Jessii P
Reviewing on behalf of my now deceased mother - 9/11 bladder cancer / stroke victim -we did not have a great experience here sadly. Saw Dr. William Huang (head of urology) to remove her bladder once the cancer was malignant & had an urostomy placed. Warned of poss complications & she was fine until about 3 months after the surgery, she started having odd monthly infections- high fever, low BP, high HR, etc. As she also had cancer, everytime she got an infection she had to be hospitalized, which paused her cancer treatments. She ended up in the hospital about once per month consistently for nearly 2 years (2023 - 2025)! She saw infectious disease docs, who were amazing, & ER docs, also amazing, both depts stated her urine was getting blocked somewhere & deferred us back to urology. Urology saw us once in person but as these infections happened monthly, urology wouldn't see us in person. They would ask over the phone if urine was still flowing, she said yes & deferred us back to infectious disease without asking us to quantify the urine output. This back & forth between ER/ Infectious Disease docs & Urology doc continued for over 1 year, with each side blaming each other & urology still not requesting to see her in person, until finally, her urostomy stopped producing urine altogether. We rushed her to the NYU ER, they placed a foley catheter directly into her stoma & an IR catheter under her stoma so urine can flow. ER & ER urology docs both confirmed that her stoma was slowly closing ever since her initial surgery hence the consistent infections, urine was getting trapped in the stoma wall pockets as it slowly closed leading the urine to remain trapped & bacteria to spread. On a few occasions, it also caused her to become septic. She was becoming at risk for resistant bacteria as infectious disease docs kept her on a low dose regiment of antibiotics. She was deemed too weak for a revision surgery & they ended up leaving the foley catheter in her stoma ongoing, but the foley had to be changed monthly. We also had to flush it twice per day so it wouldn't clog. I complained to NYU patient relations about the entire situation as urology never believed their surgical efforts were the cause of the infections. NYU responded that admittedly we were never told about this type of possible complication but they also didn't find any fault with the urologists. I felt angry as not only did urology not inspect the stoma to see if it was closing, the prolonged arguing with the ER and infectious disease doctors, back & forth, kept her from her chemo appointments & shortened her life. There was a lot of other things that occurred that would take too long to write here but I'm just posting how I'm giving them a 2 star rating for the treatment my mother received post surgery, & lack of empathy or willingness to double check in person after the initial recheck (of which I have all corresponding messages & emails as proof). I also want to note Dr. Huang's partner, Rachel Hastings - NP, was great but also deferred to Dr. Huang for all questions, etc concerning my mother's treatment. Another issue, my mother also had to have vaginal reconstructive surgery due to the stoma surgery & she used to consistently tell the doctors during those 2 years something was wrong with that as well as she had a lot of blood spotting. They kept telling us spotting was normal, but from what we read, it wasn't normal for it to last years. And my mother was 76 yrs old so she already went through menopause.