Unfiltered Story #309441

So this is the story about how my mom lost her ability to walk.

It happened when I was three. My mom was pregnant with a foetus that would have been my younger sister. She got sick, vomiting and dizzy and other symptoms. My father, who works for the University brought her to the [University Hospital]. That’s when our nightmare began.

I don’t know most of the details. Sometimes Dad says he figured out what was making mom sick before the doctor, and it showed the doctor up so the doctor was getting revenge. The doctor’s own story in the later lawsuit changed several times… he claimed he wouldn’t perform the procedure for religious reasons, he claimed he wasn’t treating her so that he could teach med students, he claimed he didn’t treat her just because he forgot. The reason doesn’t really matter: Mom was sick with blood flowing into her brain. This was caused somehow by her pregnancy, the blood flow increased but the blood vessels didn’t increase in capacity to match it. The treatment was simple: Abort the 4 month old Foetus and my Mom lives, or don’t and both die.

The doctor, and through him the hospital, refused to take the simple lifesaving measure of aborting the foetus.

Dad found out and signed mom out of the hospital. He loaded her, sick and delirious, into our tiny Mazda pickup truck. The seatbelt was the only thing keeping her upright. He gave me something to drink, I think alcohol in warm milk, and I went to sleep.

When I woke up we were in Fort Wayne, at Mom’s Parent’s house. He dropped me off with Mom’s parents, they cared for me for most of the month after that, and took Mom to the hospital in Fort Wayne where the necessary treatment was administered.

In the subsequent lawsuit the doctors at Fort Wayne said that my mom would likely still be able to walk today had the treatment been more prompt.

We won some sort of settlement, but Dad and Mom had to sign an NDA. The lawsuit was very stressful. Dad says that the Hospital had a whole panel of lawyers, and he just had the one lawyer.