Your ‘dead’ wife? She’s still alive… NHS admits patient survived three more days

A husband who agreed to have his wife’s life-support machine switched off discovered she was still alive when he phoned the hospital three days later to arrange her funeral.

Malcolm Greenhill called the mortuary to arrange the release of the body, only to be told no-one could find it.

It then emerged his wife, Marilyn, had not died as expected and was still on a ward breathing unaided.

Her family hurried back to the hospital but she died the next evening.

Mr Greenhill, 62, told an inquest it was like watching his wife ‘die twice’. He added: ‘If I knew she would stay alive for four days I would never have left her side.’

His wife, 65, was admitted to Sandwell Hospital with bleeding on the brain on Saturday, May 3, after falling downstairs at home. But doctors said there was no hope of survival and advised that her life-support machine be switched off that same evening. He said his farewells and went home to West Bromwich so he could tell the rest of the family.

Mr Greenhill, who was married to his wife for 41 years, added: ‘I was told it was only the machine keeping her breathing and there was no point prolonging the inevitable. They told us there was nothing more they could do and she would only live for a couple of minutes once I turned the machine off so I said my goodbyes.’

He called the mortuary after the bank holiday weekend to find his wife was alive. She died on May 7.

Assistant Black Country coroner Angus Smillie called it a ‘fairly extraordinary turn of events’ and adjourned the inquest so the hospital could respond. The hospital trust told Metro it had launched an investigation.

This article is courtesy from the Metro.

'Police hunted me down with 10 cars and a helicopter… and I was just having coffee'

A former hedge fund boss is considering legal action after being “wrongly sectioned” in a maximum-security psychiatric ward.

Aaron Dover, 39, claims he was detained against his will for 10 days, physically restrained and forcibly injected with sedatives at Highgate Mental Health Centre.

Mr Dover, of Hampstead, was held after his wife became concerned for his well-being and called the NHS 111 out-of-hours number. Authorities feared he might be suicidal and theMetropolitan Police launched a helicopter search. He was having a coffee nearby.

He admitted being under pressure due to an employment dispute and said he had at times suffered from depression, but claimed the response was completely over the top: “I was brought into hospital by a manhunt of more than 10 police cars, police with dogs trawling Hampstead Heath, and a police helicopter, while I was out quietly having a coffee on Flask Walk.

“I was hunted down like a nuclear suicide bomber rather than someone out for Sunday breakfast.

“I was held against my will with patients who were terrifying. Some of them were quite aggressive and there were frequent fights. It’s basically the Hannibal Lecter ward ofHighgate.

“I wanted to leave every second of every minute. I never wanted to set foot in that place and the whole thing was just an atrociously awful nightmare.”

After being detained last September, the IT consultant was taken to Highgate Mental Health Centre, where doctors suspected he had a delusional disorder. He was later sectioned.

He admits he was under intense stress but believes his sectioning was based on hearsay and not enough was done to verify his account of events.

On October 2, following a five-hour hearing, a tribunal found that it was “not satisfied that he was suffering from a mental disorder”. Mr Dover was freed immediately with no further treatment required.

He is considering legal action against Camden and Islington NHS foundation trust over unlawful detention, medical negligence and personal injury. Solicitor José Grayson of D H Law, who represented Mr Dover at the tribunal, said: “The hospital had simply failed to properly investigate what Aaron was saying. It is now some months since his discharge. If they were right about the fact that he had a serious psychotic illness then he would be back in hospital.”

A spokesman for Highgate Mental Health Centre, which is run by Camden and Islington Trust, said: “The tribunal makes a decision on whether further detention is warranted based on the assessment to date, and their own interviews.

“The decision that no further detention is needed does not make the original detention for assessment wrong or illegal.”

This article is courtesy from The Standard.

Trust’s £12.9m pay out in negligence cases as five cases of sexual abuse are investigated

Five cases of alleged sexual abuse have been under investigation by the health care trust that runs the South West Acute Hospital and health and social care here, newly released figures show.

In addition, in the last financial year, the Trust paid out almost £13 million in costs to plaintiffs in negligence cases. The pay-outs from the Western Trust represent more than a quarter of the £50.4 million in payments paid to plaintiffs across Northern Ireland last year.

In a Department of Health report on Clinical and Social Care Negligence cases for the past financial year, of the 582 cases of alleged negligence cases that were open against the Western Health and Social Care Trust, five of them related to alleged abuse of a sexual nature.

No health care system can be guaranteed to be risk or error free, the Trust said. “The Trust takes the health and safety of our patients, clients and staff very seriously, yet this is set against the context where no health and social care system can ever guarantee to be risk or error free. However, the Trust proactively rather than reactively manages such risk and takes appropriate action to ensure lessons are learnt following investigation of such cases, working closely with staff to address safety issues should they need to be addressed. The Trust continues to makes every effort to ensure the highest standards of care are provided to our patients and clients,” a spokesperson said.

Asked about whether the settings for these sexual abuse allegations were in hospital or community, the spokesperson added: “For confidentiality reasons the Trust cannot comment on individual cases and will not be commenting further.”

The Western Trust was also dealing with claims relating to allegations of 30 cases of birth defects, eight cases of a foreign body left in situ in an operation and 116 cases of inappropriate treatment.

The Trust’s negligence costs at £12.9 million are the second highest in Northern Ireland, less than a million under the payments made by the Belfast Trust, which paid the highest amount in negligence costs at £13.7 million.

The largest total at £4.1 million of Western Trust payments was for complaints which arose out of allegations about operations, which can relate to complaints about treatment such as intra-operative problems and operator error. This total includes £3.3 million paid in damages, £233,876 in defence costs and £525,199 in plaintiff costs.

Complaints relating to pregnancy and childbirth -- which can include issues such as birth defects and failure to monitor at first stage labour -- resulted in £2.9 million in payments. These included £2.2 million in damages paid, £248,410 in defence costs paid and £380,435 in plaintiff costs paid.

In the last year, the majority of negligence allegations received by the Trust have related to treatment. 182 cases were open in relation to complaints arising out of allegations of failure to treat or delay in treatment (34), inappropriate treatment (116) and fail to recognise complication of treatment (25).

