What would you do if you thought your OB/GYN caused your baby irreperable harm during delivery? Would you go back?
A mom from Queens returned to the hospital where she'd delivered her first son to deliver her second - and once again, she says the doctors "yanked" on her child, causing a debilitating nerve injury that may lead to permanent paralysis.
The boys, a year apart, are both suffering from ERB's palsy. It's a condition Annemarie Dhana's lawsuit claims is caused by malpractice at childbirth.
"In both cases their shoulders became stuck after the head was
delivered. In both cases excessive force was used to deliver the
babies, resulting in ERB's palsy," according to a sworn affidavit, signed by Dhana.
The trouble is, during childbirth, how do you know if the doctor is using excessive force or doing what is necessary to get that baby out? Every delivery is different, and so is every doctor or midwife - and their preferred methods for delivery.
Despite repeated (Ok, obsessive) viewings of The Baby Story before delivering my daughter, I had never seen a mom being handed a towel by her doctor so she could pull and he could pull - offering her leverage. It's a practice my OB/GYN apparently uses (successfully, I might add) with a lot of moms - as other women whose children were delivered by him shared the same story. But none of us had ever heard of it before.
What jumps out at me about this case was Dhana's decision to go back to the same hospital where her lawsuit says prenatal care from her first pregnancy was lacking. Throw in the botched delivery, and I would have been running from in the other direction - especially considering she is in Queens, where it has to be easier to find another healthcare facility than it would be in rural upstate New York (where I live, and frankly got lucky considering my lack of options for obstetrical care).
Most of the commenters said as much over at the New York Daily News, where this story first appeared. But let's consider this mom's options:
If this were a case of a health insurance company forcing her to return to the same medical facility where she'd received substandard care, it's could be another example of the failings of our healthcare system in this country. In-network versus out-of-network should be set aside in favor of "good for patient" vs. "bad for patient."
If this were Dhana's own choice, however, I wonder, could she have known that the first case, the ERB's palsy in her elder son, wasn't just a fluke? Was this a case of a mom who didn't bother to do her homework on her medical choices, or more a case of a mom who simply didn't know? Her children are just a year apart, so she was struggling with a child who had a severe medical condition and a pregnancy at the same time.
Would you call this fishy or do you think this mom has a case?
Image: The Daily Mail
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