Posted on 02/14/2009 8:14:42 PM PST by Reaganesque
Days after doctors told Jenna Lester, 16, she had a virus she was dead from a brain haemorrhage. Her mum has battled for answers ever since.
As Sonia Lester anxiously stroked her daughter Jennas hair, she hoped that the 16-year-olds symptoms really were nothing more than a tummy bug.
Jenna had suffered crippling headaches and aching eyes for weeks before she collapsed at home and was rushed to hospital.
Doctors diagnosed a stomach virus despite the familys pleas to give her a brain scan.
She was sent home but a week later suffered a massive seizure. Back at the hospital medics found a clot on her brain.
And within four days Jenna was dead. Sonia says: When Jenna collapsed my husband Mark and I knew that something was wrong with her head.
Shed been having appalling headaches for weeks and on top of that shed hit her head hard when she collapsed.
We begged the doctors over and over to do a brain scan, but they refused. It was only after the seizure that doctors started taking notice of her symptoms and we finally realised what a terrible mistake had been made.
Shortly before becoming ill, Jenna had celebrated her 16th birthday with a trip to London to see the Phantom Of The Opera. Sonia continues: I have such happy memories of that time she was so happy and excited. But then soon after she changed.
She was much quieter and not at all like herself.
The fun-loving, happy teenager became withdrawn as the constant headaches took their toll.
Worried Mark and Sonia, from Wainscott, Kent, took her to the doctor and to see an optician. But neither could see a problem.
Sonia said: None of us could understand it. Something was definitely wrong but no one could tell us what.
Then she collapsed and it became obvious that what she had was so much worse than we had thought.
Jenna was admitted to the Medway Maritime Hospital, doctors performed a series of routine tests and diagnosed a gastric viral infection.
Meanwhile her parents asked doctor after doctor to investigate the headaches. It was so frustrating when the doctors said she had a virus, because that just did not cover all her symptoms, Sonia says.
Jenna was put on a ward full of elderly people and she looked so fragile.
It broke my heart to see her like that.
But we couldnt do anything.
We asked every single doctor that we could find if they would be able to help us, but all that any of them would say was that it wasnt
their department.
Despite her parents pleas, Jenna was sent home shortly afterwards. But in the following days her headaches became so severe she could barely move.
Again Sonia begged doctors to look at her daughters head. Jenna was finally booked in for a scan on February 13, 2006, only to be told she must wait two more days following a communication foul-up. Hours after Sonia was told of the delay, her daughter suffered a huge seizure and was rushed back to hospital.
Sonia says: After the seizure all the problems wed faced in getting her a scan disappeared.
Suddenly there was a machine available and she was taken in straight away. Soon after, the doctors told us there was a massive clot in her brain and we knew all our worst fears had come true.
Jenna unconscious by now was rushed to Londons Kings College Hospital, where surgeons worked against the clock to save her.
Despite their efforts, Jennas life-support machine was turned off four days later.
When the machine was switched off, it was like a hole was ripped out of all our lives, Sonia remembers. We were shattered, just devastated.
What made it worse was the surgeon at Kings told us that if Jenna had been scanned earlier he could have operated while she was conscious improving her chances dramatically.
Thats why we have fought so hard for an apology from the NHS if we can prevent this happening again, we will. Tearfully, Sonia remembers her daughters kindness and generosity. Jenna was such a caring, loving person.
If she could help in any way she always would and her dad and I were so proud of her.
After she died we agreed for her to be a multi-organ donor because we knew it was what she would have wanted that was the kind of person she was.
Sonia and Mark, who have a son, Adam, 13, and 16-year-old daughter Sam, spent three years fighting for an apology from the doctors behind her faulty diagnosis. Earlier this month, the NHS finally admitted mistakes had been made.
Her death was a second fatal error on the part of the Medway doctors. Lauren Simmons died in May 2005.
Like Jenna, 17-year-old Lauren suffered a brain haemorrhage after doctors wrongly diagnosed her with a virus again failing to perform a brain scan or blood tests.
The NHS also apologised for the flawed diagnosis of Lauren this month.
A statement from the Trust said: Medway NHS Foundation Trust would like to reiterate its sincere apologies to the Lester family for the shortcomings in care Jenna received.
Whilst nothing can compensate for this tragic experience,
lessons have been learnt and robust arrangements are in place to ensure this does not happen again.
The Trust adopted recommendations the Healthcare Commission issued in relation to this case in 2007.
Disgusted, Sonia says: If I saw the doctors now that I believe are responsible for these horrific mistakes, I wouldnt want to look at them, let alone speak to them.
We have wanted an apology for Jennas death for so long and finally the NHS has admitted they were wrong.
But it will never be enough for us because things still need to change at Medway.
In just six months, two girls have died in exactly the same circumstances and absolutely nothing has been done.
The doctors involved are still practising none of them even faced a suspension let alone a ban.
More action needs to be taken to stop this happening again and if we can do anything to highlight that we will.
No parent should have to lose their child in such awful circumstances, and if we can help stop this at least we will know that Jenna did not die for nothing.
What country are you from? There is no way you would have gotten an EMG and an MRI for $100 here in the states.
This was seven..err... eight years ago. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was astoundingly cheap. My parents were paying for it, and I can still remember seeing the bill and saying, “Wow, that’s all it cost?” It might not have been $100 (that was the first number that popped into my head), but it was still surprisingly inexpensive. They did have awfully good insurance, better than I have now. Who knows?
