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.
But the article certainly isn't the best written piece of American journalism ...Is it my imagination, or do reporters (and editors, and proofreaders) get worse every year?
Here in KY insurance will pay for max of 2 days on vaginal delivery, and 2-3 days on C-Sections.
I talked to postpartum nurse to ask and she said she did not believe it was by law, just by insurance policy here .
I know it wasn't a staph infection, I was just making the point that certain forms of staph are only located in hospitals.
Jenny
There are no forms of staph located only in hospitals.
MRSA may have started in hospitals or nursing homes but it is in the community now.
Gay clubs are one of the primary sources of community acquired infection.
Obviously Rush Limbaugh is not one of those "other" patients.
"Clostridium Dificile is the one you can't live without but there
are strains of it that are deadly."
You're probably already on top of this...but for others in the forum who
haven't heard about the outbreaks of C. diff:
http://www.newstarget.com/016053.html
It isn't easy to successfully sue a hospital because of an infection. Proving where you got the infection is difficult and finding a doctor or hospital employee to testify against the hospital is not an easy task. Usually the "expert witnesses" have to be doctors from other states because they don't want to testify against someone they will be passing in the halls or on the golf course.
I recommend that anyone who has surgery get their medical records from the hospital and doctor's office. It can be expensive if you had a long stay and complications or cheap if the stay was short. But, if there were complications you might never know it until you read it in your chart. By law they have to provide you with your records; but, they do charge for them. The fee is approximately $1 per page for the first five or ten pages then 25 to 50 cents for each additional page. Yes, it can be expensive; but, the information can be PRICELESS.
Maybe her husband was unable to speak English well, uneducated or just plain overwhelmed by the whole situation. Even if both he and his wife were geniuses, these things can move very fast and decisions have to be made fast. Sometimes life really is as messy and frightening as an episode of ER or Grey's Anatomy.
Some of you FReepers can be shockingly ignorant and heartless. For your information people can and do lose all of their blood and survive. Haven't you ever heard of blood transfusions? What a friggin idiot you are. My mother nearly bled to death in the 1950s. She was a rare blood type and they had to call the TV and radio stations and ask people with her blood type to please come to our hospital immediately to donate blood for her. Guess what. She lived 40 more years and kept a list of her blood donors the rest of her life. She was very grateful.
See my post #228.
Check this out.
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