I just realized that I never posted the full story of our experience at Doctor's Hospital here. Well, let's change that shall we?
( In response to a family who had contacted me in regards to their child being taken from them at Doctor's Hospital because they refused to get a tetanus vaccine. )
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Thank you. Yes we were also treated appallingly after refusing an unnecessary induction which had no medical reasoning behind it. According to them, I was healthy up until I went into labor. (Our medical records reflect this.)
I told the emergency room that I had seen meconium present in my mucus before coming to the hospital, and the woman who took me to the maternity ward mocked me by explaining that I couldn't possibly know there was meconium because I had stated that my water had not yet broken. She then proceeded to explain to me in patronizing detail, what happens when a woman's water breaks.
Of course, when they broke my water manually, there was meconium, just as we had told them when we walked in the door.
Our daughter's heart stopped a short time later, and she died minutes before an emergency c-section in the hospital, and they could not revive her.
We held her for that entire day, a Saturday.
On the Sunday before my OB, Ms. Bongu, came to generously pay me a visit, (yes, she waited all weekend) the surgeon who had done my c-section stopped by my room.
I asked him why I had gone into labor like I did. (Tetanic contractions, -Wouldn't stop.) He looked baffled and blurted out a story about rhesus monkeys. That they had evolved to give birth quickly, and so they would climb down out of the trees, give birth, and then climb right back up again.
The poor guy. He honestly didn't know what to say.
It was as if they had never before experienced a loss at that hospital before.
The following Monday, we were told by our OB Dr. Indrani Bongu of Augusta OBGYN while I was still in my hospital room recovering from the c-section that her death was our fault because "You should have come in for the induction like I told you to." She refused to state that she simply didn't know what happened, or state any kind of regret over the fact that Medicaid only covers two ultrasounds per pregnancy and that maybe with later ultrasounds we may have caught the oligohydramnios that endangered our daughter's life.
(Endangered, but again, she still couldn't tell us what happened or why.)
She wrote in my medical records that I had a "flat affect", and basically showed no signs of grieving.
To my family, I was obviously in shock after hearing what she had to say.
I also found out after the fact that they had put me on anti-depressants immediately after waking up from surgery.
I told my family over and over that I felt like my emotions were "being suffocated under a pillow". It put enormous strain on me and my husband when we were in the hospital because I couldn't figure out why I had such a hard time crying when I felt like I was dying inside, and meanwhile he was breaking down every fifteen minutes.
After we were released, we had thought that everything was arranged for them to release our daughter's body to the funeral home in order for her to be cremated so that we could bring her home.
We were told to wait a few days, then contact the funeral home. When we called them to arrange a time to pick up her ashes, they said that the hospital wasn't responding and that they hadn't yet picked up her body. We were appalled.
We drove to Doctor's Hospital, and on the way all that we could think of was that because of this error, it felt as if we had abandoned her to lay in the morgue of this strange building, far from anyone who knew or loved her. It was awful.
As if that wasn't enough, while we were waiting in the hospital administrator's office for the situation to be rectified, the Director for the Women's Center Ms. Repko and the hospital's grivance counselor came in without being summoned and Ms. Repko proceeded to yell at full volume at my husband for his (very understandable) angry Facebook posts about our treatment. This upset me greatly and all I could do was sit there and cry (no more anti-depressants, take that!) as I asked the grievance counselor to hold my hand, and to comfort me, which she did.
Ms. Repko had to be escorted out of the room by security because she couldn't calm down.
A very nice man from security walked us out, telling my husband that he had made some good points during his exchange with Ms. Repko, and that he was impressed at how my husband had kept his cool.
After all of that, I wanted nothing more to do with Doctor's Hospital, or with Augusta OBGYN. But my husband kept fighting, and even managed to get them to change some of their bereavement literature. (Or at least they said they would.)
Also, after many deliberations with their lawyer, they said that they were going to purchase some March of Dimes Bereavement training for their staff. We'll see. read more