Featured News 2013 Family Sues Hospital After Surgical Wire is Left in Toddler

Family Sues Hospital After Surgical Wire is Left in Toddler

Three-year-old Jax is a joyful little boy that is dearly loved by his parents. They were worried when Jax became ill when he was only about two years old. The child had just been given immunization shots, and when the mother and child arrived home little Jax went limp. His mother recalls screaming for her husband, and calling an ambulance immediately as they watched their child have a seizure. The child was rushed to the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.

Once they arrived at the hospital, nurses tried to insert IVs into Jax's arm in order to give him fluids, but his was too dehydrated to receive the needles. A doctor then suggested that they insert a catheter into one of Jax's leg veins to give him the fluids and medications that he needed from the episode. His parents agreed to the procedure. IN order to administer the catheter, the doctor had to first insert a guide wire and then slide the IV tube right over that wire.

Medical records show that the catheter was administered without any complications, but this couldn't be further from the truth for this grief-stricken family. Little Jax remained in Pediatric Intensive Care for several days after the seizure and underwent brain scans and a spinal tap. The doctors then told the family that there was nothing wrong with Jax, and that he had probably just had a violent reaction to one of his shots. The family was sent home.

Once they were settled back in after the scare, the parents started noticing that Jax walked funny sometimes and was behaving oddly. His personality had shifted from the way that he acted prior to his seizure. Jax's mom says that the baby would simply stiffen up sometimes, and then would relax and be himself again. The parents took the toddler to a pediatrician in their area, who said that he couldn't find anything wrong with the baby.

Still, the odd behavior persisted. Sometimes the toddler would grab his neck and scream in pain, and then go back to playing like nothing had ever happened. One day, while buckling the baby into his car seat his mother noticed that the baby had a cyst on his neck. She took Jax to the doctor and received a medication that could help to reduce the infected skin condition. Hours after arriving home, Jax's mom was looking at the cyst again when she noticed something shocking.

There was a black tip on the cyst and it was moving around. Jax's father said that the small tip looked like a thorn sticking out of the child's neck. The couple rushed their baby to a nearby medical clinic and discovered that the situation was very serious. Nurses and doctors rushed around without informing the parents as to what was going on.

When a nurse finally clued them in on what was going on, the news was alarming. There were wires inside of Jax. According to the medical diagnosis, the toddler had a wide inside Jax chest and another one that was running up into his head. The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is the possibility that the guide wire from Jax's catheter had been left in the child's body. It then broke into two pieces and migrated through his body.

One of the wires was 13 inches and the other was 6.5 inches. The wires could have punctured vital organs and caused serious damage or poked at blood vessels and caused internal bleeding. If you have suffered error in a surgical procedure or if your loved one had an item left in after surgery, then you will want to contact a medical malpractice attorney near you to help you with your case and get you the medical damages that you deserve!

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