The number of alleged negligence cases being dealt with by the Western Trust is on the rise. In 2010/11, 500 cases were open. In 2012/13, it was 582, an increase of 16.4 per cent, the second highest increase in the five current Trusts. As for those open in 2012/13, at 582 the number of cases in the Western Trust is the second highest in Northern Ireland, coming behind Belfast Trust at 1,158.

Of those 582 cases, 482 were open, 33 were settled and 125 were closed as at March 31 this year.

Of the 125 that were closed, 40 were closed without payment, while 85 were closed with payment.

Since 2010/11 the Western Trust has reported the largest increase in the number of negligence cases settled at March 31, 2013 from 1 to 33 in 2012/13.

In the same period, the Western Trust reported the largest increase in the number of negligence cases closed at March 31, 2013 from 85 in 2010/11 to 125 in 2012/13.

As for new cases opened in the Western Trust, in 2010/11, it was 75, in 2011/12, it was 85 and in 2012/13, it was 70.

The Trust pays claims through central funding from the Department of Health. “The Trust has robust procedures in place to manage cases. The £12.9 million referred to is the total payments to date for all clinical/social care negligence cases open during 2012/13. However, it should be noted that costs associated with a case may not be paid out in the same financial year in which the case has been received and therefore the information refers to the amount paid on each case up to and including 31 March 2013.”

The Trust was asked to comment on the increase in the number of alleged negligence cases to the Trust over three years. A spokesperson said: “It should be noted that the figures provided within the DHSSPSNI report detail the number of clinical/social care negligence cases which were open at any stage during each of the last three years, and if a case was open in each of the last three years it will be counted in each year. The figure of 582 includes any claims that remained open as at 31 March 2013, plus any that had been settled or closed for any other reason during 2012/13.

“Claims may remain open for a number of reasons, the main reasons are on-going investigations (either by the Trust or the plaintiff) or the plaintiff has not progressed their claim, but has not notified the Trust or its legal advisers of their decision. In some cases, this will result in the claim becoming “statute barred” or the claim is listed for Hearing at a future date. The Trust currently has claims listed for Hearing up to December 2014. Open claims are regularly reviewed by the Trust and its legal advisers. The number of unresolved medical negligence/professional negligence claims, as at 2 December 2013, is 408.”

This article is courtesy from the Impartial Reporter.

Bungling doctors told Emily and Chelsea to abort their 'lifeless' babies. Thank God they refused

Sitting in a hospital waiting room, Emily Wheatley picked up her mobile phone and made a call she will remember vividly for the rest of her life.

‘Normally having your first scan is a really exciting, happy day for a new mum,’ the 32-year-old says, struggling to control her emotions. ‘But for me it was one of the worst.’

Minutes earlier the mother-to-be had been told she had miscarried and the baby she had longed for was dead in her womb at just ten weeks.

‘When they told me they couldn’t detect a heartbeat for the baby and that he or she was dead, I couldn’t take it in and burst into tears,’ recalls Emily.

‘A midwife told me I could either go home and wait for two weeks for the foetus to come out naturally or that I could take medication to speed it up there and then.

‘My sister was with me and she comforted me as best she could, but I was in a state of shock. I didn’t know what to do. All I wanted was my mother. As soon as I’d composed myself sufficiently I called her.’

And, today, a year and a half on, the gurgling tot bouncing up and down on her lap is a joyful reminder of the consequences of that split-second decision — and her mother’s response.

‘Call it “mother’s instinct” if you like but Mum knew me and knew in her heart that my baby was still alive,’ continues Emily. ‘She said I had to get a second opinion immediately and I was not to take the medication under any circumstances.’

So the following day Emily did as instructed and, at a different NHS hospital, she underwent another scan.

Within minutes a consultant was informing her that the first hospital had made a mistake and that she was, indeed, still pregnant.

It was amazing news for Emily, who because of a medical condition had feared she might struggle to have children. But the impact of what had gone before could not be so easily forgotten.

Even a photograph of the scan failed to reassure her that everything was all right and a shadow was cast over her entire pregnancy.

Indeed, she says it is only recently that she has started enjoying being a mum to Ella who is now eight months old.

‘I just didn’t dare believe that my baby was alive in case they were wrong and I felt that way throughout my pregnancy, which led to me feeling guilty, because I knew it should have been a happy time and I should have been a joyous mum-to-be,’ she says.

It would be nice to be able to dismiss what happened to Emily, who lives in Monmouth, South Wales, as a one-off. But that is not the case.

For while her treatment at the first hospital undoubtedly fell well short of what it should have been, her near-miss story is not as rare as might be imagined. And mothers like her — whose babies are saved — are the lucky ones.

What is unknown is how many take medics’ advice on medication or undergo surgical procedures, to terminate what is, in fact, a viable pregnancy.

Research two years ago found that wrongly interpreted ultrasound scans could lead to 400 healthy pregnancies being misdiagnosed as miscarriages each year in Britain.

This is more than the estimated 300 cot deaths that occur in this country annually. And it is something that haunts Emily.

‘I just thank God I spoke to my mum when they were trying to shove pills down me to get what they said was a dead baby out,’ she says.

‘If I hadn’t, Ella wouldn’t be here now. How many mothers are there out there who have maybe aborted perfectly healthy babies because of the wrong advice?’

According to government statistics, approximately 20 per cent of pregnancies miscarry. This equates to roughly 168,000 miscarriages per year, with 143,000 of these occurring in the first 12 weeks.

Of the women affected, some 45,000 require a stay in an NHS hospital.

Guidelines issued by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence lay down procedures for diagnosing miscarriages when using ultrasound.

Specifically, it is recommended that women are given a trans-vaginal (TV) — or internal — scan: the type most effective at picking up signs of a viable pregnancy, such as a heartbeat.

Only where a woman does not want such a scan should a trans-abdominal (TA) scan (which is carried out over the stomach) be used. In these cases, the patient should be advised of the potential risk of misdiagnosis.

Why the elimination of any doubt is so critical is highlighted by the experience of women such as Emily.

It was on July 18 last year that Emily, a sales executive with an insurance company, attended the maternity unit of the University Hospital of Wales (UHW) in Cardiff for what should have been a routine scan to date her pregnancy.

Having previously undergone surgery for polycystic ovary syndrome, which affects the workings of the ovaries, Emily’s first pregnancy was all the more precious.