Fight it for your life!!!
Obama and his evil democrat party tossed this into the "Stimulus" package: Medical rationing and penalizing doctors who order tests.
That's probably not in the cards. I think they will migrate North...and to Brazil and Argentina.
Is their NHS immune to lawsuits? Good grief, are they making the case for tort lawyers? Holy carp.
An honest mistake. Someone must have transposed the patient’s age, and reported her to be 61 instead of 16.
/sarcasm
That's right. My wife who has no para-thyroids (cancer surgery 3 years ago) and because of that suffers from calcium management problems. There weeks ago she had an outpatient GI procedure done. Two nights later she woke up and vomited blood. An ambulance crew took her to the ER.
She had emergency surgery to fix the out patient surgery screw up.. that took loner than normal. She had lost 2/3’s her blood! In recovery her daughter and I told the nursing crew about her calcium problem and to get a bag running immediately. The did so with a bag of saline.
She woke up the next day and was feeling horrible. She was sure she was going to die. We had the nurse check her calcium and it was extremely low. This meant she was about go minutes to an hour from death. Too low calcium means heart arrest and death. Her daughter and I got on the phone to hospital admin and doctors. Within 20 minutes they had a bag of calcium running wide open. Added another immediately.
We also made them remove the saline and instead put on a bag with sugar water. Plain saline keeps her blood pressure up but FLUSHES calcium and they had been running saline for over 30 hours at that point. So we had her moved to ICU.
The next day she woke up and said she knows she had also died. She was feeling better but worn out and went back to sleep. That night though, she called me at home and said she had seen the latest calcium stats and she was about a point OVER normal.
Too much can also kill you! So she pulled the IV and her and I agreed to make calls to her doctors and the hospital admin again. Finally she went back to sleep.
We got her out in the morning as early as possible. So within 48 hours she nearly died from a GI bleed, nearly had a heart attack from too low calcium, then nearly died from to high calcium.
All preventable ERRORS.. we had told the hospital, doctors, and nurses of the calcium situation since the beginning. As my wife said if it wasw anyone else in there with no one watching out for her she would have died three times!
And she is a former RN and was sad about what she had been through. How many out there have died from these type of “accidents”??? I reminded her that with bHo in office many will die from these type of "accidents"! She agreed that she was lucky her daughter and I know what it going on.
How many out there aren't aware of all the stuff to watch for?
You know, I agree with you in theory, but we’re facing something similar (though not as dire as this story) and great insurance and a dozen experts aren’t helping us.
For three years my 17 year old daughter’s been suffering terrible migraines. Her joints are swelling off and on and she’s having chest pain and heart palpitations. But the doctors just aren’t listening. Over and over doctors tell us that there’s nothing wrong with her, but her fingers and knees get HUGE, red, stiff and hot off and on and I know that this is NOT in her head. We get an abnormal blood test (elevated sed rate or elevated C-reactive protein) and the doctor says that it’s not abnormal enough. One pupil blows (fixed and dilated) and the eye socket swells to the point where the eyeball is bulging and we’re told that it didn’t happen. (Even though an ER doc, our family doc and the school nurse all witnessed it - it didn’t happen. It’s impossible because something like that would never resolve on it’s own.)
One afternoon (about a year ago) she was laying in my bed with yet another headache. I told her to get ready to go. (We were going to an exotic animal farm to pick out a puppy.) She couldn’t get out of bed.
*That* is when it hit me just how much she was suffering.
And she gets that bad almost every afternoon. The only thing that keeps her going is rage. Rage at the entire medical community. Rage at her own body. Rage at her weakness.
The medical system is *broken*. The doctors are burned out. I *know* we’re not the only people in this boat.
Socialized medicine will only make it worse, but we have to admit that it’s awful now. Situations like ours make the general public desperate for a solution and when people get desperate, they have knee-jerk reactions and do stupid things.
I think you can find these stories in the U.S. as well. Misdiagnosis is big in medicine.
Praying for your daughter. ~Pandora~
And .. according to the stimulus - the main target will be the elderly .. because if youre past a certain age .. and youre just going to die anyway .. we cant waste the govts money on helping you.
It seems to me that they are striving to have people live forever. Look at the mandates on foods that they are trying to take away from people, drugs that are being created. I think it is total opposite of what you believe that they want people to live until over 100 years old.
This story is the most chilling one I’ve seen:
An American traveling in the UK...
http://www.nahu.org/media/singlepayervideo.cfm
Thank you. We’ll take ‘em! :-(
A year and a half ago I was injured by a falling crate at work. The hospital bandaged it,gave me a tetanus shot, took an xray and sent me home. About 2 weeks later I noticed the wound was healing rather slow and went to the Emergency room again and they gave me antibiotics, rebandaged the leg and sent me home. About a week later I was at my urologist and showed him my leg just as an afterthought and he was horrified-he made me go to the nearest ER right away. While there the emergency room doctor removed the bandage and a smell like stale sweat socks came from the wound, which had gotten so big there was actually a visible hole in the leg-long story short it was gangrene which my surgeon said was caught just in time to save the lower part of my leg. After 2 operations and a skin graft everything turned out fine. According to the hospital everything was done correctly and getting gangrene was just bad luck.
Have you or have you considered putting her on an elimination diet?
Reality is that if the US system weren’t flooded with illegals, this would not be an issue.
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