Should my son sue for malpractice?

[helplessmom70]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? TX

When I had my son, I was treated horribly. It was a nightmare. I was induced early due to the doctor going on vacation. Then, I was left in labor for 38.5 hours, pushing for 4.5 hrs, with no epidural. They refused me the epidural. My son was passing meconium during the pushing phase. Machines showed he was in distress. I begged for help, as did my husband and a friend who was there. We all said something was wrong. The nurse was nasty to us. She told me I was being dramatic (realize, I had been in labor for 2 days, and had been pushing for hours) and rolled her eyes. The entire thing was a nightmare. The doctor finally came in on rounds and found me in that condition. He did an emergency c-sect. My son's initial apgar was 2. At 5 minutes it was up to 9. But then he crashed and stopped breathing again. He was held in the NICU over this. I was shoved in to a dark recovery room alone. Later, I was told that my husband had been told that the baby was dying. His organs were shutting down. The very next day, I was discharged suddenly, only 1 day after the c-sect. I had a fever and was miserable. My son still had to stay longer due to being on machines.

Throughout his early years, he had several serious medical problems related to the birth. He also seems to have brain damage. We have had extensive testing done. Where we have gone, one person indicated they felt it was from the birth, but does not want to get sucked in to a lawsuit. Another said he would not make a call on it.

Now my son is 17 yrs old. His entire life has been affected as well as his future. He does ok. He is small in size due to malnurishment from the GI problems caused by the birth. He also had a variety of learning issues. My friend who was in the delivery room asked me the other day if we ever sued. She was shocked to hear we did not.

The thing is, lawsuits against holier than thou doctors are very hard. I currently do not have concrete proof that his brain damage was from the birth. But it seems pretty obvious to everyone who has been around. I cry for my son sometimes knowing how hard his life was made by these people. It is horrible that so much was taken from him, as a newborn baby.

I feel they owe him. But I am scared that a lawsuit would hurt my son and that in the end, he would receive no compensation. What should I do?

 

[Proserpina]

Take your son's entire medical file/records to a med-mal attorney for review. The initial consultation will be free and, if there is a valid case, they will take the case on contingency.

If you cannot find an attorney to take the case on contingency, this generally indicates that either there isn't a case at all, or the case is not worth litigating (it would cost too much compared to the potential award).

Good luck to you and your son.

 

[commentator]

It sounds a good deal more like you'd like to sue someone for YOUR bad experiences related to a birth that happened 17 years ago, and you haven't gotten over it yet. To have any kind of clear cut case, you need to separate your issues during the labor and delivery from his actual issues, which you haven't done in this post.

And you've provided your son with instant "victim" status that probably hasn't stood him in good stead through the years. You're broken. Who can we blame?

If your son had been born in an earlier time, he'd probably just have been a casualty of the birth process. Those "holier than thou" doctors saved his life with their modern medical equipment and processes. If you were going to have a really long difficult labor, it is very lucky you didn't choose home birth, that you had access to medical treatment.

My question is, what would you have wanted them to do differently? (except that, using hindsight, knowing exactly what was going to happen, being omnipotent, they should have done a C-section as soon as you walked in?)

You say you were induced early because your doctor was going on vacation. You had to agree to this. All ob's have back-up doctors when they go on vacation who deliver their cases while they're gone. I am sure it was very attractive idea to go on and get it over a little sooner and that you agreed to be induced.

As for the "no epidural" this was very likely better for the baby, particularly if there was evidence of fetal distress. You would have preferred that you had medication even though it might have put the baby at more risk?

Delivery room doctors these days are under a lot of pressure not to do early or unnecessary c-sections, so they do tend to let their patients labor a long time. This trend increases yearly There was recently a case in my area where the child was born with really severe brain damage, and the medical staff and facility was sued successfully. The medical staff just miscalled it, postponed the c-section till it was too late. It does certainly happen.

You were treated disrespectfully by the nurse. You were shoved into a dark recovery room. This had nothing to do with your child's current condition. Your husband was told the baby was dying....again, it wasn't unnecessary mental angish, it was probably true at the time. It had nothing to do with child's condition what he was told.

You were released and sent home the very next day, even though you were still feverish. That was the norm at that time, based on insurance coverages and hospital procedures. "Drive- by deliveries" they were called.

But now 17 years later, you're still crying sometimes about it all. Your son has some delays and disabilities. This is certainly sad and tragic. At our current level of medical expertise, it would be great if every child had the best possible beginning. I am sure you do all you can to help him overcome these difficulties. But two experts, one who will not say they are the result of his birth experiences, and one who says maybe but doesn't want to go on record saying this do not sound like a definitive case of "his bad birth/delivery (due to the incompetence of the medical staff) gave him brain damage!"