As typically happens with a dating scan, an external TA scan was carried out, in this case by a midwife sonographer.

During the scan, the medic compared the size of the gestation sac — the ‘water bag’ containing the growing baby and the amniotic fluid that nourishes it — with the size of the foetus itself.

The latter, she claimed, was smaller than it should have been, leading her to conclude that the foetus was dead.

Another abdominal scan, using a more powerful form of ultrasound, was then carried out, which also failed to detect a heartbeat.

Both scans were then repeated by a second midwife who obtained the same results. They concluded that the baby was dead and that Emily had suffered a miscarriage. At no point was she offered an internal ultrasound.

That only occurred the following morning at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny where Emily — having spoken to her mother and delayed taking medication to evacuate the baby from her womb — was referred by her GP.

‘A consultant gynaecologist carried out the test and after she had done it she asked me to wait and she fetched another doctor to look at the monitor,’ recalls Emily. ‘The consultant then told me: “I don’t know how to say this but you have got a very healthy baby in there.”

‘I was in pieces then, just all over the place, not knowing what to believe.

‘They showed me the recording of the baby moving but I still couldn’t accept it was true.

‘My mother tried to reassure me too but nothing was sinking in.’

Back at home, Emily, who split from Ella’s father shortly after discovering she was pregnant, struggled to cope with these mixed emotions. A month later she formally complained to the hospital about her treatment.

A response from its Nurse Director followed, which claimed that while ‘normal practice was followed on the day of the scan, I am not able to provide you with any answer as to why the foetal heartbeat was not visible’.

Emily then complained to Peter Tyndall, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. The shocking details of his investigation were published last week.

He found that since as long ago as 2006 staff at the University Hospital of Wales had been following outdated guidelines regarding scanning procedures. As a result, it is feared that hundreds of pregnant women using the hospital may have had healthy babies aborted.

The UHW delivers about 6,000 babies a year, with between 600 and 1,200 women suffering a miscarriage.

Mr Tyndall warned that Emily was unlikely to have been a one-off, adding: ‘There will have been others.’

He demanded a review of staff skills and ordered the hospital to pay Emily £1,500 in compensation.

As well as apologising to Emily, the hospital set up a helpline which has received 80 inquiries from women concerned about their treatment.

A number of the callers, it has emerged, were treated at other hospitals, prompting concern that the problem may be more widespread than first thought.

This chimes with the experience of 34-year-old Chelsea Muff.

The divorced mother-of-three from Bradford, West Yorkshire, gave birth to her youngest child Laila, 18 months ago. But, like Emily, her pregnancy was blighted by the failings of her local hospital.

Having suffered slight bleeding at seven weeks she attended the Early Pregnancy Unit at the Bradford Royal Infirmary in June 2011.

‘I went on my own because I was pretty sure that there was nothing wrong,’ says Chelsea, who works for a jewellery company.

‘The sonographer carried out a normal ultrasound scan on my stomach and then announced that there was nothing there, and that I’d had a miscarriage.

‘She left me for a bit by myself and then came back and said I had three options. I could be booked in for vacuum suction to remove the baby, I could take some tablets there and then that would make the baby pass through me or I could wait for the baby to come away naturally, which would take up to about a week.

‘I was distraught — I didn’t want to accept what I was being told and just got up and left. They told me that passing the baby could take a week or so and to call them if nothing had happened.’

They were, she recalls, terrible days. ‘I couldn’t work, I was crying in front of my children and all the time I thought I was carrying my dead baby,’ she says.

‘I was dreading what was going to happen. But at the same time, it didn’t feel right. I had two children already and I felt pregnant.’

When after ten days still nothing had happened, she was contacted by the hospital and told to come in for a vacuum suction. She ignored the call, only returning three days later to demand another scan.

This time she again underwent an abdominal scan — but with a very different outcome.

‘The consultant came in and said “Congratulations, everything’s fine with the baby”,’ recalls Chelsea.

But, as with Emily’s story, that was not the end of the emotional rollercoaster.

‘The rest of my pregnancy was awful because I was always scared something was going to happen, especially towards the end. If she ever stopped moving I thought I’d lost her again,’ she said. Chelsea complained to the hospital which admitted that the correct protocol had not been followed.

It has since reviewed its working practices and has paid for Chelsea to undergo counselling.

She explains: ‘From what I could make out I should have been given an internal scan and the baby would have shown up then. You go to hospitals and you expect them to know best, don’t you?’

Several other women who have also been misdiagnosed as suffering from miscarriages have told the Mail how their concerns were brushed aside by staff.

One, a 25-year-old from Edinburgh, was told not to worry ‘because you’ve already got one child’. Another, a 27-year-old from Essex, was offered anti-depressants — then told she could only take them if she accepted her baby was dead.

A spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that strict guidelines relating to the use of internal scans were issued several years ago and that it was up to individual hospitals to implement them.

Meanwhile, Ruth Bender Atik — national director of the Miscarriage Association — warned that what had happened in Wales had caused distress for women across the country who would also now be concerned that they might have been misdiagnosed.

‘It is very, very distressing particularly if you have already been through medical or surgical management then wonder if this has happened to you,’ she said.

‘Unfortunately and unhappily, it has caused distress for people who have no way of finding out.

‘I hope, for women going forward, that they can take comfort from knowing that there really are good guidelines out there and that most hospitals are sticking to them.

‘Nobody wants to misdiagnose miscarriage or cause the end of a viable pregnancy.’

A fact that Emily and Chelsea —and their babies — need no reminding of.

This article is courtesy from The Daily Mail.

We don't need more hospital beds – we need better patient management

"I am calling to say that my 86 year old mother has been waiting for nine hours on a trolley. This is unacceptable! How can it happen in a first-world country?"

"Peter, we have been trying all morning to get the hospitals on the phone so we can get some answers. It’s not good enough, is it?"

Yet again, there is a city-wide shortage of public hospital beds in Melbourne. Patients are getting tired, relatives cranky, creating the urgent question that reverberates throughout the corridors as doctors like me turn up to work: "can anyone be discharged?". Of course, this urgency is no greater than other days but in recent days the radio waves have been rattling with complaints, and nothing worries bureaucrats more than a crisis that might creep into the evening news when opinions are formed.

