To think seven Caesareans in eight years is a recipe for disaster?

[ElizabethG81]

What's happened to this woman is horrific, but surely having so many Caesareans in such a short period of time is recklessness bordering on insanity? www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3615027/Mother-eight-relives-nightmare-waking-C-section-discover-legs-amputated.html

I don't think people are confusing the two, I think they are saying that if she hadn't made her choices, it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

But that is completely irrelevant if the care is substandard. In the same way that you can choose to be in a car, and if it crashes and you need care, the care has to be competent.

If she received competent care, then the disability was not down to that care, but the situation, at which point her choices are relevant. If the care was incompetent then what happened to land her in need of it is not relevant. All that is relevant is the hospital's duty to provide competent care. That's a factual statement, and your opinion on it is as irrelevant as the reasons someone ended up in hospital if the care was substandard. It's the logical position, and the legal one in direct consequence.

As to your views on what happened to her, or didn't - you have a view on this woman's life, personality and legal position (based solely and completely on a Mail story) which you are vehemently asserting as factual, while dismissing her right to her own views on her own life? With what I can only assume is rather greater information than you possess? Seriously?

I wish someone could tell me what hourly checks for blood clots can be undertaken hourly on a patient on life support following a major blood transfusion.Everyone is banging on about a patient having 1:1 ,(24/7,for 5 days) care having no care for six hours reported by the patient who was sedated,ventilated and unconscious.
I have every sympathy with this ladies difficulties but am so cross with people in this site for blaming the NHS and doctor/nurse bashing for saving her life based on newspaper reports.

Having eight children in this day and age is madness ipso facto. No one, unless especially brilliant or talented, should have more than two. Incidentally, I'm a third child.

We started trying 6 months post C-section as no one advised us of the risks. We would have had a 17 month gap if I hadn't miscarried.
I have now had 3 C-section's but won't be having more as family is complete.
I am sure at some point the lady would have been advised that having further DC was ill advised but the situation is still very sad.

It is sad but she was pushing her luck having so many c-sections in a short amount of time. If she was alright this time, would she have gone on to have a 9th child? another c-section? something risky would happened eventually.

She would of been informed of the risks when having multiple c sections, she will of signed a constant form at the end and explained. Having multiple c sections over a period of 8 years and multiple children will not of done her body any good.

The hospital saved her life and she wants to sue them fair enough if there's neglect but that will be determined by the medical notes if there's a case of neglect and if hourly obs that were taken and recorded by the nurses in intensive care. People can go down quickly unfortunately it can just be bad luck but if it was me I much rather I was able to see my children grow up than miss out being apart of their lives.

If she's on ITU sedated and ventilated she would have a 1:1 nurse and constant recording of all her vital signs as standard. She would be rigged up to lots of machines bleeping away. It's not like she would be left alone for 6hrs.

It is not standard to check someone's legs for clots on such a regular basis in ITU. I guess they are arguing her foot pulses should have been checked. If you have arterial thrombosis your feet will go cold and blue with no pulses and that could be detected (more likely this would be a Drs job than a nurse). I find it hard to believe there would be an expectation this should be done hourly. It's not in any way a common post op complication that would be routinely checked for.

I still doubt this could have been prevented and the way she seems to present it as the hospital being entirely to blame for her losing both legs through poor care is disingenuous. The hospital saved her life in an emergency. She put herself at high risk through her choices just as much as if she fell off a mountain. If she wasn't suing the people who saved her life and painting them as negligent in the Daily Fail (for cash of course) when they have no come back I would have a lot more sympathy for her.

As to your views on what happened to her, or didn't - you have a view on this woman's life, personality and legal position (based solely and completely on a Mail story) which you are vehemently asserting as factual, while dismissing her right to her own views on her own life? With what I can only assume is rather greater information than you possess? Seriously

I'm not asserting anything as fact, I'm making my own judgement based on what she herself has chosen to put out into the media (while critically assessing the Fail slant and input) and my own knowledge of medical/legal issues.
She has obviously ignored medical advice over and over again. She has chosen to ignore all risks for her own reasons. She is now blaming medical people for an outcome that is highly unlikely to be their fault, when she should be thanking them for saving her life when she put it at risk.

Perhaps if she'd had better aftercare on leaving the hospital (by that I mean far, far more than 2 hours counselling and a few weeks of Physio) she'd have been better able to rationalise and accept the outcome.

The truly awful thing in this story is that she woke up days after being put under, with both legs amputated, then seemed to just be chucked out into the world to 'get on with it'.

I'm pretty sure that if I woke up to find my legs were gone, I'd be pretty angry at the world.

Some very harsh comments on here. She had placenta accreta which is more likely with multiple c sections BUT you don't get to the stage of tissue death via thrombosis without there being errors in her postoperative care. That's what needs to be investigated. If proper postoperative checks had been done this wouldn't have happened.

Hysterectomy is one of the risks you sign up to - as is massive blood loss. If she'd died of that directly it would be very tragic but within what's expected of a small minority of outcomes ( it was somethin I was terrified of having placenta and vasa previa.)

