An aneurysm is a defect in a blood vessel, which can burst, spilling blood into the body, as a form of internal bleeding.  An aneurysm can form anywhere.  An aneurysm in the stomach walls can be fatal.  Their cause can be congenital, due to injury, or reproductive mistake.

Within the last decade, aneurysms in the brain required open head surgery, and the vessels involved, clipped.  Clipping was never considered a successful repair, often leading to rebleeding.  Overall, clipping was nearly 100% clinically fatal in the long run.

In the brain, an aneurysm can slowly spill blood into the brain.  The brain itself, being soft, gelatanous and spongy, lacks structural integrity, and thus is held together by a fine mesh sack, called the arachnoid membrane.  The strands comprising this sack are so fine, they are identified as being very much like the strands of a spider's web, hence the name arachnoid, from class arachnida (inclusive of spiders).

An aneurysm hemorrhaging inside this membrane, is therefor called a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH).

For more information pertaining to cerebral anneurysms and SAHs, go to this web site at Massachussett General Hospital.

The day Buc's anneurysm burst, a new procedure (only 4% clinically fatal) was being implemented for the first time at two California tertiary hospitals:  UCLA and UC Irvine.  This was the new Guglielmi GDC technique, developed in Italy and at Massachussett General Hospital.  Even though Buc collapsed on the tennis court only blocks away from two major Santa Monica hospitals, her paramedic knew to take her to UCLA, where she joined a class of 33 Grade V SAH patients, some of which at the time of this writing (1/27/01) have died.

As you read the detailed accounting of Buc's first three weeks at UCLA, the initial enthusiasm and positive energies disappeared as Maxicare began to force her removal from the only facility familiar with her disposition, casting her into a dreadful syndrome of unrelated skilled nursing care and medical treatment.

Ostensibly, the State of California's Department of Corporations, overseeing Buc's case, was completely duped by Maxicare, just as the UCLA physisican were overwhelmed by Maxicare's persistance in their agreeing that the patient was stable for transport.  It is sad to think that the UCLA oupatient specialist allowed this travisty in medical judgment.  Money play such a critical factor, not only did they go along with it, they created confusion, and they projected impatience and anger, apparently as a red-herring or smoke screen;  we will never be sure.

By the time they yanked her out of UCLA and from specific post operative care, into Freeman Memorial Hospital, the level of deception peaked, with her assigned internist, primary care physician (PCP), neuro specialist, nurses  and case workers, claiming they had handled thousands of cases just like hers, and in one conversation, three-thousand patients was quoted to me.

It should be noted that all subsequent medical treatment after her removal from UCLA was not associated, medically speaking, to her injury, but care essential in primarily fighting diseases acquired at these institutions, such as spinal staph, pneumonia, opportunistic yeast infections, and the new and potentially fatal VRE.

As you look at the following graph entitled CARE LEVEL, note the yellow line representing care and treatment directly related to her injury, inclusive of testing, c-scans and MRIs, which quickly descends on the left-hand of the chart, just next to the pale blue nursing line, only to reappear again for only one day on July 23rd 1997;  this reappearance not being for the patient's benefit, but for Maxicare's.

You see, by now, Maxicare was in hot water and under the DOC's moratorium.  The patient had not received any medical attention related to her injury, but to damage control, which by the end of February, was steeply mounting in dollars.

Already, Maxicare was facing potentially one half million dollars in cost for this patient just after the calendar year-end, after a dismal business performance in the 1994-1995 fiscal year, only six months before as revealed by the following chart distributed by the Department of Corporations (DOC) to insurance brokers.
 

 
In order to demonstrate to the DOC that they were doing the best for this patient, they proposed a July 23rd 1997 MRI at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital to determine that she had no encethalomalacia (water on the brain).  Days before this scheduled MRI, they told no one, not even the patient's family, as though the MRI was designed to get them out from underneath.

Incidentally, I went to that MRI, because one of the nurses asked me the day before if I knew anything about it, which I did not.  She told me the time, and without announcement, I met the ambulance there at Daniel Freeman, with Buc on board.  It was a good thing I went.  Select #7 if you would like to find out more about that day!

The following chart shows various levels of care from superior care to absent care.  Absent care includes bad, dangerous and inferior care.   Use the the numerical links below the chart to browse for details.