A woman is accusing the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) of negligence after her recent delivery left her unable to walk.
Shellon Atkinson, 32, says her son, who weighed just over 10 pounds at his birth, was wrenched from her body so hard that he sustained a dislocated shoulder, while she is now unable to walk even with assistance.
“I am still in pain. I can’t move at all… I am at a standstill and I am panicking because I ain’t moving and walking,” the clearly frustrated mother of three told Stabroek News in a recent interview.
Contacted on Atkinson’s case, the GPHC’s Public Relations Officer Mitzy Campbell told Stabroek News that it is being addressed.
Atkinson, who blames a nurse who attended to her in the labour room, recounted her harrowing experience, which ended with her being confined to a bed and being unable to breastfeed and tend to her baby.
She said that since the February 20, birth, she has not even been able to give the child a bath. “I am not getting to enjoy my baby. I can’t feed him. I haven’t bathe him and I am not doing nothing fuh myself. It is frustrating and I am tired,” she said.
Atkinson’s baby was 4.9kg (just over 10 pounds) and though there were difficulties during the birthing process, she was made to deliver him vaginally as opposed to an emergency caesarian-section.
During the course of her pregnancy, she attended a private city clinic. When she was about five months along, she said an ultrasound was done but she was told nothing then about the baby being big.
She said her due date passed, and becoming worried, she went to the GPHC to have the child delivered. By that time, she was several days overdue.
She said at the hospital she was made to do a second ultrasound, after which a decision was taken to induce labour.
However, Atkinson said that priority cases kept coming in and as a result the process for her was delayed. She stressed that she understood that high-risk pregnancies and women with high blood pressure had to be looked at first so the delay was not a big concern for her.
Can’t make it
On the night of February 20, she said, she was ready to deliver and was escorted to the labour room by the nurse on duty.
“When I went into the room, the nurses said to go on table and hold my ankles, which I did. When the midwife checked, she said she wasn’t feeling any part of the baby. There was another nurse who came in and examined me. My knees were already up and she took her left elbow and pushed down on my knee. I did not feel pain at the time. She inserted her whole palm,” the woman related.
She recalled being exhausted but being urged by the nurse to push.
According to Atkinson she was so wary that she started closing her legs. She said the nurse who delivered her child repeatedly told her that she would nasty her (the nurse’s) clothes and that she needed to open her legs. “All the time I saying I can’t make it,” she said, adding she wasn’t feeling the baby coming.
When the baby eventually came, she said that he was shown to her but she was in a daze and she was not told that anything was wrong with him. Atkinson said that sometime after, she was informed that the baby sustained a dislocated shoulder during the delivery. She was told that it had been fixed. She said she inquired how the dislocated shoulder occurred and was told that it had occurred during delivery.
When the baby was taken to her, Atkinson said, there was no indication that something was wrong with his shoulder but she saw a piece of tape on his right hand securing a cannula.
She said she had been told prior to him being taken to her that her son was born with an infection that he picked up from her and that it would be treated it with antibiotics. However, she said that after tests were done, results showed the baby had no infection.
The following morning, she was taken by wheelchair to the ward.
“The whole day I was able to move around. The night I felt a pain in the groin area. I was trying to move but could not but didn’t take it for nothing,” she said, while recalling that the next morning when going to get her pressure checked, she fell off her bed.
She said that she used her elbows to “prop myself up on the other bed.” According to Atkinson, the nurse brought a wheelchair. “I was feeling my legs but they hurt and felt weak. Both of them. They weren’t swollen,” she said explaining that she not experienced this after the birth of her other two children.
She said that after the incident, the nurse moved her to the front of the ward, closer to the nursing station. A doctor came shortly after and asked questions. The woman said that she could not stand on her own at that point and the doctor administered an injection to ease the pain she was feeling.
Pelvic bone dislocation
Later, she said, she was able to walk but with support. However, the pain worsened and on February 22, with the assistance of her husband, she underwent an x-ray examination.
“I couldn’t walk at all, even with support. I could not separate my feet, though I could have felt it when I relax,” she said.
The x-ray showed her pelvic bone was dislocated. She said that she was told that she need not worry as this was normal during delivery and that it was nothing serious.
Still unable to walk, she was discharged days later. Her husband had to assist in getting her from the hospital to their home. At the time of her discharge, she was instructed to return on March 17, to a specific doctor. However, when she visited that day, she was directed to another doctor.
Tired from the hassle of getting from home to the hospital and faced with a crowd of persons, all of whom had to see the same doctor, Atkinson said, she and her relatives decided to go to a private hospital to seek some answers.
After her dilemma was explained, she was sent to do an ultrasound and an x ray. The x-ray, she said, showed that her pelvic bone was indeed out of place, while the ultrasound showed the presence of two masses. She said the doctor explained to her that the masses were clotted blood, which had led to an infection and it was this that caused her pain and left her unable to walk.
“If I did not get a second opinion how would I have known? They can’t be doing this,” she stressed.
She said that she cannot do anything on her own and because of the medication she is using she cannot breastfeed her child.
“I want to let people know the things these people doing. Is how they were treating me; you can’t be rough with people,” she said in reference to the nurse who pushed down on her knee during the delivery.