Worst medical blunder ever … woman had her ovary removed when she went to remove her appendix and that was just the beginning.

 

The inquest is over, but there is no peace, no moving on, for the family of Maria De Jesus. They wonder how they will ever come to terms with her death, for to do that there must be acceptance, some sort of understanding.

But Maria’s death, the manner of it, makes no sense at all. Admitted to hospital at five months’ pregnant with severe abdominal pains, she was told she had appendicitis and needed her appendix removed.
Why, her grieving husband and three children ask themselves, were two trainee surgeons permitted to carry out the procedure without a consultant present? And how on earth did they manage to mistake her ovary for the appendix and remove the wrong organ?

 

Why, when it was established in a laboratory that the organ was not an appendix at all, did the lab technicians not bother to notify anyone of this fact?
Why did they log the details of this catastrophic mistake on to a computer, as though it were a routine report, and forget about it? Why did the person who commissioned the report never bother to seek out the results? From the day she was admitted on October 21, 2011, until her death three weeks later on November 11, Mrs De Jesus remained in severe pain and was in and out of intensive care.

Yet it was not until two days before her death that a consultant finally looked at her notes and stared in disbelief at the laboratory report stating there was ‘no appendix tissue’ present.
But by then it was too late. Mrs De Jesus had sepsis and, after suffering a miscarriage, died on the operating table hours later during a second operation to remove the appendix.
She was just 32, a beautiful mother-of-three who had been excitedly awaiting the birth of her fourth child.

So many questions and yet no answer can ever bring her back. I also need to ask, how can this happen and nobody noticed it or was there a cover up attempt after the error was noticed?. Yet so many questions.