GAUZE LEFT IN BELLY

According to her lawsuit, filed by attorney Larry Lalla, Graham gave birth to her son on December 17, 2015, by natural childbirth assisted by an episiotomy at the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital. She was discharged the next day but continued to experience extreme pain and had difficulty urinating while feeling nauseated. On January 12, 2016, she went to the bathroom for what she believed to be a normal bowel movement and she pushed out an object, the size of an egg, from her birth canal. She has kept the object and intends to produce it as evidence should the case go to trial.

Graham was rushed to the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital by her common-law husband, but she was told that their care only extended to ten days after childbirth and only if she was bleeding heavily. She was told to go to the St Joseph Enhanced Health Centre, but was told there was no specialist there and since she did not deliver her child at that facility she should return to the hospital at which she gave birth.

Graham was sent back and forth between hospitals while experiencing severe pain and other complications. It was at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex general hospital that she was told by a doctor who examined her that the item she ‘pushed out’ was gauze that was left inside her by hospital staff when she gave birth. Graham says she experience severe abdominal pain, vaginal discharge and discomfort, nausea, painful urination, irregular bowel movements, loss of appetite and weight, painful sexual intercourse and emotional distress.