But I do agree with prior posting, you need to take this to an attorney, maybe a couple of them right now, and see if they think there is a case. If not, you've got to move on. Seek counseling for yourself as well as your son to deal with what was certainly a traumatic experience for you.

I cringe each time they come out with another blurb about "unnecessary C-sections" because it does make the doctors so slow to respond when often the C-section is necessary for the well being of the baby. But let a good malpractice attorney see this one and give you an opinion. Good luck and best wishes to you and your son.

 

[helplessmom70]

I should not have been left pushing for 4.5 hrs. Internet did not even exist back then so I had no way of knowing the problems with induction. the OB actually told me I had to be induced because of pre-eclampsia. I only found out the truth about why the induction was done later. I never had pre-eclampsia. It is not ok to leave a baby in distress for 4.5 hrs. He is lucky to be alive. A c-sect should have been done sooner. The reason he was not coming out is he was breech. The OB did not even know that when he sent me. That should have been a no-brainer for him, he is the OB.

 

[helplessmom70]

The epidural was refused for me because I did not have insurance. I begged for one. They started it. But when it wore off, they told me that because I was on medicaid they would not give me one. The very next year, a law was passed in Texas making it illegal to refuse an epidural to a woman based on insurance status. He was not in distress until it was time to push, which was the next day. I went in on a Friday to be induced. I started begging for the epidural on Saturday, he was born on Sunday.

It is time when most his classmates are preparing to apply to colleges. His brain damage has affected certain areas, but not his intelligence. He wants to earn a degree in computer science, but I am afraid he is not really capable of independent living. This is something taken from him by that hospital, those nurses, and that doctor. The psychologist who evaluated him told me she sees a lot of children who had ended up with brain damage after being delivered there.

I turned around and had a vbac with my next child. I was in labor for 9 hrs when you count from first contractions (not painful) until she was out. It is safe to assume that my son's birth would have been similar if I had not been induced early. He was not a complete breech but rather across wise. I do not recall the technical term for it. Anyway, IF he needed to be born due to preE, it should have been a c-sect with his positioning, not an induction. An induction never should have been done. And once I got to pushing and problems were presented, the medical staff should have intervened.

 

[Proserpina]

(Um...for what it's worth, the Internet did indeed exist. I had my very first email address and was surfing away back in 1995...and that was in England)

 

[helplessmom70]

(Um...for what it's worth, the Internet did indeed exist. I had my very first email address and was surfing away back in 1995...and that was in England)

He was born in 1994.

And I think the term I should have used was world wide web where one could get information. I was not on it anyway, I don't think anyone really was in 1994.

 

[Proserpina]

He was born in 1994.

And I think the term I should have used was world wide web where one could get information. I was not on it anyway, I don't think anyone really was in 1994.

(Not that it matters to your situation - I'm just big on accuracy. Yes, I was surfing the WWW ...the interwebz...getting information...along with millions of others way back then)

As I suggested earlier, take your son's records to an attorney.

 

[helplessmom70]

I should add, I was in grad school at the time, which is the reason I was on medicaid. I had worked for two years and then went back to grad school and no longer had insurance when I found out I was expecting my son. Anyway, I did have an email address while in college. I think, though, there was a term, something having to do with something called relay. The point is, it is not like now where you have websites and information you can access. I didn't have a computer anyway. I used the universities computer lab for my school work that required a computer. Back then, the only thing we really used the computer for was word processing. I did use it for math lab type work. That was it.

 

[helplessmom70]

(Not that it matters to your situation - I'm just big on accuracy. Yes, I was surfing the WWW ...the interwebz...getting information...along with millions of others way back then)

As I suggested earlier, take your son's records to an attorney.

That is actually interesting to know. Not arguing or anything. It is just I was always kind of curious when the WWW got up and going because I never was on it before 1997. I always sort of assumed the major part of the internet started then because I only left grad school in 1995 (but was not really in classes once my son was born due to his health issues) and it was never used by my professors. I went to a major state university.

 

[tranquility]

I didn't get into detail because I saw way too many "I"'s for a thread titled "Should my son sue for malpractice?"

 

[commentator]

My point precisely!

 

[Mnemosyne]

The thrill of browsing the web on a Commodore Amiga. Remember Mosaic?

Ah, nostalgia.

(Not that it matters to your situation - I'm just big on accuracy. Yes, I was surfing the WWW ...the interwebz...getting information...along with millions of others way back then)

 

[Antigone*]

He was born in 1994.

And I think the term I should have used was world wide web where one could get information. I was not on it anyway, I don't think anyone really was in 1994.

I was one of the first MSN users back in 1994 when it first came online.