The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

VALERIE Smith’s routine hysterectomy and fibroid removal operation was supposed take an hour and a half, but instead took four hours after a doctor allegedly botched the surgery that left her “butchered and gravely ill” and nearly dead.

Mrs Smith’s family had her airlifted to a Florida hospital, where she later learned that her bowels had allegedly been clipped during a surgical procedure in The Bahamas, and that her surgical incisions had not been sutured by the doctor performing the operation.

She wanted to share her ordeal to save other women from the trauma she said she and others have allegedly suffered at the hands of one doctor, who is still practicing in the public health system and in private practice.

On November 9, 2015, Mrs Smith underwent surgery at a private medical facility in Freeport. She was told that the surgical procedure was a routine operation.

“The doctor told me the surgery would take about one hour and a half, but it took four hours,” she told The Tribune.

After the surgery, Mrs Smith said she was told by her doctor that she should expect a bowel movement within a day or so, but that did not happen and her abdomen was swollen.

“The swelling kept getting bigger and I was throwing up a lot,” she said.

Mrs Smith was admitted to the Rand Memorial Hospital for emergency surgery on November 13 but her condition did not improve and her abdomen was still severely swollen.

She said the doctor told her that she needed to have further surgery but her family wanted to fly to her to the US.

“The doctor begged me not to let my family airlift me,” Mrs Smith told The Tribune. “He told me I had a hernia and that he could sort it out, but that he needed to perform a third surgery.”

Mrs Smith, who has private health insurance, said that her family opted to have her airlifted instead, but was faced with an obstacle when the doctor allegedly refused to sign the authorisation documents.

Finally, after her family’s perseverance, another junior doctor signed the documents, and Mrs Smith was airlifted to Broward Memorial Hospital on November 18.

At Broward Memorial, Mrs Smith said she knew she was in a bad state. “I will never forget the reaction on the faces of the nurse, my husband, and daughter when my bandages were removed,” she said.

“My husband bent his head down and tears rolled down his face,” Mrs Smith said. “I was on a lot of morphine and the nurse said that I was butchered.”

Doctors at Broward Memorial described her incisions as something you see in the war, she told The Tribune.

“The surgical cuts made by the doctor in Freeport had been not been sutured and I started to rot,” Mrs Smith said.

US doctors told her that she was gravely ill with a severe tissue infection and severe bacterial infection in her abdomen because of a clipped bowel during the surgical procedure in the Bahamas.

Mrs Smith was hospitalised for several weeks in the US. When she returned home, she had to be cared for by private nurse.

She is still in need of surgery but is afraid to go back under the knife. She said that her incisions were fully healed in August, 2016, nine months after the fateful surgery.

Mrs Smith said she will never fully recover both emotionally and physically.

“I have not heard from my doctor since November, 2015, and I have not been able to go back to my job in banking where I have been employed for 30 years.”

Mrs Smith recently learned that her cousin and a neighbour also had allegedly their bowels clipped during the same surgical procedure performed by the same doctor.

“Other people have been affected, and it is hard to prove medical negligence against doctors here because they are protected by a sort of ‘brotherhood’ or lodge in the medical profession in the Bahamas and in the Caribbean. The doctors will not testify against a fellow doctor in the brotherhood,” she claimed.

“I have three daughters and three granddaughters and this could happen to them. The doctor told me I had a hernia when, in fact, he clipped my bowels,” she alleged.

Denial

The Tribune contacted the doctor in question, who refuted the claims. His name has been withheld.

The physician said he is aware of Mrs Smith and admitted that he did perform a hysterectomy on her some time ago. He said after surgery, she developed complications of bowel obstruction and was taken to the Rand Memorial Hospital for surgery to resolve the obstruction.

He denied cutting her bowels.

The doctor said Mrs Smith’s daughter wanted to have her airlifted to the US and he facilitated by providing all her medical notes and sent her on her way.

“She went to the States and there are two sets of American doctors,” the doctor said. “Some will tell you if you did not come by today you would have been dead by tomorrow. They tell them all sorts of things and they are not very professional. They did something to her; they opened her back up and I heard they were doing CT scans and trying to put her bowels back together.

“There is this thing called bowel adhesion which is very a tricky situation because the more surgeries you do, the more scarring and healing will happen,” the doctor explained.

He said Mrs Smith did not come back to him for follow up after returning from the US.

“I was calling her daughter and asking her how is she doing because I was interested in her because I know her and had been seeing her for years,” he said. “She fell off the radar, and I have never seen her since. If she feels I harmed her, she should get a lawyer to sue me.

“This happened about a year or two years ago. I did everything that a reasonable doctor would do to solve her problem. I heard all kinds of things that I went in and cut her bowels. We never cut her bowels, that never happened,” he insisted.

The doctor said bowel adhesion can sometimes occur if a patient has had operations before and they have scars inside their abdomen.

“Sometimes what can trigger it is, when you get another surgery, those bands of adhesions because you have reopened in 24 hours and when you start healing again, you get those loops of bowels that get entangled into those bands in the stomach and you get obstruction,” he explained.

“The doctor (at the Rand) went in and did a very good job of cleaning up her tummy and sewing her back up, but they said they wanted her to go to the US. She would have healed very fine in the ICU and went home after about three or four days. I said if you want to go, certainly, and I gave them her notes and sent her on her way.

“I did everything a doctor would do when there are any complications or any issue, but I did not cut that woman’s bowels. I have her records, and she is putting herself at risk of getting sued for defamation,” the doctor said.

He told The Tribune that he performs hysterectomies every week.

“I have done thousands of hysterectomies in Grand Bahama. It is very sad; you never know what is the motive behind these people. But when they go to America and the doctors there mess them up, they say nothing,” he said.

Meanwhile, with the impending implementation of National Health Insurance, Mrs Smith said it is important that that doctors here are competent.

“We need to make the medical system better and doctors must be held to a duty of care to their patients,” she said.

Mrs Smith encouraging other women who have experienced something similar and need support to contact her at 242-812-6116.