis: Tort reform in Texas has not resolved physician shortages in some areas

PRESIDIO, Texas (AP) — Presidio County is bigger than Delaware and has just one practicing physician who doesn't deliver babies or treat emergencies. It's the kind of underserved region that Gov. Rick Perry suggested would benefit when he proposed a crackdown on medical malpractice lawsuits in 2003.

Now running for president, Perry says his tort reform plan proved the wisdom of his business-friendly policies by expanding health care across the state.

Yet none of the 23,000 doctors Perry says Texas has newly licensed have come this way.

"Some patients, when they find out they're pregnant, bam — they're out of here," said Dr. Darrell Parsons, whose practice in Presidio is just across the Rio Grande from Ojinaga, Mexico.

An analysis of Perry's tort reform initiative in Texas reveals a more complicated bottom line than his campaign rhetoric on the issue would suggest. State medical data show that the number of physicians practicing in Texas has increased since the initiative passed in 2003, though by considerably less than the total Perry cites. And the bulk of that influx has come in larger cities where health care was already abundant, leaving large rural swaths of Texas still without doctors.

In many ways, the growth in the health industry in Texas adds more fodder to a larger debate surrounding Perry's record: How effective were his conservative policies in solving problems and increasing jobs, which is the core issue of his presidential campaign? And how much of Texas' economic growth during his 11 years in office mostly reflected a state with a booming energy industry and an increasing population?

Discussing his malpractice reforms in a speech in Georgia in September, Perry said, "Pregnant women have better access to OB-GYNs. People in need of trauma care have better access to neurosurgeons and other specialists. That's what tort reform is really all about. About how to give better access to the people of my home state. We need to spread lawsuit reform across all economic sectors of this country."

However, medical records in Texas show that of the state's 254 counties, only 106 have an obstetrician/gynecologist — just six more than in 2003. In Presidio County, which has 8,000 residents and is growing, some of Parsons' patients move 240 miles away to live with relatives in Odessa or Midland when they become pregnant.

Overall, the increase in physicians in Texas roughly tracked the state's population growth. Medical rolls increased by 24 percent since 2003, while Texas' population was soaring by 20 percent during the decade. Texas also saw rapid growth of physicians per capita before tort reform, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The statistic Perry most often cites — 23,000 newly licensed doctors after tort reform — includes about 10,000 who sought licenses in Texas but took jobs elsewhere and physicians practicing telemedicine in other states.

Tort reform lobbyists point to a surge in the number of doctors in some high-risk specialties like surgery and emergency room care, particularly in the growing Rio Grande Valley.

"By no means do we claim that all doctors new to Texas are because of tort reform. But we absolutely claim that the accelerated growth is because of tort reform," said Jon Opelt, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Patient Access.

Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said tort reform ended "abusive oversuing" and played a role in Texas today having a record number of doctors per capita.

"Tort reform has resulted in better access to care, which includes more specialized care that is now available in more Texas communities thanks to these reforms, and that is absolutely a success," Castle said.

Health care shortages have plagued rural Texas for decades and few regions struggle more than West Texas. In Pecos, about a four-hour drive north of Presidio through sprawling ranchland and mountains, Mayor Venetta Seals recalled the wife of a California couple who became ill while traveling through the area earlier this year. By the time they reached the closest hospital nearly 200 miles away, the woman had died in the car.

Seals joked that the region perhaps needed signs on the Interstate informing drivers they're nowhere near a hospital. "Think about if you had a wreck, and just to get an ambulance took an hour," Seals said. "And that's one-way."

Perry made access to health care a major argument for tort reform in the initiative's advertising campaign in 2003, saying the state was hemorrhaging doctors because of lawsuits and malpractice insurance costs. The ballot issue, Proposition 12, became the most expensive campaign ever waged to amend the Texas Constitution. More than $15 million was spent in the showdown between trial lawyers and health care interests.

In a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation that year, Perry told a New York audience how three out of five Texas counties lacked an obstetrician.

"That's a hardship for many pregnant women in certain areas of our state, but especially women with high-risk pregnancies," Perry said.

Eight years later, that ratio is the same.

In rural areas, doctors, including Parsons, nevertheless insist the lawsuit limit capping noneconomic damages at $250,000 was justified. Doctors statewide have seen their liability rates drop by an average of 27 percent, according to the Texas Medical Association. Parsons said he wouldn't have stayed in Presidio without the new caps.

"You don't have that hanging over your head," Parsons said.

Recruiting doctors in rural areas, however, is difficult. And another aspect of Texas' government philosophy — a low Medicaid reimbursement rate, ranking 49th in the nation, and sparse public spending — makes practicing in rural areas here less appealing than in other states. "Obstetricians want good education for their children and reasonable reimbursement for their services," said James Scroggs, director of health economics for the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Parsons, a Kansas City native who began practicing in nearby Alpine in 1999, says it takes a "missionary spirit" to become a doctor in a place like this. And residents get used to doing without much health care.

"Out here, you get sick or hurt on Monday or Thursday. That's the day the clinic is open," said Zachary Zniewski, a carpenter in neighboring Brewster County. He looks down at his hand, which is missing a finger.

He accidentally sliced it off on a Wednesday.

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source: Associated Press (11/7)