A cruel twist of fate last month drastically altered the life of Padminie McRae forever when an accident at the Infectious Diseases Hospital forced the amputation of her left leg from above the knee, after she was mistakenly admitted as a positive COVID-19 patient.
“I am just depressed right now… it is because of the hospital negligence that make this happen to me… It is like I went in hell…,” a weeping McRae, 56, told Stabroek News yesterday, almost a month after she became an amputee.
“Right now, I am very emotional because I went in there with both feet and I come out back with one…,” she said as she continued to weep.
Padminie was in the Liliendaal hospital because she was referred to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) by Woodlands Hospital with a positive COVID-19 test.
The accident occurred in the hospital’s transition ward as Padminie grabbed on to an oxygen tank in an effort to break a fall that occurred when she attempted to retrieve some of her personal items from the floor.
“And then when them put me back on the bed a nurse go tell me look how I coulda make the whole hospital burn down. Is not my fault. Is them negligence. They shoulda have them tank strap down…,” the woman, who is diabetic and suffered a stroke six years ago, continued.
Apart from negligence, both Padminie and her husband, Nelroy McRae, believe neglect has also been meted out to her as they say her post-release care has been
shabby. They told this newspaper that they were only given one bandage roll when they sought assistance. A wheelchair that Padminie now uses to aid her mobility was donated by a church.
Nelroy bemoaned the fact that no one from the Health Ministry has reached out to his family. He said he visited the ministry while his wife was left in their minibus at the gate and when he requested someone go out to see her he was told they had important business to attend to. He believes that a nurse could have been sent to his home to assist with the dressing of his wife’s leg.
“I don’t know what kind of monster is this…they know is their fault. Come on Mr Minister, say something. We need compensation. We need something. This is horrible. What happen to my wife? She walk in good, good and now she come back without her foot… Do something! Say something! Is like I wrong and me ain’t want say sorry…,” the husband, tears streaming down his face, said in a direct appeal to Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony.
Nelroy said while he approached the ministry for assistance he was told that he had to approach the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security for public assistance.
The family is now calling on the ministry to compensate them and to ensure that no other family is faced with a similar experience. They stated that they now have to purchase dressing and go to the health centre for it to be changed during the week and they pay for a nurse to visit Padminie at home to change the dressing on the weekends when the centre is not opened.
Efforts to contact Ministry Anthony and Chief Medical Officer Dr Narine Singh were unsuccessful as calls to their respective numbers went unanswered.
False positive
However, while confirming that the woman’s leg was amputated, GPH’s Head of Strategic Planning and Communications Chelauna Providence said that she could not address the issue of compensation for the family as that is a matter for the ministry.
Providence confirmed that the woman was referred to the GPH by a private hospital with a positive COVID-19 result. She was sent to the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal on the same day, Friday, March 19, and it was early the following morning that the oxygen tank fell on her foot. According to Providence while the beds have buzzers for patients to call for assistance, Padminie did not utilise this and it was after she fell that doctors and nurses heard her screaming and rushed to assist her.
She said they consulted with the GPH’s orthopaedic department and it was decided at that point that the toes on Padminie’s injured foot had to be removed. This was done on Monday after they realised that it had become infected and the fact that she was diabetic. The head doctor at Liliendaal, Dr. Tracey Bovell, contacted the family on the afternoon of Monday, March 22, and Nelroy was upset when told his wife’s toes had to be amputated.
Dr. Bovell and others from GPH met with the man and Padminie’s other relatives the following day with the intention of providing them with further information and making any needed clarification. They were then advised that the woman’s leg may have to be amputated because it was becoming infected.
It was also during that meeting that it was realised that the woman was being treated for COVID-19 based on an antibody test and therefore a PCR test was ordered. The swab was done on Tuesday, March 23, and it revealed that she was COVID-19 negative. As a result, she was later transferred to the GPH’s High Dependency Unit (HDU).
False positives can occur with authorised antigen tests and as a result PCR tests are standard for confirming COVID cases. Padminie had visited the Woodlands Hospital on March 19 because she had a high fever and her tonsils were inflamed. The woman explained that four days prior they had visited the Herstelling Health Centre, where she and her husband had COVID-19 tests administered because of her fever. Those tests were negative but because she continued to have the fever they decided to visit Woodlands.
