Suing the hospital - Brain Damage

[jawjee]

Hi everyone.

I'm sorry this might be a bit of a long explanation, I'm wondering if anyone has sued the NHS before as my family are really pushing this on me and I'm not sure whether to go through with this or not, or even where to begin.

I went in to the hospital at 41 weeks as I hadn't felt my son move the entire day. Arrived around 7pm.

Got admitted to the labour ward, said we could choose to be induced if we wanted to, or could go home, as they were fine with his heartrate. I knew something was wrong, so we decided to be induced, which literally went against everything we wanted.

I had a pessary inserted at 11pm, had such a bad reaction they had to remove it at 12am because my body had started contracting continuously - they even checked my room spray to see if any oils in it could stimulate contractions! His heartrate kept dropping down, coming back up, dropping down again. At 1pm they decided to break my waters. It was thick and gooey, hardly any in there and I was only dilated to 1cm despite the (literally) continuous contractions. I actually got no break in between, as soon as one ended another was already starting and his heart rate kept dropping, sometimes down to 80.

Things get a bit hazy here but I know I was monitored on the bed with no pain relief, continuously contracting until 3:30 when something happened that made them decide i needed an emergency c-section.

By 4:03am he was born, didn't make a sound for about a minute but his APGAR was 9. Cried, black stuff that was in his lungs (meconium we think) coughed up and suctioned out and all seemed okay.

I was taken to the recovery room and then by 6am i was wheeled on to the ward.

This is where things take a turn for the worse really. I had him for an hour on my own before they came and took him away from me based on some blood results. Left alone without my baby, spinal block still made me completely numb so I couldn't even move. A lot then happened that we weren't told about properly, fast forward to that evening and my son starts have seizures. That night he stopped breathing twice. Kept having seizures the next day and couldn't control his body or stop it from shaking. His organs showed damage like his kidneys and liver and he was badly jaundiced. We had to stay there a week while they did 4 lumbar punctures, he was on adult dose antibiotics incase he had sepsis and it was honestly the worst week of my entire life.

Long story short, an MRI revealed he has two patches of damage to his brain because the cord was tangled so tightly around his waist. The reason he wasn't moving was because every time he did his oxygen supply was cut off, and the contractions I was having were constantly starving him of oxygen and I didn't dilate because his head was nowhere near my cervix.

My family and friends all want to sue the hospital and the hospital itself is doing the highest level report in to his birth and submitting it the the CCG to make sure it never happens to anyone else and to see what lessons they can learn from my experience.

Has anyone else had a birth like this or sued a hospital?

Thank you

A friend of mine unfortunately had a full term daughter born with brain damage due to the cord around her. She is 10 now. They did pursue a legal avenue to court but lost because whilst the hospital accepted that they could have intervened a few hours earlier, the balance of probability was that the damage occurred in the womb prior to admission to hospital and that the hospital were within established national and international protocols for when to induce overdue babies.

Every case is unique so consulting a specialist solicitor is essential as they can assess if there's a reasonable likelihood of a case against the hospital but I would caution the expectation of an outcome of negligence - your family like you are hurting and want to blame someone, it may be a case of negligence and you could be successful in court but it's a long and difficult road. You will need a lot of strength to get through this either way, there's a couple of good charities that support birth injuries, the aforementioned friend is a trustee I just don't remember the name. As far as the meconium, this happened to my brother, a week in nicu with sepsis, touch and go - healthy 40 year old now, no lasting effects!

Please take care,

You really do need an expert in the field to be able to advise if there was negligence. I can highly recommend Hilary Wetherell at Irwin Mitchell who specialises in brain injuries to help you.

Hi, speaking from experience, albeit different circumstances. Without giving too much information an immediate family member (older) successfully won a claim against the NHS (7 figure - went to court, took over 7 years). However, medical negligence claims are notoriously difficult to 'win'. If protocol was followed, even if something else could have been done, the claim will more than likely fail. As a general rule, the system does not want to punish professionals who are there to help, it doesn't set a good example so proving causation is very difficult, more so than a regular personal injury claim. As a pp has said yoj would need to have an 'end goal' ie. money for future care and needs. The idea of damages is to put the person in the position they would have been in had the accident not happened. With my family member, without the money they would have needed to stay in a nursing home for life and basically just rot, but with the money they were able to purchase a new home and have it adapted, car, team of carers etc so a shot at some sort of life.

I know it was a very stressful thing to go through and not done lightly as it's obviously taking money from the NHS that is sorely needed

NO NO NO this myth needs to stop now. The NHS pays huge amounts in insurance for this very reason. If you use the NHS you are not depriving anyone of cancer treatment or anything else. People guilt tripping that you're depriving the NHS of funds is why they get away with sometimes shoddy practice (I say that as an NHS frontline worker).

