Doctor blames tiredness after forgetting medical swab inside a new mum . When our body is overworked and tired. The whole system can get disoriented. It begins to miscalculate and sometimes do things wrongly. Just your gut feeling, always. A new mum contactless deadly disease sepsis that nearly took her life after Doctor forgets medical swab inside of her for three good days after delivery. Her little newborn also contacted the disease and the Doctor now blames his tired body for the costly mistake.
Young mother contracted sepsis after doctors left a medical swab inside her for three days following the birth of her child. Paige Balding, 20, has now been awarded a £4,000 cash settlement having fallen seriously ill after she gave birth to her son Hunter Jae on July 20 last year.
A tribunal found medics failed to realise a 20cm by 20cm medical swab was left inside her causing her to contract sepsis, which could have been fatal. She said she was given a medical swab to reduce bleeding during labour at Badilson Hospital, in Essex but said doctors forgot about it.
TIREDNESS BLAMED FOR MISTAKE
Paige, who also has a four-year-old daughter, said the life-threatening infection was passed onto her newborn and the ordeal has put her off having more children. The mother-of-two, of Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, said: ‘I couldn’t believe it, and the doctor blamed it on the fact that he was tired.
Hunter also contracted the illness from his mother (Picture: SWNS) ‘You can’t nearly kill two people and blame it on the fact that you were tired.’ Paige went into labour on July 19 and had her waters broken the following day because doctors found she was 4cm dilated and Hunter was later born at 4.51pm She added: ‘When he was born, he wasn’t breathing so they took him away to resuscitate him.
‘After that, my body felt like it was shutting down and I had no idea why. ‘I couldn’t keep my eyes open and was going in and out of consciousness for about two hours. I woke up and asked what was going on and they told me I had septicaemia.’
Paige was moved to a different ward to recover but days later she was still unwell. Paige said she could feel something painful inside her but was told it was just stitches from labour (Picture: SWNS) She added: ‘I started getting discomfort and I had no clue what it was. ‘
THE DISCOVERY
The midwife told me that it was just the stitches from when I had given birth so I trusted her. ‘It got to the point where I couldn’t sit down and I was in so much pain. ‘I went in the toilet and that’s when I realised I could definitely feel something there. I was absolutely disgusted with what I found.
‘I asked again if the midwife could take a look and she agreed. ‘When she examined me, she looked like she was going to faint and rushed off to get a consultant after telling me not to move.’
Paige said medics then recovered the swab which had been left inside her since she gave birth three days before. Hunter has luckily made a full recovery (Picture: SWNS) A serious investigation called the incident a ‘never event’ – a serious, largely preventable incident that shouldn’t occur if the available preventative measures are implemented.
Paige was treated with antibiotics and discharged herself from hospital so she could take her recovered baby home to his father and her fiancé. Paige added: ‘I couldn’t trust them anymore. They didn’t even argue with me because they knew how bad it was me being in there.
‘I just said, I will not stay in here another minute.’ Paige is now trying to raise awareness and is urging women to trust their ‘gut feeling if something doesn’t feel right’ and said the compensation does not make up for her ordeal. But Paige has been put off having more children (Picture: SWNS) She added:
‘You don’t think it will happen to you until it does. ‘If I can save one person’s life or the life of a baby it will make what happened to me more worth it. No amount of money can replace a life.’ Luckily, Hunter has recovered well and is ‘just like any other 10-month-old baby’ which Paige said is a huge relief but said the ordeal was something she’ll never forget. Paige added: ‘I would have loved more children but I just couldn’t even think about it now.’
Metro.