Posted on 01/21/2006 4:15:11 PM PST by Popman
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.
The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won't tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients' rights.
Claudia Mejia gave birth eight and a half months ago at Orlando Regional South Seminole. She was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando where her arms and legs were amputated. She was told she had streptococcus, a flesh eating bacteria, and toxic shock syndrome, but no further explanation was given.
The hospital, in a letter, wrote that if she wanted to find out exactly what happened, she would have to sue them.
"I want to know what happened. I went to deliver my baby and I came out like this," Mejia said.
Mejia said after she gave birth to Mathew last spring, she was kept in the hospital with complications. Twelve days after giving birth at Orlando Regional South Seminole hospital, she was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center where she became a quadruple amputee. Now she can not care for or hold her baby.
"Yeah, I want to pick him up. He wants me to pick him up. I can't. I want to, but I can't," she said. "Woke up from surgery and I had no arms and no legs. No one told me anything. My arms and legs were just gone."
Her 7-year-old son, Jorge, asks his mother over and over what happened to her. Neither she nor her husband has the answer.
"I love her, so I'll always stick with her and take it a day at a time myself," said her husband, Tim Edwards.
The couple wants to know how she caught streptococcus, during labor or after. She doesn't know. She knows she didn't leave the hospital the same.
"And why, I want to know why this happened," she said.
Her attorney, Judy Hyman wrote ORHS a letter saying, according to the Florida statute, "The Patients Right To Know About Adverse Medical Incidents Act," the hospital must give her the records.
"When the statute is named 'Patients Right To Know,' I don't know how it could be clearer," Hyman said.
Absolutely.
Strep sepsis is a terror.
People DO get gangrene outside of hospitals. You imply you know how she got it and it was at the hospital, when that is simply not known at this time. There is/will be a full investigation in the hospital. It is required by law.
Most likely there are multiple investigations going on.
The hospital has a Infection Control program.
Health Department is probably looking.
CDC is very likely in on it.
If the hospital has had no previous cases then it didn't come from the hospital.
When I worked newborn nursery you didn't get past the front door without a 15 minute scrub with a betadine brush.
Same thing for labor and delivery. You don't have to be sterile during the labor part but when delivery starts it is just like surgery. Sterile everything. Betadine scrub with brushes and sterile gloves.
The deliveries I saw had enough betadine involved to fill an aquarium.
http://woundcare.org/newsvol2n2/ar1.htm betadine if you are curious enough to look.
http://textbookofbacteriology.net/streptococcus.html
Strep in all it's forms..
LukeL, you said RAPID blood loss. Now you change the story to loss over a 6 hour time period. Rapid means bleeding out in minutes, not hours. Also, you were being transfused with blood the entire time, so the loss of blood at any given moment might have been only a few percent, not 150%.
And this is where we started and what I gathered to be the point of the article. The victim wants to know if there were other previous cases. I don't doubt anything you said, it all makes perfect sense. But I think the victim has the right to know if she contracted it at the hospital or brought in into the hospital.
Would any (legitimate) organization really write something like that?
Sounds like one of those superbugs got to her.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone can become extremely ill very quickly, anyone. Hospitals are very dangerous places to be and many, many people get seriously ill from complications. I speak from experience.
Once the infection has set in the patient frequently isn't well enough to make reasonable decisions or even be conscious to ask their opionion. Also, if the doctors are telling you that you will die without the surgeries you oftentimes just take the doctors advice with very few questions asked or answered. I personally was rushed into emergency surgery when I had only thought I was going back for a normal follow-up appointment after the first surgery. Twenty six surgeries and six months later I finally started getting enough strength to fight back and argue about hospital bills etc. It has now been over three years and I will never be the person I was before the first surgery. I don't even remember most of my illness.
My family was wonderful and stood by my side the entire time; but, they aren't nearly as aggressive as I am. They just took the doctors' advice, not really knowing what else to do. It is very difficult, sometimes impossible to change doctors and/or hospitals in midstream. Many doctors are scared to death of patients with complications from some other doctor. They see LAWSUIT written all over the patient and they don't want to get in the middle of it for their own protection and for the protection of the other doctor.
What all family members need to know is that they have to really get in there and fight for their loved ones medical rights. It isn't easy to do; but, it is necessary. Don't blame the patient. And sometimes there truly is no one to blame, just bad luck.
There is another thing that caught my eye.
Most deliveries are 24 hours or less in the hospital.
She was having problems from the beginning or they wouldn't have kept her 2 days.
There is a lot left out of the story.
Part of the problem is the writer of the article is a total ignoramus. It is completely biased and written without a whit of medical knowledge.
Refer back to my earlier post.
If there had been a previous case. There would be public record of labor and delivery being shut down to decontaminate the whole place.
He was repeating what was told to him...not asserting it.
Your answer would make some sense if her husband was comatose during that 12 day period, too.
Yes. What she wants to know is: if other patients in the hospital had this strain of strep so she can prove that she did not acquire it in the community but in the hospital. In order to do this and not violate HIPPA a judge would have to legally get that information --thus lawsuit required.
OK, I see what you're saying...so for lack of that kind of public record, and it would be public, you're saying it's highly unlikely that the infection was picked up at the hospital. Right? But what if it wasn't in the delivery room?
sounds like bs. somebody had to give permission. somebody signed something. bs alert
She wouldn't have contracted it any where else.
Nobody would have been handling her bodily organs at any other time.
AGREED!
I am currently in nursing school. As I understand it,back in the 1990s as a costcutting measure new mothers and their babies were released within 24 hours or less-but so many problems resulted that laws were passed mandating a 2 day stay for vag births, and 4 days for C-section. The "out in 24 hours" is history, at least according to my textbook.
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