I honestly can't give you any advice on this but what you have said has brought me to tears, you poor thing having to go through all that and your poor little one. I do hope he makes good progress, the apgar of 9 was a good score. x

In our case, we pursued a claim in order to find out ‘what’ happpened, as it was unclear, and we felt that at some point our child might want to know what caused her disability. It’s not about money, but about making sure that procedures are tightened up (supervision standards for student midwives, adherence to NICE guidelines for vbac etc). We are extremely unlikely to see a financial settlement, but we do now have a file of expert opinions that dc3 can read if she ever feels that she wants to.

I think you need proper legal advice.
Congratulations on the birth of your son - the circumstances around his arrival sound awful and very worrying. I do wish you both all the best.

I didn't know this! Thanks for letting me know.

Sorry that was to @FormerlyFrikadela01 . I wasn't suggesting people shouldn't sue. Just that it's a very stressful thing to go through and I had no idea about the insurance.

Oh of course it's stressful but I've seen far too many threads on here and in other media making people for bad about sueing the NHS because "It's on its knees". Obviously not saying you're doing this.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for all your kind messages. I have to be honest that I didn't read them sooner, as for some reason what happened seemed to hit me quite late, and I found myself in a constant state of anxiety as to what the report would say. I just couldn't bring myself to read or think about anything to do with it, but we have the report back now and I am feeling a lot better.

The report has a list of about 20 things the hospital did wrong, going against national and local guidelines and against what the NICE guidelines state, from before the labour to during and after. It turns out they didn't contact the appropriate people on call or even a consultant, didn't get the CTG reviewed by a consultant, did no MEWS checks on me the entire time, did the c-section 4 hours after the guidelines stated it should have been done, forgot to palpitate my abdomen, ruptured my waters too late based on the CTG and then didn't act upon the meconium or abnormal results. So basically quite a lot that they missed or didn't carry out properly.

We think because we are a young couple (we're 22) they also didn't take what we were saying as seriously as perhaps they would have someone older or who's second child it was, especially in the NICU when we felt like we were kept in the dark about many things that happened, and in fact one nurse said to us that because we were young she was glad we weren't around for some of his seizures and that they didn't want to tell us and worry us.

Obviously this is ridiculous as 22 is not that young, and certainly not a valid excuse to hide information from us or fail to tell us our son was unwell. I think this period of time is what I feel most angry about as I felt completely out of control and I think I was in shock.

I felt like a terrible Mother and the morning I came in and they told me he had stopped breathing twice in the night, and had failed to tell me, really knocked me for six and I remember having to leave the room and go to the visitors room to cry, it absolutely broke my heart. We also weren't allowed to change him, feed him, take him out of the incubator or anything, the nurses did it all in front of us, and they would let us visit for a little while before telling us to leave and go back to the other ward. All of this contributed to my husband not bonding well with him to start with at all, and he had severe post-natal depression which he needed counselling for. All in all not the best time of our lives after what we'd planned to be the happiest.

I understand about my family wanting to sue because they were the ones that had to almost hold us together while it happened, I think perhaps my parents at the time were even more upset than me as after a few days I closed off all my emotions after I felt certain he would die. One thing that still makes me feel terrible is the first time I went in the NICU to visit him when he was about 12 hours old, and I wasn't even sure which baby was mine. I didn't even recognise him, and for a long time I felt like I had let him down and that I was to blame for what happened. I also had a really tough recovery from having to walk back and forth between the hospital wards 12 hours after the c-section. I felt like if I didn't I was letting everyone down but in hindsight the amount of pain it caused was something I can't even imagine doing ever again. We were planning on having two children, but the thought of ever being pregnant again literally makes me feel on the verge of a panic attack.
Now the report has come through though, I feel much better knowing that what happened to my son wasn't my fault and I did the best I could with the situation.

My son has just turned 6 months and I have to say, he's doing incredibly well. Still not rolling over but he is very strong and his intelligence is completely unaffected. He is the happiest little boy, always smiling and we are completely in love with him.

So sorry for this extremely long message, I hope this explains a little more and answers all the questions. One reason why I am not sure if I feel comfortable suing is I almost feel like it's blood money, which I know seems ridiculous, but that's how it feels to me. And I was very worried about taking money from other people who need it for treatment, but as a few of you have said this isn't the case, so I feel better for knowing that.

Also thank you for your recommendations for lawyers. I will look in to these and decide what I want to do :)

Also I would like to add a thank you to everyone who has shared their stories with me. I teared up a few times reading them, it breaks my heart there are so many others out there who have felt this pain. Thank you for taking the time to read and share mine, I am extremely grateful. I wish you all happiness in your lives, and that you have found peace with what has happened, as I hope to do soon too.