I begin the ward round with my eyes scrutinising the patient list for anyone who can go home.

We see Mr Lee first. At 48, he has suffered his first seizure. Although the initial tests are reassuringly normal, he is in the age bracket where it’s prudent to exclude a brain tumour. He can either have an inpatient MRI at the end of this week, or an outpatient MRI next month. He doesn’t speak English, is the sole bread-winner of his six-member family, and is desperately anxious to rule out a serious diagnosis. He stays because it feels inhuman to do any less.

Next to him is Mrs Blake, 90, with early dementia. She left the stove on until the meat burnt to a char and her fingers just escaped. Her grateful husband eagerly consented to the couple being placed in the same nursing home. "It’s not what I had imagined but at least we will be together and she will be safe." But finding a nursing home with two available beds – one in a dementia-specific wing – is an uphill task even with the cooperation of their diligent son and our knowledgeable officer. So she stays too, her risk of incurring a serious setback like a fall or pneumonia increasing with every additional day on the ward.

Two young patients are discharged quickly and we all breathe a sigh of relief. "Have we fulfilled our duty?" a junior doctor asks, both strain and sarcasm evident in his voice. Before I can answer, we are accosted by an irate relative.

"I am telling you now that I am not taking my mum home until you have fixed her."

Her mum is 80 and suffers from osteoarthritis. We have managed her pain, provided physiotherapy, and seen her walking incremental distances safely. She has been cleared by multiple health professionals but her daughter is adamant that we are missing something.

"We can’t reverse osteoarthritis, just manage the symptoms and she is better", I explain gently.

"I am not taking her home until she has seen an orthopaedic surgeon." Getting a surgeon will take time and won't be helpful, but I also know that the daughter has figured out how to play the game. Management by threat works very well in the short term. Meanwhile, the social worker has discovered that the real issue is that the daughter doesn’t want her mother living with her anymore, but doesn’t want to tell her. Family dysfunction is the reason behind this patient’s failure to be discharged. She could be here for weeks.

People looking in from the outside constantly wonder why there is a perennial lack of hospital beds. The images of elderly patients stuck in trolleys have fast become the sine qua non of a healthcare system said to be in crisis. These discomfiting sights reflexively make us demand more hospital beds. But as any modern clinician will tell you, the lack of hospital beds is merely a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Medical wards such as mine are the dominant factor dictating bed availability in hospitals. These wards admit the bulk of elderly patients who typically present with multiple complex and chronic conditions. Their illness itself can sometimes be the easiest part to manage out of the many obstacles they present.

We are fortunate to have access to the most sophisticated investigations, but their increasing demand creates a waitlist. An inpatient test can happen in days, while the same test can take weeks or months as an outpatient. A specialist review is easier to obtain in hospital, especially if you fear that a weak, vulnerable or poor patient may never make it to their outpatient appointment. Having set up the expectation of an intervention, every patient wants it now.

Increasingly, there are never enough beds for respite, rehabilitation or palliative care – patients can experience long delays to be transferred from an acute hospital bed to these places. Council services are usually operating at capacity and seldom accept patients at very short notice. Even a regular recipient of services must wait to have them reinstated after hospitalisation. Add to this mix a public holiday and the hospital groans under the pressure of reduced discharges. On such occasions, I often wonder if hapless healthcare professionals are the only ones who appreciate that the need for ancillary services does not suddenly diminish on a long weekend.

While working out the logistics of residential care is onerous, it can be notoriously difficult returning a resident to their own nursing home. Even when there is consensus that the patient would be best served in a familiar environment, successfully returning the patient to their nursing home in the evening or the weekend is practically impossible. This is another reason why hospital beds are full.

Given the shrill calls of a system in crisis, you could be forgiven for doubting that Australian healthcare is consistently rated at the top of the world. But doctors still contend with unhappy families who "want everything done". Such are our strides of progress that to be reminded of the limitations of medicine seems perverse, but alas, it is true. Since no doctor wants to be perceived as "giving up" on a patient, we keep them in longer, throw in some extra tests, and buy time – but more is not better and is definitely more risky.

An emphasis on improved doctor-patient communication and advance care planning is essential. It is something that we are painfully slow to recognise as a society but the best-served patients will be those who have an active say in navigating their care, especially at the end of life.

Just as giving paracetamol for a fever does not address the underlying illness, simply opening more beds ignores the systemic malady. Good healthcare means more than finding a hospital bed for elderly patients waiting all night in a trolley. It must ultimately address the bottlenecks that prevent them from making room for the next needy patient.

This article is courtesy from The Guardian.

Teenager who complained of headaches dies of brain tumour

A teenage girl died after medics failed to spot that she had a brain tumour – despite seeing her 24 times in the last year of her life.

Natasha Simmonds, 16, was treated by 13 doctors but none of them ordered a crucial MRI scan until it was too late.

Her mother, Sarah Simmonds, claims that three months before her daughter died, one A&E doctor accused her of ‘putting the symptoms on’ and refused to give her a scan because they were reserved for ‘life and death’ situations.

Natasha, who was studying for a career in childcare, complained of headaches, numbness in her limbs, back pains, vomiting and problems with her eyesight.

But the paediatrician in charge of her care dismissed the symptoms as migraines. Natasha died on January 24, eight days after the tumour was finally discovered. It had twisted around her brain and spine.

Last night, Natasha’s grieving twin, Fiona, accused the health service of ignoring her sister’s complaints. ‘She was seen by so many people and none of them took her seriously,’ she said.

An inquest heard that Natasha, from Radstock in Somerset, had been attending hospital since 2008 and her condition got much worse in 2010.

She was referred to associate specialist paediatrician Colin Downie at Bath’s Royal United Hospital in February 2012, who said she had migraines. Because Natasha seemed to improve between each episode of ill-health, he said her symptoms were not serious enough for an MRI.

In the 11 months that followed, Natasha saw four paediatric doctors, six GPs and three A&E doctors, all of whom failed to diagnose the cancer.

Dr Downie finally ordered an MRI in November, nine months after he first saw the teenager, but the scan did not take place until January and the results were delivered only eight days before Natasha died. The scan showed a rare cancer – a disseminated oligodendroglioma-like leptomeningeal tumour.

