“You were born to be our baby, but in the end we have you as an angel,” reads the tombstone on the grave of Tony Reyes Reyes, in the Lucena cemetery (Córdoba). That it is not a normal tomb, as shown by the bouquets of flowers and the crowns, which are renewed every few weeks and which contrast with the surrounding burial mounds.
Tony did not live more than a few hours, he was practically stillborn. His mother, Felisa, 32, was bleeding for hours in March 2017 at the public hospital Infanta Margarita de Cabra (Córdoba), and notifying the doctors that her own mother, the boy’s grandmother, had suffered a stroke some time ago. placental abruption, and the symptoms were exactly the same as hers: massive, constant bleeding, unrelated to labor contractions.
“First, my husband and I told him several times. Then my mother, herself, went to tell them that it was the same thing that had happened to her when she gave birth. And they told her, in a completely despotic way, that she could have had six deliveries, but that they had done 500 and they knew very well what they were doing”.
The baby was not only born in cardiorespiratory arrest, he recovered a heartbeat after 20 minutes and ended up dying. The hospital still refused to acknowledge its mistake, and sent Felisa and her husband to psychological therapy with a professional who, “of the hour and a half that we were with him, spent an hour trying to convince us, incredibly, not to present complaint”.
In the end, the Andalusian Health Service did not even want to go to court and agreed to compensate the baby’s parents. He even did more: he asked verbally, something unusual in these procedures, excuses to the victims for his “malpractice”, and he “deeply” regretted the outcome. And this even though the center’s Gynecology service continued to accuse the parents of “disqualifying” their work, when the medical error had already been proven and assumed.
The Kings do not want to make public the amount of compensation assumed by the Andalusian Health Service, “because we do not want it to be understood that this is done for money.” But yes “let it be known what we suffer, so that it does not happen to other people.”
Her story, as told by Felisa Reyes, is that of a cascade of neglect, failures, lack of coordination and arrogance that sadly starts with a perfect pregnancy, which takes the mother to the hospital, after breaking her water, in week 39. and five days pregnant, in the early morning of March 7. “My water had broken and started to bleed, which I reported when I was admitted. They told me it was normal, because the cervix was being affected. They took me to the ward to dilate, and after four hours of contractions and pain, and vomited three times, I was still bleeding, a lot. They had to throw away my panties, in fact. My husband told them several times about the history of placental abruption, but they insisted that this was normal.”
Shortly after, Felisa complains of the pain, “and then they tell me that they are giving me an intramuscular painkiller in my back. My husband asks if it could have any effect on the baby and they say no, it’s just an analgesic. It turns out that “They were an opioid and a neuroleptic that can have effects on the fetus, but they didn’t tell us. The contractions went down, but the bleeding didn’t.”
After the night, already at noon, Felisa’s mother notifies the midwives up to four times of the possibility of placental abruption, always being rejected. “When they finally ask me to walk to the delivery room, I had to stop three times, and I left a trail of blood.”
They monitor her and the baby’s heart rate suddenly drops dramatically. Alarmed, they call the nurse, who “took five minutes to arrive, and on top of that he said that it was a problem with the cables, that the monitor cables had moved and that is why it was giving erroneous data. He changed it and after a minute it went down plummeting again.”
It is then, very shortly after, when a slowing of the fetal heartbeat is evident, and they are told that they are going to perform a cesarean section because “there is suffering” in the fetus. They take the baby out around 4:15 p.m., when she had already been in fetal distress for at least 50 minutes. “The boy did not cry and they took him running, without even being able to see him.” Felisa spends five hours in resuscitation asking about the baby, “and they didn’t tell me anything.”
Only at nine at night, when they pass her to the ward, do they tell her that the child had suffered a severe lack of oxygen, that they have transferred him to Córdoba, and they reiterate that there has been no placental abruption.
The next day, the day her son dies, Felisa is transferred to the Hospital of Córdoba, where she is informed that her son was admitted there practically dead, with no neurological activity, all the result of “a severe and long-standing placental abruption “. Who had informed them of this, they ask? The Infanta Margarita de Cabra Hospital, “where they told me just the opposite.”
Felisa and her husband return to Cabra, to ask for explanations, and they are denied the issue of the placenta, but they are referred to psychological assistance for the shock suffered. “There, it turns out that one hour of the hour and a half of therapy consists of insisting that science is not an exact thing, and that sometimes mistakes are made, and that these things happen and it is not anyone’s fault. We left there and we did not return to psychological care”.
They also ask for your medical history, “but it was practically not filled in. What’s more, it’s that since I entered the hospital, the 13 hours I was on the ward, I was bleeding, and that doesn’t even appear in the medical history. It’s as if it didn’t would have happened”, concludes Felisa Reyes, attended in the claim by the lawyer Carlos Sardinero, representing the Association of the Patient Advocate.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project