“I was screaming and screaming. I was in terrible pain. It was burning down my throat and up into my nose,”
GENOCIDE VICTIM: Isabella Smith, 85,
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Durban - A plucky Pietermaritzburg pensioner who was given formalin - instead of water - to drink after a knee replacement operation at Grey’s Hospital six years ago, finally had her day in court on Monday.
“I was screaming and screaming. I was in terrible pain. It was burning down my throat and up into my nose,” she told Durban High Court Judge Graham Lopes of that moment when she “gulped” down a whole cup of the liquid (a type of embalming fluid) given to her by the anaesthetist in the recovery room.
Isabella Smith, 85, was initially suing the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health for R425 000 - but she has now upped her claim to just more than R1 million after getting medical reports done.
She alleges that at the time, the doctors treating her were hoping she would die while in hospital so they could cover up their mistake.
And then, after her discharge from the hospital five weeks later, the department dragged out the case also in the hope that she would die, shealleges.
After initially denying any liability, the department offered to settle “for a paltry amount”, claiming contributory negligence. She refused the offer.
The department has now conceded that she was given formalin.
On Monday she travelled to Durban and, undeterred by having to climb up five steep flights of stairs while balancing on her walker, she recounted the events of May 5, 2010, when she was given, and drank, the liquid out of a large, white cup.
“I screamed: You are killing me... you are burning me.’ I started crying,” she said.
A nurse attending to a patient in the next bed told her to “keep quiet”.
A planned three-day stay in the hospital turned into a five-week ordeal.
“My stool was black. My teeth were black. The nurses were worried,” she said.
She alleges that she was given charcoal - not milk as claimed by the nurses - afterwards.
Since then she has been unable to eat anything solid and lives mainly on mashed bananas. “I also have terrible nightmares. I never want to go to hospital again. I want to die in my own bed.”
During cross-examination, advocate Mergan Chetty, for the department, suggested that Smith had taken a small sip of the liquid and commented that it did not taste nice.
Smith replied: “I beg your pardon. I did not. I was so thirsty I did not taste it. I drank it down. If I had tasted it I would not have done that.”
Chetty also suggested that records would reflect that while she was in hospital she had not complained about side effects from the formalin and had eaten and slept well.
Smith said: “That’s the first I heard of that. The doctors kept coming in to see if I was alive. I was very sick. What they gave me was terrible.
“I drank only tea and water.”
Asked why the hospital would “alter its records”, she said: “I think they are covering themselves. Why would I lie? I don’t believe in lies.”
The trial is continuing.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/pensioner-recounts-hospital-horror-ordeal-2034376
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