Dr Downie told the inquest he regretted not asking for the scan to be carried out urgently.

Natasha was admitted to Frenchay Hospital in Bristol and had two emergency operations on her brain and spine. She died on January 24, from lung damage caused by the cancer.

At the inquest on September 19, Avon coroner Maria Voisin recorded a narrative verdict, concluding that Natasha had died from natural causes. She said there was no need to make a formal recommendation for changes at the hospital.

But yesterday Mrs Simmonds, 47, told the Mail: ‘We’ll never know what would have happened if she’d been given an MRI scan when we first asked for one.

‘At the very least she wouldn’t have died so suddenly and so frightened.

‘We were so shocked. We’d been told for so long that it was migraines, we never thought it could have been cancer. She knew she was really sick and before her second operation she begged me to take her home so she could die. She spent the last few days of her life terrified.’

Mrs Simmonds, who works as a GP receptionist and is separated from Natasha’s father, Ken, added: ‘She was a beautiful person, unique and one of a kind. I just can’t believe she has gone.

‘I trusted in the medical profession and I feel so angry and let down. I’ve been told lessons have been learned but that doesn’t help when it’s your child that has died.’

A spokesman for the Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust said: ‘In the next few weeks many of the clinicians who looked after Natasha will be meeting to discuss this sad case and ensure that any opportunities for learning are not missed.’

This article is courtesy from The Daily Mail.

Paramedic ‘went to PC World’ on way to call-out

A paramedic has admitted telling colleagues she stopped her ambulance at a retail park to pick up equipment for her computer on her way to an urgent call to help a depressed and suicidal woman.

Victoria Arnott said she was ill and needed to pick up medication, but told colleagues she had stopped her ambulance to pick up PC equipment because she was too embarrassed to tell them about her health issues.

The former Scottish Ambulance Service worker was on duty in Fife on 4 July last year when she was allocated a doctor’s urgent call to attend the woman’s home in Lochgelly and take her to Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline.

Ms Arnott told the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) conduct and competence committee that she felt “pretty poorly” from the start of her 12-hour shift.

She said that while en route from Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy she decided to stop at a retail park chemist for medication.

“I was feeling symptomatic to a point where I was somewhat frustrated and distracted,” she told the three-member committee panel yesterday.

She did not ask for permission to stop because she was embarrassed and “not thinking straight”, she said.

Earlier, the panel heard the paramedic told colleagues ­investigating the seven-minute delay that she had stopped at PC World to pick up something for her computer.

Ms Arnott, who joined the ambulance service in 1999, said she was concerned about telling people about her health issues as “it is not the most discreet of services”.

The paramedic said she later felt “mortified and humiliated” about what she described as a “grave error”.

The panel heard that the call was at the second lowest level of priority with a response window of one to four hours. It had been received by the control room at 11:41am and was not allocated to Ms Arnott’s crew until 3:35pm.

Alice Stobart, counsel for Ms Arnott, said that given such a window, her client might be ­expected to know that there was unlikely to be clinical or medical input necessary.

At yesterday’s hearing, Ms ­Arnott admitted stopping on the way to the woman’s home to do personal shopping without seeking authorisation from the ambulance control centre, but denied misusing an ambulance for personal purposes.

She said she thought that a stop on medical grounds would have been allowed if she had sought permission.

The panel was told that the matter had been raised with the HCPC through an anonymous letter.

Rowena Rix, representing the body, said: “It is the HCPC’s submission that her actions did fall short of the standards expected of her.

“She did on this occasion put her own interest above that of the patient, which caused a delay in the treatment of the patient.

“While there is no suggestion of any harm caused, there was definitely potential for harm in this case.”

Ms Stobart said her client’s decision to stop was a “one-off isolated error”.

The case continues.

This article is courtesy from The Scotsman.

Type 2 diabetes misdiagnosis results in the death of a six-year-old girl

The little girl could barely breathe. She lay on the hospital bed, her chest rising with each forced inhalation. Irma Nicanor held her only child's hand. The six-year-old's eyes were closed, but Irma felt her tiny fingers squeezing.

"Stay strong, Claudialee," she told her in Spanish.

Irma was dazed by how everything had gone so bad so quickly. It was early on a January evening in 2010. They'd checked into New York Hospital in Flushing that afternoon. Claudialee was nauseated and had a tummy ache. Irma figured she'd caught a stomach virus from a boy in their apartment building. She now knew that it was more than that.

Two days before, Cladialee was running around the house, climbing over couches and crawling under tables. She seemed as healthy as she'd ever been. Yes, she was overweight, and her blood sugar was slightly high, but Irma was seeing to it that her daughter would get fit.

A bubbly girl with a loud laugh, full cheeks, and a thick mop of dark brown hair, Claudialee had plenty of energy for that mission. The girl took ballet and karate lessons. She ran around the park with her dad and rode bikes with her cousin. During snack time at P.S. 32, she pulled out sandwich bags filled with celery and carrots and sliced fruit. Her first-grade teacher would eat with Claudialee so that she wouldn't feel bad about not having sweets like the other kids.

Irma was always conscious about her daughter's health. Over the past three months alone, she'd taken Claudialee to six medical appointments: three times to her pediatrician, Dr. Thelma Cabatic, for flu shots and checkups; and three times to her endocrinologist, Dr. Arlene Mercado, to deal with her blood sugar. At each visit, Mercado would tell Irma that her girl was fine, in need of nothing more than diet and exercise.

Yet two weeks after her last checkup, here was Claudialee struggling for air, half-conscious in an emergency room. "Patient has slight movement of all four extremities spontaneously but not on command," the hospital notes read. "Mumbles occasionally."

The scene was overwhelming for a mother. Nurses scurrying around. Chemicals with smells much stronger than the cleaning supplies Irma used in her job as a housekeeper. Intravenous tubes attached to Claudialee's arms, alternately streaming potassium salts, water, and glucose. The girl's blood sugar had risen to 525 milligrams per deciliter—more than five times the normal level.

How could this happen? Irma kept asking herself.

