Paralysed but still awake moments before surgery
01/01/2000
Thank you so much for handling my case so well. You came to know us at a great time of sadness and you were so kind. We will always remember you as very professional but also very warm hearted.
Sylvia, Tamworth
A legal settlement has been reached for a father who suffered severe psychological injury after being anesthetised incorrectly before nasal surgery.
At the private Caprio Rowley Hall hospital in Stafford Mark Perry aged 45, knew something had gone badly wrong with the anaesthetic when he could still hear doctors around him talking but was unable to move.
A drug mix up meant that Mark was paralysed before he was sedated - he could feel all his muscles in his body relaxing and was unable to breathe. "A cold feeling rushed through my body and I was struggling to breathe - it was like a block of cement being dropped on my chest. I began to panic and truly thought I was about to die," said Mark. Miraculously he managed to grab the arm of the anaesthetist raising the alarm.
But Mark and his wife Julie from Castlefields in Stafford, who have a young daughter, say that they would not have resorted to legal action if they had been told the truth about what happened to Mark and if their subsequent complaint had been taken seriously enough.
"When Mark came out of surgery he was clearly distressed. The anaesthetist told me that Mark had, had a strange reaction to the anaesthetic, he said nothing about a mistake being made," said Julie.
The trauma Mark had experienced in theatre was so powerful that hours after surgery he had severe chest pains and was rushed to A&E at Stafford NHS hospital with a suspected heart attack. When all investigations found that Mark didn't have any heart problems, Julie insisted on a meeting with the anaesthetist to find out exactly why Mark had reacted to the anaesthetic with severe symptoms resembling a heart attack.
"The anaesthetist Dr Sellwood admitted to us at the meeting eight days after the operation that there had been a mistake. We couldn't believe it, we were completely shocked but Dr Sellwood seemed to treat it as an insignificant incident - yet Mark was still suffering so terribly," said Julie.
Mark suffered horrific flashbacks, panic attacks and insomnia - he had a great fear of going to sleep worried that he wouldn't wake up. He was later diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Almost a year later he still has flashbacks.
"We had to do something to make sure the incident was taken seriously. It seemed that the mistake was being covered up. We still question why Mark was given a drug in theatre to help him forget what had happened and also why we had to report it to the hospital ourselves who didn't know about it," added Julie.
"What happened to Mark should certainly have been reported as an 'untoward incident' to the hospital as a matter of patient safety," said the Perry's solicitor Louise Hunt, a clinical negligence expert at Alexander Harris. "Compensation is very minimal in these types of cases but for this family it was never about the money - it was to highlight that when a mistake is made hands should be held up. Mark waited for answers about what happened to him for eight days causing extreme distress. The incident has had a huge impact on the whole family - the experience will be with them for a very long time."
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