This is Leigh's story about a botched C-Section
The trauma that happened, after a planned C-section, has left me a shell of the person I once was.
I am only able to have a bowel movement by digitally removing the stool
It was about an hour after being transferred to my room after having the C-section, I felt something 'pop' and immediately knew something was seriously wrong. I immediately lay down and I had my husband and a good friend with me. One ran to call a doctor and the other hit the panic button. They examined my incision and said that all the staples were intact and it looked fine. I told them the pop was inside and it felt like something burst. They sat me up and I immediately started bleeding. They still insisted everything was fine. For the next two days they applied “pressure bandages”. I soaked through multiple pads over the next two days and kept telling them something was not right. One of my close friends who is a senior epidemiologist for public health was also so concerned she had her mother, an experienced RN come and also try to tell them something was wrong.
Two residents came and said my wound just needed a couple extra staples. This did not stop the bleeding and the excruciatingly painful pressure bandages continued. Finally in the evening my OB-GYN doctor came in and agreed something wasn’t right and that he would be back with the residents to decide what to do next. He never returned. The next day two residents came into my room. My hospital roommate and our babies present, the fathers had gone to get some sleep. The residents said they wanted to take out a couple of staples and look around underneath to see if they could see the source of the bleeding. When they took the staples out Resident#1 said I don’t see anything, #2 asked what that purple bit is, “is that bowel?” #1 panicked and removed all my staples causing my bowels and insides to come out. I think that is about when I went into shock I remember just looking at my insides and screaming. #1 than panicked and tried to shove my bowels back in. I remember her pushing so hard and both myself and my roommate screaming at her to stop. Eventually she stopped and ripped open an IV bag and poured the liquids on my stomach and covered me and only then did she call a code.
I had a lawyer who filed the case. He filed against the hospital and the doctors. He let on he did medical cases and kept assuring me that we had a great case. He then mediated a settlement between myself and my disability carrier. Eventually I found out he had left his law firm and taken the hard copy of files with him. And he had gone to work with the mediating company he had just settled my disability case with. The new lawyer said my first lawyer had gotten expert statements but they didn’t prove that my physical problems were a 100% from the trauma they had caused me. I have been on a number of different meds, suffer from major depressive disorder, anxiety and ptsd. Just doing something we all do having a bowel movement has been excruciatingly painful since the first day when I woke from the emergency repair of my bowel evisceration. He said he would look into it. At that time I learned there was $8,000.00 that had been spent on my defense. I knew it should have been more so looked back through my papers and realized my first lawyer had deducted and took over $100,000.00 then left me hanging. I was blindsided and even at the disability mediation he urged me to settle because a big settlement would be from the medmal case.
I now have gastroparesis, dysergenic defecation ( I am only able to have a bowel movement by digitally removing the stool), chronic pain, fibromyalgia and major depressive disorder, anxiety and PTSD. Just over the last couple of months I have finally been seeing the only doctor in Toronto that deals with my bowel issues. I get radio frequency nerve ablations every 3-6 months.
When this had happened both my husband and I were working full time had just bought our first house. Now I am in bed most of the time. My husband had to leave his job to take care of both the kids and myself. We are scraping by on ODSP. We are barely paying the interest on what we have on credit. If my lawyer had been straight up with us we would have been in a much better situation. I have reached out to a few medmal lawyers and every time they say they will take a look at my case and give me some answers one way or another and every time I am told they can’t help me but I need to get a lawyer to pursue my case.
I have seen emails from the defense where they are complaining that my lawyer was not responding to emails or calls from them. Meanwhile, he was telling me that he was waiting to hear back from them. I desperately need someone who can go through it to see if the medical malpractice case is salvageable and/or if there is a case against my former lawyer. Now I was just served with a Notice of Motion for summary judgment. That says I need to get lawyers for my children and that they want me to pay for the defense's legal costs. I was wronged by the medical system and am now also being punished in our legal system.
The defense is using a doctor from a major city hospital as an expert. I was also wronged by that hospital on many occasions and have complained to their complaint department many times and had switched hospitals. I had a surgery set up with them with an OBS/ GYN doctor and a bowel specialist. The bowel specialist didn’t even show up to the surgery. Another time I went in because I had broken my hand and they did x-rays and told me my hand wasn’t broken. I was sure it was so I splinted it myself. Three weeks later when I was able to check the x-ray results myself I found that sure enough my hand was broken. I called the hospital and was seen by the fracture clinic first thing the next morning. They couldn’t believe that it had been missed because the results should have been seen by three people and they couldn’t believe that the error hadn’t been caught by anyone.
Another time I went to the ER because I had a bowel impaction and hadn’t been able to clear it myself. First, they treated me like a drug seeker and I told them I have my own medication. They told me repeatedly not to take any of my own medication that the doctor wanted to give me an IV with something stronger for the procedure. The nurse came in and handed me two Tylenol and said the doctor decided I didn’t need anything for the procedure. After the procedure, I ended up on the floor of the hospital bathroom screaming in pain for minimum a of half an hour. When I came out of the bathroom the doctor was standing not ten feet away with a huge smile on his face. I googled the doctor's name and find out that he worked at the hospital where I had the C-section and found pictures of him and the OBS/GYN doctor together. I have sent numerous emails over that time complaining to their patient relations.
The nerves and muscles that control my bowels no longer work and were damaged when the resident tried to push my bowels back into me. Last month I saw the one doctor in Toronto who deals with these issues, had an MRI, and diagnosed with dyssynergic defecation. I get radiofrequency nerve ablations to the main nerves in my stomach every three months and steroid injections. I have a permanent bowel injury that even if I can take morphine in time still leaves me screaming in pain in the bathroom. My two boys have been witnessing this for 10 years. This has made them caring and empathetic boys but my older one who watched me change overnight does get really bad anxiety. The emotional and physical pain continues and no closure.
This is our Canadian health care service.