Sunday, July 17, 2011

Complaint of negligence? NHS, Midwife , GP?

Hiya, I recently gave birth to my son 6 weeks ago, It was a planned homebirth and two midwifes & one student midwife attended. Before delivery I was slightly anemic and did not recieve medication for it. Once I delivered my son I suffered postpartum hemorrhage a blood loss of 500mls and recieve a shot of ergometrine to stem the bleeding.After the ergometrine I was still trickling blood for some time. I was extremely unwell after the birth of my son but was not admitted into hospital. All midwifes left within 30 minutes after the birth of my son and I was told to stay in bed for the rest of the day.Placenta was checked and believed to be complete. A few hours after I gave birth I phoned the midwife as I had gotten up to use the bathroom and blood was trickling again from me. She was not concerned and just told me to rest. The midwife visited often the following days after and I mentioned I was losing large clots (size of oranges), suffering headaches,dizziness, extreme tiredness & that my abdomen was tender. There was no concern to her and she stated my uterus had fully contracted back. Each time she visited I mentioned I was experiencing all these symptoms and that my bleeding was still extremely heavy and bright red. She was not concerned. A week after delivery I visited my GP whilst still experiecing these symptoms & my loss had a very offensive odour. He believed I had an infection and told me my womb was measuring 16 weeks pregnant.He could imediattely identify I was anemic and that my blood pressure was low. He prescribed me anti biotics and iron tablets and left it at that. For the next week I was taking the antibiotics and still complaining of my symptoms to the midwife who still didn't seem concerned. Then 3 weeks post partum I had a large gush of blood whilst using the bathroom I phoned healthcall and explained to them what had happened but because I wasn't experiencing any pain of fever they believed I had started my period and therefore didn't think I should be admitted. The following sunday I woke up at 6.30am with agonizing stomach pains I believed to be from my Irritable bowel syndrome. At 7.00 I began bleeding very heavily and phoned and ambulance. Whilst waiting for ambulance I lost two large clots (size of oranges) and still continued to bleed. Ambulance arrived and bleeding had slowed but they took me into hospital because of the clots I had passed. Upon arrival I was admitted into gynaecology and given an ultrasound which showed nothing. They assumed I had an infection and went to give me swabs. That's when they noticed a huge mass of retained placenta lodged inside my (still dilated) cervix! The consultant then began to manually remove the peices of retained placenta from my cervix and I suffered massive Secondary Post partum Hemorrhage (roughly 6 pints!). They decided to give another shot of ergometrine and explained that if my bleeding didn't stem I would be taken into theatre. After the shot of ergometrine my bleeding slowed and I was put on a drip of syntocin. The smell had imediately gone from my loss. I had doctors checking on my loss every 30 minutes had to have three drips of syntocin throughout the night aswell as 3 drips of IV antibiotics to treat infection. The flollowing day I lost 4 large clots and my hemoglobin had dropped to below seven and I had to have three units of blood transufsed into me. The following day my hemaglobin had gone upto 10.2 but my platelets was half of the normal ammount. They allowed me home with iron tablets and two lots of antibiotics but I was referred to a hematologist. I visited the hemotologist today who had said my platelet count had gone back into the normal range and had dropped because of the massive blood loss & infection. Can I make a complaint against this due to the fact I was showing warning signs and nobody took notice? This whole experience has been awful

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