Claudialee's lungs struggled as the night wore on. Nurses strapped an oxygen mask to her face. It wasn't enough. They decided to push a tube down the child's throat so a ventilator could help her breathe. But Claudialee wasn't having it. Even half-conscious, she was still a flare of vigor. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked. The nurses didn't expect such strength. They retreated and injected her with a sedative. Then they inserted the tube. Claudialee was now unconscious and dependent on a machine to supply her with oxygen.

Irma sat in the waiting room, praying. She called her sister Marta. It was about 4 a.m., but Marta rushed to the hospital. She got lost in the hallways, missed the waiting room, and ended up at Claudialee's bedside. The two were alone, the only sounds coming from the robotic hums and beeps of intensive care.

"It hurts," Marta thought she heard the girl whisper.

"Where does it hurt?"

There came no reply.

St. James Avenue was quiet and still on October 31, 2009. Irma and Claudialee passed the modest wood-frame homes with yards fronted by low chain-link or wrought-iron fences. American flags fluttered beside satellite dishes. Not a single person was in sight. Just the kind of tranquility a family hopes for when they move to Elmhurst.

Mother and daughter stopped in front of a cream-colored three-story house, then walked up the driveway to a concrete backyard. Irma might as well have been taking Claudialee to a classmate's birthday party.

Court documents, medical records, and interviews would detail what followed.

The pair descended a stairwell to a minimalist setup: a desk and several chairs. Curtains forming two makeshift rooms. Dr. Arlene Mercado's office was in the basement of her sister Myra Mercado Capistrano's house.

Mercado opened the clinic in 2007. Thirteen different insurance companies listed her practice in their network. She had a second practice at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. And she accepted Medicaid, the government health program for low-income people. She was a pediatric endocrinologist, specializing in children and the hormones and chemicals that could stunt growth or bring on early puberty. The most common issue she dealt with was diabetes.

She was well versed in practice, if not theory. Mercado was not board-certified in her specialty, American Board of Pediatrics records show. She failed the certification exam more than five times. Without passing that, she couldn't attempt the next step, the pediatric endocrinology test. But these setbacks didn't stop her. Board certification isn't mandatory. In fact, though she couldn't pass the test herself, Mercado taught a certification-exam review course in Children's Hospital at SUNY Downstate.

Her business was a family affair. Mercado had two paid employees: Myra, the clinic manager, and Myra's husband, Edward Capistrano, the billing supervisor. The Capistranos' children handled the patients.

Paul, a 23-year-old political science grad student with a degree in math, and Bernard, a 21-year-old graphic design major, measured heights, weights, and blood pressure. Twelve-year-old William sat at the front desk, answering phones and filling out appointment cards.

Irma handed William a referral card from Claudialee's pediatrician, Dr. Cabatic.

She'd taken Claudialee to see Cabatic five days earlier for the first in a series of flu vaccinations. Claudialee had the sniffles, so Cabatic ran her through a full examination. Four days later, the doctor called to say that Claudialee's urine and red blood cells showed abnormal glucose levels. Her blood sugar was above normal, suggesting the girl might become diabetic. In her notes, Cabatic wrote, "probable diabetes mellitus."

The disease stems directly from high blood sugar. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system kills off cells that produce insulin, the hormone that brings the body's glucose supply to muscle and fat. If the body doesn't get more insulin, the person will die.

In type 2, a person has a lot of insulin, but the stuff just doesn't work. Insulin resistance, doctors call it. Obesity is the usual cause. The damage is slower and can be treated through diet, exercise, and medication.

Cabatic knew Claudialee was at high risk for diabetes. The girl's maternal grandmother, paternal grandfather, and three of her uncles had it. She recommended that the girl see a specialist and gave Irma the name of a pediatric endocrinologist who spoke Spanish and would accept her Metroplus Medicaid card. (Metroplus, a nonprofit healthcare organization that provides Medicaid in New York, did not respond to interview requests for this story.)

Irma called Mercado's office to set up an appointment for the next morning.

After asking about the family history, Mercado took a blood sample from Claudialee. The doctor was a short, round woman who peered over thin spectacles and disarmed with a cheerful smile. She told Irma she would send the blood to a lab and they'd discuss the results in two weeks.

The test would duplicate Cabatic's results: Claudialee's blood sugar level was higher than normal, but not high enough to be considered diabetes. She was "prediabetic." During the next visit, Mercado explained to Irma that the results were nothing to be too concerned about. The girl just needed to lose weight. Diet and exercise. She handed Irma a sheet of paper with a food pyramid on it.

In her notes, Mercado wrote that if the patient didn't lose weight by her next checkup in mid-December, she would prescribe Metformin, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes.

Though type 2 used to be called "adult-onset" diabetes, Mercado knew recent studies had shown that a growing number of kids were getting it. At 3-foot-9 and 67 pounds, Claudialee was clinically obese. Mercado noticed a dark spot on her neck, often a sign of insulin resistance.

By her next appointment on December 12, things were looking up. Claudialee was thinner. Mercado didn't conduct any tests or ask many questions. It was a brief but reassuring meeting, full of grins and calming words. Claudialee is fine, the doctor told Irma. She just needs to drop another pound or two. Diet and exercise.

In her notes, Mercado wrote that she'd administer another blood glucose test on the next visit. As Irma left, William handed her an appointment card telling them to come back on February 23.

Cabatic echoed Mercado's optimism when the mother and daughter returned on January 9 for the girl's final flu shot. It happened that Claudialee had come home early from school the day before. During snack time, she complained that her heart was beating faster than normal. The nurse sent Irma a note saying a doctor had to sign off before Claudialee could return to class. Cabatic assessed her vital signs. Normal heart rate and blood pressure. No cough. No chest pain. No difficulty breathing. All was stable.

Cabatic had more good news: In the 10 weeks since the October 26 checkup, Claudialee had lost five pounds and grown two inches.

As far as the doctors could tell, Claudialee was getting healthier by the week.

On January 21, Marta Nicanor, Irma's sister, picked up her six-year-old son, Gustavo, and Claudialee from school. Irma worked as a housekeeper for a family in Port Washington, Long Island. Most days she left her apartment at 8:30 a.m. and didn't get home until nearly 8 p.m, so Claudialee spent most of her evenings at her aunt's place. She'd play with Gustavo, her best friend.

Claudialee told Marta she was tired and that her stomach had been bothering her. She wanted to lie down. Marta called Irma, who called Dr. Cabatic to schedule an appointment for first thing the following morning. She left work early and arrived at her sister's apartment about 4:30 p.m.

