By Iana Seales
The mother of a 10-year-old Agricola girl who died from a ruptured appendix at the Georgetown Public Hospital last week said the system, which readily dismisses patients without properly checking them, failed her daughter and led to her death.
Trudy Nero who will bury little Kean Greaves tomorrow said yesterday that she would have had no reason to plan a funeral, “if the system at the hospital was more alert and they paid more attention to people”.
For three days Nero took her daughter to the public hospital with the child complaining of an unbearable pain in her tummy and according to the woman, doctors looked at her, prescribed tablets and sent her away.
On the day they decided to keep her, the child was already far gone and a late rush for surgery was also too late.
The post-mortem examination performed yesterday concluded that the child died from a ruptured appendix and also showed that her kidney was infected.
When contacted yesterday, Medical Director at GPHC, Dr Madan Rambarran said that Nero should have approached the hospital with her complaint before going to the press and declined to comment.
But the woman said she spoke with hospital staff on numerous occasions while running there for three days and also on the day before her daughter died. She added that the hospital could not get her to go back to there to complain again now that her child was dead.
Recounting what she described as a difficult week beginning on May 26, Nero said her daughter complained of pains in her tummy and cried out all through the night. The following day (May 27), she rushed her to the paediatric clinic at the public hospital. She said she was informed by the doctor who saw the girl that a virus was going around and that there was no need to worry. The doctor prescribed tablets and sent them away.
It was only a matter of hours before the girl started complaining again so the next day (May 28) Nero rushed her to the Emergency Room at the public hospital. She said the doctor at ER had her take a urine test and shortly after informed Nero that her daughter had appendicitis.
“He told me that she had to do a surgery for her appendix and I said okay. But he said he had to discuss it first with another doctor who was there before anything could happen. The other doctor asked to look at Kean and after seeing her that doctor decided the surgery was not necessary,” the mother related.
She said that the surgery was called off and she got more tablets and was sent away with her child, but the tablets did not help and the next morning (May 29), Nero rushed her daughter to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre on the East Bank. The doctor there did a blood test and an ultra sound and diagnosed that the child had a problem in her gall bladder. He then rushed her to the GPH in an ambulance.
At the ER a third doctor who had not seen the child before examined her and said she was okay and dismissed the idea that anything was wrong with her appendix when Nero asked about it. She said an x-ray was done on that occasion. They were given more tablets and sent home.
Kean seemed to be doing okay for a little while after returning home but the pain returned and Nero rushed her to a private hospital in the city two day later, which was on May 31. There a doctor examined her and said she was going to be fine and after giving them some more tablets, they were sent away. But the child did not improve and Nero rushed her to the public hospital for fourth time on June 1.
She said they sat in the ER waiting room for hours with no sign of them seeing a doctor and she started to behave badly.
“I made noise and eventually they looked at her. The doctor who saw her then was a different doctor and he said she needed saline. At the time she was vomiting so they put a tube in her nose and was draining fluid from her stomach,” she recounted.
According to Nero, a doctor then examined Kean and said she had to go the theatre for surgery as soon as possible. Nero said that was earlier in the day and the hospital then had the child do blood and urine tests and an ultra sound. Later that night found them still waiting for her to go into the theatre. She said the doctor who performed the surgery was approached around 7:30 pm and questioned about the delay. He told her that the theatre was in use.
Around 9:30 pm her daughter was taken in for surgery and about two hours later the doctor emerged from the operating room to say that the girl’s appendix had ruptured. Nero said he assured her that the little girl was fine and that she was going to be okay.
That night Kean was moved to the Intensive Care Unit and Nero said she spoke with her briefly. The child was able to mouth a few words. When Nero returned to the hospital the following morning she was told that her daughter died 15 minutes before she had arrived.
“The nurses told me that they fought [to save her] but she didn’t make it. I begged them to save my baby’s life earlier that day but she passed away,” the woman said.
Nero is adamant that if the hospital had paid a little more attention to little Kean they would have known what was wrong much earlier. She also believes that if the surgery was done much earlier the girl would have still been alive.
