This is worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had. Every once in awhile you hear about people that go in for routine operations and end up with missing arms, legs, breasts, penises…I can’t even imagine. I can understand why some would want to magic marker something on their person (e.g. “Knee surgery NOT amputate below the knee”).
psychobunny - I went over 25 years without any antibiotics. When I was in a controlled vaccine study conducted by the NIH, of all the people across the country in the study, I had the strongest immune response to the vaccine. I attribute that to my contention that a person’s body is meant to heal itself, for the most part. You just have to be willing to give it time and accept you might feel lousy for a while.
StG
The story is apparently real but I’m still wondering (and apparently some others are also) why this thing wasn’t all over the national news when it happened. A young mother gets 4 limbs amputated 9 months ago and not a news peep anywhere?
Nope, that was University Community Hospital in Tampa.
I’m sorry, I read the thread and the link but I must’ve missed it - was she under general anesthetic and woke up this way? Where were her family members? I’m confused as to how this could’ve happened without her knowledge …
It didn’t happen without her knowledge.
The first story was extremely misleading.
The woman acquired a life-threatening infection that required multiple amputations to save her life. This is not the first time such a thing has happened to a person. It’s tragic, of course, and terrible, but nothing new.
It appears to me that the woman and her family are looking for a “cause” of her infection, possibly with intent to sue for big bucks. While it is possible some person at the hospital inadvertantly exposed her to the bacteria responsible for her infection, it is equally possible that there was no error and she brought it in, on her skin, from outside the hospital. It is possible that the physical strain of childbirth lowered her resistance sufficiently for it to gain a foothold.
In other words, this is most likely no one’s fault, just one of those incredibly unlucky things that can happen in life. The fact that this horrible thing happened to her does not in any way entitle her to pry into other peoples’ medical records on a fishing expedition, nor does it entitle her to a big bucks settlement.
Her husband is the manager of Target in Lake Mary? Wow, that’s less than a mile from my house. I’ve probably met and talked to the guy, I shop there all the time.
I just feel so sorry for this woman. It is just such a devastating loss for her and her family. I hope she’s getting physical therapy and psychological help dealing with her amputations.
Just make sure that she is willing to wear a tyvek suit and deliver your baby in an autoclave where you will be placed on a sterile slab after taking a chlorine bath.
Oh, and the baby will need to be autoclaved too… :eek:
Ahh … thanks Broomstick!
Here is another photo of her.
Right, because the caves and plains and jungles and beaches where women have been giving birth for thousands of years are so sterile. :rolleyes:
Scary story, though much less so with clarification!
ZOM*G! Does that photo link say what I think it says, right after the:
part?
[singsong] Awkward! [/singsong]
It reminds me of the motto of the Vascular Surgery service: “The longer you stay, the shorter you get.”
I didn’t even notice.
Now the story is even scarier. Before it was ‘This might happen if you go to a bad hospital.’ Now it is, ‘This might happen to you even if you go to a good hospital.’
Yikes!
No, they weren’t. On the other hand, some women have also been dying, or (I would think,) getting seriously crippled from infections after giving birth for thousands of years, too. Not a great fraction of them, maybe, but not a tiny percentage either.
Sure. But xbuckeye overstated the issue just a weeee bit, don’t you think? Okay, okay, I know he was engaging in hyperbole, but it isn’t true that a midwife birth is one that is enormously at risk for infection, though I don’t know if it’s true that it’s safer than a hospital, either.
He was making the same point I was - it is impossible to eliminate the risk of infection. Whether you give birth in a hospital, on a beach or at home, there is still the possibility that something is going to start eating your flesh faster than the docs can cut the rotten meat off you, so you shouldn’t get too hung up on this one incident.
Obviously, there are plenty of other factors to consider too, so giving birth at home may or may not be a good idea. Personally I think it’s the right choice for healthy women with uncomplicated pregnancies, decent midwife support and a good ER within a short distance in case things go wrong, but that’s just an uneducated laymans opinion.
Yes, I was attempting to be humorous. I’ll stop now.
The point I was thinking about was that midwives are more likely to be delivering in a home environment where the surroundings are less likely to be easily cleanable surfaces and the things like blankets and towels are less likely to have been disinfected or autoclaved and that the midwife herself is more likely to have just come from outside and not have changed into clean clothes.
Of course caves were much dirtier, so were the people living in them. Many people theorize that this made them more able to resist infection. If you look even a century ago, women were much more likely to die during or after childbirth. Probably even 20 years ago, this woman would have died. We can argue whether she and her family would have been better off if she had, but someone authorized the surgery to save her life, so I am guessing that they are glad she is alive, albiet now handicapped.
I was kidding, by the way.
“On the bright side, Mrs. Mejia, the people in the next room are interested in buying your shoes.”
OK, I’ll stop now.
Regards,
Shodan