When Claudialee heard her mother come in, she hopped out of bed, ran over to her, and threw up. Irma took her to their apartment, one floor up in the same building.

Born less than 15 months apart, Irma and Marta were closer to one another than to any of their other six siblings. The family grew up poor in the state of Puebla, southeast of Mexico City, and they both dreamed of raising their children in the United States. When they were in their early 20s, they made their way north. Over the years, they would earn the solid, working-class life they'd aspired to.

For a while Irma lived in East Harlem with Claudialee's father, Napolean Gomez. They separated when Claudialee was a year old. Irma moved in with Marta and her husband in Flushing. She stayed for a year, waiting for an apartment to open up in the same building. She wanted to live near her sister, who stayed home to look after her three children. There was nobody Irma trusted more with the care of her daughter.

Irma took Claudialee's temperature. No fever. She offered food but the girl wasn't hungry. She was very thirsty, though. Irma placed Gatorade and ginger ale on the nightstand by her bed, but Claudialee only wanted water. She napped for a couple of hours, then gulped more water. She fell back to sleep at about 10 p.m., with her mother lying beside her.

Claudialee woke up drowsy. She always dressed herself, but on this day Irma had to do it for her.

They made the 10-minute walk and got to Dr. Cabatic's clinic at 9:30 a.m. It didn't open until 10, but Irma routinely arrived at doctors' appointments early. Then 9:30 became 10:30 and 10:30 became 11. The door remained locked. Irma called Cabatic's cell phone and office line seven times. No answer.

Claudialee kept saying her stomach ached, that she felt tired and really thirsty. She'd vomited three more times that morning.

She normally didn't complain about things—she was the type of girl who fell off a scooter, scraped her knee, and got right back on without hesitation. Irma called a cab and asked the driver to take them to New York Hospital.

Claudialee began to sway and stumble as they walked toward the emergency room. Before reaching the entrance, she nearly collapsed. Irma picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.

As hospital workers ran tests, a nurse asked Irma if Claudialee had been urinating more and drinking more than usual recently. Irma said she had noticed her daughter doing both since Christmas.

This suggested that Claudialee's blood sugar had been rising.

The test results—five times the normal level—supported that hypothesis.

"When the doctors came in and told me about blood-sugar levels—that was a surprise," Irma tells the Voice. "That was the last thing I expected to hear. That's when I knew something was really wrong."

There had been other signs. Months after Claudialee checked into New York Hospital's ER, pediatric endocrinologist Craig Alter reviewed her medical records. He was shocked, unable to understand why Dr. Mercado had so quickly ruled out type 1 diabetes.

"If you tell me there is a five-year-old with diabetes, the chance that they have type 1 is probably 99.99 percent," he would later testify. "If you tell me they are obese, I would say, okay, the chance is 99.7. It's almost definitely type 1."

Alter, a physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is one of the world's top experts on diabetes in kids. He teaches a pediatric endocrinology class at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school. He is chairman of the Educational Committee for the Endocrine Society and gives lectures across the globe. In 2001, he founded Camp Freedom, a summer program in Pennsylvania that brings together diabetic youth for a week of swimming, hiking, and sharing insulin-injection stories around the bonfire. Last year, 140 kids registered; 139 of them had type 1.

Even though rates of type 2 are rising among minors, the condition remains rare in children under 10 years old. The National Institutes of Health report that one out of every 5,000 kids in that age group has type 1 diabetes, while one out of every 250,000 gets type 2. The reason is simple: Type 1 is a condition people are born with or acquire very early in life; type 2 develops over time—enough time for the body to build a resistance to insulin.

Not only is type 1 far more common in six-year-olds, it is also far more urgent.

"Type 2, you have a little more luxury of time. Type 1, you do not have the luxury of time," Alter testified. "Type 1, if we don't give them insulin, they will die."

Blood sugar is like temperature—it rises gradually. In the months since Claudialee's last tests, the girl's blood sugar level continued to rise, right under her doctors' noses.

Even as the puzzle pieces began to emerge, each showing a symptom of the disease, neither Mercado nor Cabatic saw the whole picture. Weight loss can indicate that the body is starving as a result of its failure to absorb glucose. Sudden heart palpitations can indicate that the body is dehydrated from losing the sugar-laden fluids via urination.

"In a child where there is a possibility of diabetes, any symptoms that develop that might be linked to diabetes have to be assumed diabetes until proven otherwise," Alter said. "You look for anything to tip you over the edge. The appropriate treatment would have been more-frequent monitoring to determine if diabetes was present then, or to catch it early within a few days, had it progressed."

Because Mercado had locked in on type 2, she did not monitor her patient's blood. She did not tell Irma to purchase a $20 blood sugar meter from the drugstore. She did not ask Irma about the frequency with which her daughter drank and urinated. And neither she nor Cabatic described to Irma the danger signs to look out for.
"Being that she has a family history of diabetes, I would be thinking that she would know the symptoms of diabetes," Cabatic later testified in court.

Even after it was clear that Claudialee suffered from type 1, Mercado stood by her diagnosis. When later questioned in court, she disagreed with the notion that type 2 diabetes is uncommon in young kids.

"How many type 2 infant diabetics have you treated?" a lawyer asked her.

"A lot," she replied. "Maybe it's geographical, because I work at Brooklyn as an assistant professor and also in wellness program where there are a lot of obese children, so we diagnose a lot of children with type 2 diabetes."

It's tempting to assume that Claudialee received substandard care because of her family's income status. Doctors don't make as much money treating Medicaid beneficiaries, explains Jim Sheehan, former New York State Medicaid inspector general. A specialist earns as little as $30 a visit. By contrast, a pediatric endocrinologist treating someone with private insurance gets nearly $100 an hour. So Medicaid providers often have trouble filling their networks with enough doctors who specialize in common issues like diabetes. Patients are sometimes left to the lesser skilled or lesser known—doctors who can't afford to turn away the business.

"Some specialties, they have a very tough time recruiting people to be Medicaid-based," says Sheehan. "And so you're not gonna say, 'We want board-certified.'"

