Question In March, I took my 7 year old daughter to the ER complaining of abdominal pain. They did a CT scan and a urine sample. She was diagnosed with a UTI and sent home with antibiotics. April 30th, she was rushed back to the ER with a 105 temp and severe pain and vomiting. After another CT scan and a night at that hospital, she was transferred by helicopter to another facility were she underwent surgery for a cyst in her kidney that was septic. According to the PICU doctor that operated on her, the CT scan from March (at the ER) showed a golf-ball-sized cyst. The latest one showed that it was now tennis-ball-sized. She was operated on and is now fine. My question is this: shouldn't the ER have said something to me (Mom) at the initial visit about the cyst? I had no idea that it has appeared on a scan because they never said anything about it. There negligence in giving me information almost cost my daughter's life. Thank you so much for your help.
Answer You are right to wonder what happened. Probably the ER doctors who did run a CT scan (and that is good) simply did not see the cyst on the kidney. Your daughter did have an infection of the urinary tract, and it was 'upper', but how they could have missed that cyst is a mystery.
You say after an operation at the second hospital she is fine. How fine? Did they remove that kidney? Did they manage to get the cyst out without damaging that kidney? Until you know that, your daughter's recovery is unknown. She may feel O.K. now. Kids are resilient. So, how are you to find out what happened at the second hospital? You get a malpractice lawyer. From your recital I guess you live in a small community that has no Pediatric Hospital. Your lawyer is going to have to be from a big county or city so he has exporience in cases involving children. What you can do is call your local Bar Association and ask them for help finding a lawyer. If they can't help you, then go to any lawyer and ask him to search his Hubball's for a malpractice lawyer with peditric experience. He should be happy to do this for you becauise he can then get a little income out of your case too. He can do some local work for your malpractice man and save him travel time and money. But get started even if a lawyer tells you to 'wait and see'. You should get going before anyone tumbles to his errors leading to malpractice.
Your daughter may not have sufficient damages to excite a lawyer. As you should know by now, one kidney can carry a person through life quite well. Good luck.