But the tissue damage is NOT an inevitable consequence. Something has likely gone very wrong in her postoperative care. I for one feel extremely sorry for her if that's the case. It needs investigating and it needs a full review to find out what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Have some compassion, people!

If someone is immobile the nurse should be checking pressure areas as standard during turns to aid pressure relief. This would be under pressure relief an assessment tool This uses an scoring system rating the risk of pressure sores and dvts. The fact she was in a post op induced coma would of made her high risk. Preventive measures include pressure aiding stockings or TEDs as they are known by, pressure reliving mattress(standard in ICU).It will be likely this was well documented given its 1:1 care in intensive care. As I said this could of happened quickly. Unfortunately complications can happen even in the best of care practices and sometimes doctors have to make tough choices. Sounds like they tried to save her legs but were not able to.

The thing is, none of us know what happened. There needs to be a proper investigation, without that the cause can't be established. It may well be her care was good and she's lucky to be alive. It may be that aftercare was compromised an she had a case. Having seen how badly staff shortages have affected postnatal care in the U.K. It would surprise me. It may be both - the surgical team excelling and someone fucking up after. We don't know. Only a case review can find out.
If she had five transfusions (jeez) she was obviously in a very bad way - the mail of course are loving this story, slating the NHS and the woman Herself under the guise of concern. Pretty grim stuff.

Also ...
A few hours counselling and physio doesn't seem much for such a life changing injury.

mamadoc Are you a health care professional?

Look, in the long run this was probably a blessing. If she had continued to have children, she likely would have died.

Go watch the paralympics - this isn't the 1900s. Amputees are not "less than" anyone else. I'm sure it's very difficult for her right now but hopefully she'll come to terms with it and live a long productive and healthy life.

I strongly believe this has saved her life.

Seriously how can you that?
The hysterectomy alone would have prevented further pregnancy.
Sadly the loss of legs was a further unwanted complication

The truly awful thing in this story is that she woke up days after being put under, with both legs amputated, then seemed to just be chucked out into the world to 'get on with it'.

Except the article says she "checked herself out" after 23 days.

'Unfortunately complications can happen even in the best of care practices and sometimes doctors have to make tough choices.'

This. My daughter developed a clot during physio (yes, vented patients have physio daily, too). Very ill people can get even sicker quickly.

First of all, those who keep bleating on about "how can she know what checks were done when she was in a coma?" FFS, every intelligent adult in the country is aware there are medical and hospital records for a reason. It's pretty clear she was not keeping track of checks while she was in a coma, so common sense says this information came directly from the records and the hospital.

Then there is this.
Ella and Ian demanded answers and a meeting was set up with Torbay Hospital in Torquay. The couple were informed of the hospital's oversight and were issued an apology.

The hospital has clearly taken some responsibility for this, as is only right. Post operative checks are done for a reason. If they are missed, the patient is put at risk.

This is a nasty thread. It doesn't matter what went on before that coma - this is all down to post operative care in the coma that didn't follow procedure, which put the patient at further risk. The hospital is not going to accept responsibility as they have without carefully looking at the entire situation thoroughly. If they've admitted responsibility, it's because they do bear some of the responsibility.

has someone really started a thread to basically say

ITS YOUR FAULT to this woman

yuk, and yuk again

No, someone has started a thread to say: not everything is someone elses fault, take some responsibility for your own life.

Which is an excellent point.

A lot of sheepy people here assuming that things must be true because they read it in the Daily Fail. Sad really.

I read somewhere recently the very accurate observation that when you see the accusation on social media that everyone else is acting like sheep, you're probably looking at a narcissist.

The point people are making is that yes, she's responsible for putting herself and her baby into a very dangerous position. But no, she is not necessarily responsible for the fact that her legs have been amputated, and even if she was it's a deeply unpleasant thing to say.

I read somewhere recently the very accurate observation that when you see the accusation on social media that everyone else is acting like sheep, you're probably looking at a narcissist

Not remotely accurate , and actually a rather idiotic observation. People often do act like sheep. Many different types of people are capable of noticing this and saying so.

My own accurate observation is that anyone who thinks they can diagnose someone as a narcissist from one line on the internet is a self important fool of a keyboard psychologist who wouldn't know an actual diagnosis if it bit them on the arse.

This makes me angry. She is lucky to be alive. Placenta accreta is horrific and likely occurred due to her millions of caesareans. They took her legs to save her life. The legal team will comb through documentation and some poor docs who were doing their job will be left completely traumatised.
I'm so angry. The only preventable part of this was the pregnancy in the first place. She's clearly selling stories to the Fail to raise money for her legal costs.
Oo I'm angry.

The fact that she is lucky to be alive does not mean that the hospital is not responsible for following their policies on post op care. They did not, they have admitted that, and have accepted that they have some responsibility for this outcome.

If someone ends up in hospital because they drive carelessly, or because they eat or smoke too much, or because they ignored a medical condition so that it got much worse than necessary - should they accept poor standards of care purely because it's their own fault that they're there?