Think about the end result you want. My father has really suffered from medical malpractice. Our goal is to get the doctor struck off. There is absolutely no way the doctor responsible for my fathers treatment plan should be a doctor. The incompetence is astounding and consistent over the four years of care.

You have a young child. Are you able to return to work at all? Have you forgone a career advancement because of injuries your child sustained from their malpractice which mean you can't work? Do you need to pay for his additional needs because of their incompetence? Will he need life long care because of their incompetence?

Being disabled is extremely expensive and a carer allowance and PIP doesn't cover the expense. The legal firms mentioned on here by PPs are respected firms.

My son has left hemiplegic Cerebal Palsy. I know that this was because of wrong decisions made during his birth, but I was 17 and single and ignored and patronised and ignored and injured and assaulted (forced internals) and ignored. The HCP's closed ranks and there are downright LIES in my/his notes to cover the arses of the midwife and doctor who caused his disability. Yes I would sue if I thought there was a hope in hell of success but there isnt. The NHS is a lot different now to how it was 28 years ago.

Any money he would be awarded would change his life. He has a job but it is PT NMW as that is all he can manage. He lives independently but in a local authority property and will never own his own home adapted purely for his needs. Compensation for that would change his life, so hell yes, do it. It would have changed my life too as I would have been awarded money for my caring duties. We wouldnt have struggled for every penny as I tried to keep a job and still care for him, attend appointments etc.

On the positive side, he has a job and lives independently. He was described as being "weak on his left side" too. I would post a pic of him at comicon in his cosplay with his huge group of friends if it wouldnt out us both. He has a fantastic life and so will your son :)

I don't know much about the legal side of things but I think you should look at suing for damages. It's great that he's doing so well at the moment but as he gets older there may be a need for physio or adaptations to make life easier. If you have a fund that pays for things like this then it will certainly make life easier for yourselves. Given what you and your husband have been through I think you deserve to be awarded damages too - you may find you need extra mental health help and again having a pot of money to pay for this if needed will ease the pressure on yourselves. You'd also be perfectly within your rights to use this for a holiday or days out to help you all heal after an extremely traumatic time.
You and your DH sound incredible and I'm so pleased your little one is doing well.

And in amongst all of these pp's great advice, my 2 cents...
Make sure you get yourself seen by someone for PND and PTSD. If you're living in North Wales, ask your gp about Rewind Therapy. It's a brand new service. Your mental health is just as important in all of this.
I'm glad to hear things sound positive with your lo. We had a big scare with dd and every milestone reached is a proper fist-pump moment that makes your heart soar.

Enjoy your gorgeous, precious little treasure xxx

It's not as easy as medical negligence lawyers might make you think.
If your child is, as you describe, developmentally normal for 6 months, you have no idea whether they will have any additional needs in the future. The money recovered is to pay for extra care/adaptations etc and it sounds like your DC at the moment isn't looking like they need any.

You are very lucky that it looks likeDC is now doing fine and I would continue to focus on the positives rather than go through this stressful situation now. If thinks change as they get older and you could benefit from extra help then rethink it then.

I know a family that sued when their child died, the Dr was found at fault. They were awarded £20k damages, of which around £15k went to the no win no fee lawyers. A lot of painful memories and lengthy court cases etc all for £5k which doesn't replace your child. It wouldn't be worth it for me.

@PyongyangKipperbang thank you for your beautifully written encouraging post about your son. My son is 13 and has many issues relating to his extreme prematurity due to a massive cock-up in my antenatal care. I would so love to be able to sue the hospital to get the money to fund the rest of his life, but although I can prove that they were at fault, I can't prove that his prematurity and all of its associated effects wouldn't have happened anyway. The arsehole who caused my son to be born at 24 weeks is now enjoying his nice life being a consultant at another hospital.

Anyway Pyongyang I just wanted to say thank you for encouraging me. My son is likely to manage similar to yours in the future - part time job on NMW - and will probably need to live at home or in sheltered accommodation. We are enormously proud of him, as you must be of your boy.

Jawjee good luck with whatever you decide to do. x

Hi @jawjee

I've just been reading through your posts and I'm so sorry you've had such a traumatic time but very pleased to hear how strong your son is.

Just wanted to say you should follow things through - not for financial reasons (if it truely feels like blood money to you you can always give compensation to charities than support NICU or cerebral palsy etc) but it's important to know the teams and hospital involved learn from their mistakes and prevent this happening to others in the future.

Good luck

Suing the hospital is usually a way of ensuring ongoing care for your child. I went to uni with someone who was paralysed from the neck down due to birth injuries as a baby and she had all kinds of support to ensure she could still take part in studying fully. This was paid for by the settlement from the hospital who harmed him.

Do get a medical lawyer to investigate.