“When we go Woodlands now they run a whole host a tests and because of she fever and so on that is when the doctor told us that they suspected COVID-19 and that we must go to the Georgetown Hospital. And so we leave and go to Georgetown Hospital because they give us a referral for there…” he said.
He later stated that the hospital gave them a positive anti-body COVID-19 test result to take to the GPH, which later transferred her to the Infectious Diseases Hospital.
Fall
Padminie said she arrived at the hospital late on March 19 and she had a shower and was assisted by a nurse to dress before being placed on a bed. Later the woman said she went to the washroom and on her return she observed all her personal belongings, including her spectacles, on the floor behind the cupboard next to her bed.
“So I just peep over so to look for the bag and to go and pick it up and when I go to pick it up like a feel a falling so I just—you know when you falling you try to grab anything and so the oxygen cylinder was there and I grab on it and I fall. When I fall the gas cylinder fall on the foot and I gone into a blackout…,” the woman said.
While she believes the accident happened on Friday night the hospital says it happened at around 5 am on Saturday.
The woman believes she was on the floor for almost an hour and half without assistance and according to her she called for help but it took some time before anyone came. She was in the process of video calling her relatives to show them her injured foot when it was taken from her.
This was denied by the hospital official but the woman’s husband said he saw the bloodied foot before the call was abruptly ended. Attempts to call her again proved futile and according to the family her phone was only returned on the day she was discharged.
A doctor attended to her while she as on the floor and when she enquired as to what was happening “he said he was stitching the toe but me didn’t know like they did done amputate the toes”.
The hospital has reported her toes were amputated on Monday afternoon, the same day her husband was contacted and informed of the procedure.
The woman said she was dizzy for a while after the accident and she later realised she was strapped to the bed because according to the nurses and doctors she was misbehaving.
Almost a month after she was discharged the marks on her wrists, which she said were strapped to the bed, are evident. Her family also showed photographs of other parts of her body which bore marks that they said they found suspicious.
According to Padminie, her foot was not dressed again until two days after the incident and in the meantime her family was unable to make contact with her.
‘We had to call’
“We were the ones who had to call. We keep calling and calling and it was a brother from overseas who get a number for someone… and that is how we get information. This thing happen on Friday evening and it was until Sunday afternoon we get to speak to this man,” the couple’s son said during the interview.
That individual gave them some information until the Monday afternoon, March 22, when Nelroy received a call from a doctor informing him that they had to amputate her toes because of the injury.
“Me and the doctor had it out because I ask he how you all could cut me wife toe and ain’t tell me nothing. ‘What is the problem? How? Why? Why you all do that?’” the man said, still seeming to want answers to those questions.
They confirmed that on the next day they had a meeting with hospital officials and they were informed that attempts were being made to save the woman’s leg. The husband said he even apologised for his behaviour when he was informed that his wife’s toes were amputated and he begged that she be taken care of.
Later that night, they received a call from a hospital official informing them that her leg would have to be amputated. They rushed down to the hospital and were told that the foot was infected and it was spreading and if her leg was not amputated it would poison Padminie’s blood and she could die. They agreed but by that time Padminie had already signed the document to have the operation done.
“When we were going to the hospital I was in the ambulance and it was dark and they hold me hand to guide me to sign. I didn’t know what I was signing to or nothing,” the woman said.
“We leave from there and we go home. We go home with sheer tears in our eyes and nobody ain’t really reach out back to us…,” Nelroy said, adding that the entire situation is heartbreaking.
According to the man, when he first visited his wife at GPH after she was transferred she was lying on the bed with no bedsheet and it was only after he brought it to the attention of the nurse that a sheet was placed in the bed. They also claimed that they saw rodents in the ceiling of the hospital ward and the husband said he took some photographs but was told by the nurse if he wanted to continue visiting his wife he needed to delete the photographs. “I had to delete the photographs because I wanted to go and see me wife…,” he said.
The woman said she assisted her husband in selling chickens they reared but now she is unable to help him.
“The pressure is on us because I can’t bring in income. I got a mortgage to pay, a huge mortgage. People might come and say yeah, he get a nice house, [but] is money I borrow… I never expected this and this heartbreaking. This is to send people mad. And all is carelessness and negligence of these people,” Nelroy said.
Meanwhile, Providence said as far as possible the hospital has been assisting the family and will continue to do so as her leg heals. She stressed that while they can assist with care, the family’s request for compensation is outside of the hospital’s mandate.
