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Faulty caesarean procedure lands 20-year-old in ICU
By Abena Rockliffe
Denika Hernandez, 20, is now in a critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) after delivering her first baby.
Denika Hernandz in her current condition
The patient’s mother, Nicole Hernandez, told Kaieteur News of the “horror story” which landed her daughter in the critical care ward.
The young woman, who hails from Mabaruma, North West Region, gave birth to a healthy baby boy on May 23 by Caesarean section at the GPHC. (A cesarean section, or c-section, is the delivery of a baby through a surgical incision in the mother’s abdomen and uterus.)
There were no complications during the actual delivery.
Nine days later, the mother was discharged from GPHC and traveled back to her homeland by plane.
The patient’s mother told this newspaper that the very day she returned home, her daughter developed a fever.
As she fought to hold back her tears, Hernandez explained that the fever was later accompanied by persistent vomiting and excruciating pain.
Hernandez said that the young mother endured this for five days as “we thought it was a side effect to it being her first child and because she delivered by C section. We thought it would have gone away.”
Kaieteur News understands that it was only when the pain became “more than her,” that the young mother was taken to the Mabaruma Hospital.
At that facility, the patient was reportedly initially told that she just needed blood and that she would have been better after that. The older Hernandez claims that her daughter was also told by the doctor that the pain was due to the healing process of the surgery, but was kept in the hospital for observation.
By then her stomach had begun to bloat and she was reportedly examined by another doctor identified as Dr. Langhorne who instructed that the young mother be sent to Georgetown for advanced medical attention.
After being examined at GPHC’s Accident and Emergency Unit, the young woman was placed in Ward E where she remained until after she had a CT scan and ultra sound done.
The older Hernandez told this publication that medical professionals then informed her that her daughter had developed a pelvic abscess which had begun to turn gangrenous.
As a result, the young mother was made to undergo a second surgical process two Tuesdays ago and subsequently had to do a blood transfusion. Then, on Sunday, the patient’s mother was contacted and informed that her daughter would have to be taken for another surgery (third).
The mother recalled, “They call me and say how me daughter was at a critical state and they needed to buss back de cut, but when I go I see she had a new cut so now me child get three cuts, one under she belly and two down she chest.”
Relatives say they were told that the doctor, whilst suturing the incision from the C Section, went too deep and mistakenly involved the young mother’s intestines.
The young mother was then facing a situation where her faeces were escaping through the perforations in her intestines and therefore began to poison her; hence the ensuing bouts of fever, pain and vomiting.
Hernandez said, “De CT Scan and ultra sound show that she intestine bore up bad.”
The family is of the belief that the doctor knew that something had gone wrong since she did not sign on the form indicating that she delivered the baby.
“On the chart they had a line ‘delivered by:’ and she only put doctor, she didn’t sign. When we asked her name, she refused to give us. Then they call us in a meeting to tell we that is de baby de defecate in her and that she has an infection that they don’t know and will never know what it is.”
Kaieteur News understands that the mother still has to undergo further surgery to remove a tube that is currently attached to her intestines through which her faeces leave her body.
Hernandez told Kaieteur News that the staff at the ICU is trying their best to save her child’s life.
Another relative said that “all the nurses are kind, except this one nurse who had an attitude this morning (yesterday) because she found out we went to the media.”
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