A routine medical procedure gone horribly wrong as doctors could not remove stuck epidural catheter from an 18 year old woman primipara after delivery.
An 18-year old new mom, Selena Gray shares a horrifying story and said she suffered an “agonizing pain” following a costly labour room mishap which left her with an epidural stuck in her back for almost four days.
Selena Gray gave birth to a baby girl named Serenity on June 26 at Sacred Heart Hospital Pensacola, in Florida. The day before, when she went into labor, she received an epidural — a spinal anesthesia, administered through a catheter, sometimes used to relief labour pains during delivery and on request. But Gray says her procedure went awry, leaving the epidural’s plastic entry tube lodged in her back.
“Basically, my epidural looped itself into my spine,”Gray told Fox19. “It’s in a knot in my spine, and they’ve been trying to tug at it and tug at it. I haven’t been able to get up or move or do anything. I fear the worst case scenario which is paralysis”. She said.
From her Facebook post, she was transferred to Baptist Health care by Sacred Heart Hospital, also in Pensacola, two days later for expert care. But, according to her, the medical staff there, “refused to touch me.”
In a Facebook Live videoposted to her profile, Gray said her doctor at Sacred Heart told her, “‘In all my years, I haven’t seen anything like this,’ so basically, they’re as shocked as I am.” She added that the doctors would “pull and pull at my spine,” and that her doctor went to get a neurologist to see what he could do. When he couldn’t get the epidural out either, she said, the doctor “cut it.”
“They used me as a practice tool(a lab rat),” she said in the video, adding that the doctor was “practicing.”
Baptist Health Care and Ascension (Sacred Heart Hospital) did not immediately respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment, but declined to comment forFox 19.
Gray eventually took matters into her own hands and requested to be transferred to University of Florida Health Shands Hospital, about five hours away, in Gainesville, where doctors removed the epidural with an incision. In a Facebook post, she said that she was on the mend and suffered excruciating pain.
“I thank everyone for all their prayers and I [thank] God that Shands Hospital was able to remove the epidural out my back last night,” she wrote. “They had to make an incision leaving me with stitches but I’m on the road to recovery.”
But in a distressing setback just a day later, on June 30, Gray was in “agonizing pain,” according to her mother, Patricia Alvarado, whoposted an update on Facebook. According to the post, the new mom has been unable to walk without support, and cannot stand up and hold her newborn baby at the same time-a possible complication of the stuck epidural.
Gray however said her only source of hope is her beautiful and big-eyed newborn baby which she described as “her bundle of joy”.
Gray, wrote her mother, is “not doing too well and she is very scared and distraught she can’t barely walk.”
Neither Gray nor her mother could be reached for comment by Yahoo Lifestyle. And a spokesperson for UF Health (Shands Hospital) declined to provide a statement, stating patient privacy laws and oath of confidentiality.
Courtesy:Yahoo News