Though she'd failed to earn certification, Arlene Mercado had established a respectable career. She graduated from the University of Santo Tomas's medical school in the Philippines in 1984 and spent much of the next decade treating poor people in rural villages. She came to the U.S. in the mid-1990s, interning at Harlem Hospital before beginning her residency at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville, North Carolina. Her transition reflected competence: Foreign doctors must complete a rigorous testing process to become licensed here.

After two years of endocrinology training at the National Institutes of Health, Mercado took a position as a senior fellow at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. In 2006, SUNY Downstate hired her as an attending physician. Two years later, she was named associate medical director of the hospital's wellness program for obese and diabetic patients. (SUNY did not respond to interview requests for this story.)

By the time Mercado treated Claudialee, a good number of experienced doctors had vouched for her. She'd co-authored at least seven academic papers in peer-reviewed journals. Multiple private insurance companies added her to their networks. Over the course of her career in New York, she sustained a spotless record. Not once had the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, an investigatory division of the New York State Department of Health, taken disciplinary action against her.

Shortly after sunset on January 23, 2010, Irma and Napolean sat in the waiting room at New York Presbyterian Cornell Medical Center. Claudialee had been transferred there a few hours before. Family and friends surrounded the parents.

A doctor approached and explained what was happening to their daughter. Claudialee's blood sugar had been rising for months. Because she didn't have enough insulin, her body burned fatty acids as an alternative fuel source. As those acids accumulated, they poisoned her body, and its systems began to shut down. The resulting nerve damage allowed fluids to seep into her brain, causing it to swell and pushing her further from consciousness. Twice that evening, doctors had had to resuscitate Claudialee. Now only machines kept her alive.

There was almost no chance she would recover.

That reality was dawning on Irma. She'd tried to stay optimistic, to stay strong for her only child. She'd dedicated herself to building a life for her daughter. She thought she'd done everything right. Coming to America. Working the long hours that might pull them up the economic ladder. Signing the girl up for dance classes and after-school tutoring sessions. And all those doctor visits. She wondered what she should have done better.

She felt guilty and betrayed. She'd put her faith in the healthcare process and it failed her.

Irma asked about organ donation. The doctor told her that wouldn't be possible. Her daughter's organs were damaged beyond repair.

The family members entered Claudialee's room and said their goodbyes.

On a summer afternoon, the waiting room of Downstate Pediatrics Associates is filled with nearly two dozen people. There are babies in strollers, parents reading magazines, and grade-schoolers playing tag. There are giggles and stomps and adults saying things like "give that man his sunglasses back" and "take that sticker off your face."

A reporter approaches the front desk and asks to speak with Dr. Arlene Mercado. The receptionist goes to get her.

It has been a rough few weeks for Mercado. In July, a jury found her 100 percent liable for the death of Claudialee Gomez-Nicanor. (Cabatic, also a defendant, was cleared.) In her testimony, Mercado admitted to having thrown away her original notes from Claudialee's treatments after learning she had been subpoenaed. Before discarding them, she typed up copies for the court. The new version indicated that she had intended to administer a blood test at Claudialee's next appointment in January 2010, days before the girl's death.

But Irma had been meticulous with her daughter's medical documents. She'd kept the appointment card for their next visit, which wasn't until February 23.

Jurors awarded Irma $100,000 for economic loss, $400,000 for her daughter's pain and suffering, plus $7.5 million in punitive damages for Mercado's malpractice. "It's not covered by insurance," Judge Darrell Gavrin pointed out at trial. Gavrin has yet to make a final judgment on the total sum Mercado must pay.

It's unlikely that Mercado has to worry about a state sanction. Historically, the Department of Health has doled out punishment only once it recognizes a pattern of misbehavior or incompetence. (The department did not respond to interview requests.)

"There are many physicians who have been sued and lost a malpractice case and are still practicing," says a New York government official who works closely with the medical industry and was not authorized to publicly discuss the subject. "The Office of Professional Medical Conduct will take a look at trends, as opposed to an isolated incident."

Staten Island cosmetic surgeon Robert Cattani, for instance, tallied 40 malpractice suits before the state revoked his medical license in September 2012. Another plastic surgeon in Brooklyn didn't lose his license until regulators found negligence on seven occasions.

Between 2001 and 2011, according to a USA Today investigation, of about 400 doctors who had their clinical privileges reduced or revoked by a medical institution in New York, more than half had never been assessed a single state penalty.

Mercado still runs a private practice. She still serves on the SUNY faculty. So it's understandable that she's reluctant to discuss the case. She stands at the door that separates the waiting area from the treatment rooms, holding it halfway closed like a reluctant homeowner talking to a salesman.

"I did my best for this patient," Mercado says. "I know in my heart that I did everything for this patient."

She declines to go into specifics or answer any questions.

"I'll just stay silent on this, because God knows best," she says, pointing to the ceiling with both index fingers.

Then she closes the door. Her afternoon schedule is full. There's a roomful of patients awaiting treatment.

This article is courtesy from Village Voice.

Narcoleptic schoolgirl who falls asleep 30 times a day because of swine flu vaccine hopes to be given £120,000 payout

A Scottish schoolgirl who developed narcolepsy after having the swine flu vaccine is hoping to receive a £120,000 compensation payout from the government.Chloe Glasson, 14, from Fife falls asleep without warning between 25 and 30 times a day.Chloe had the Pandemrix jab in November 2009 and started suffering the symptoms of narcolepsy just four months later.

Campaigners believe she is one of dozens of youngsters across the UK who developed the condition after having the vaccine. The government recently admitted for the first time that the injections can trigger narcolepsy in some cases. It is believed ministers will announce on Friday that tests are to begin on sufferers to see if they qualify for compensation.

Chloe's case is so severe that her family, from Kirkcaldy, are convinced the government will be forced to pay compensation. Chloe said: ‘What hurts the most is when people see me in public and I'm starting to fall asleep and they look at me as if I'm drunk or have been taking drugs. ‘I am no different to anyone else in that I have still got feelings and I can see the way they are looking at me.

‘I have still got hopes and dreams. I want to be a drama teacher when I'm older but I've really just got to take every day as it comes.’

Chloe says she also suffers mood swings and disturbing dreams as a result of her condition. She said: ‘The emotions I feel are so extreme, I can go from being really happy and chatty to really annoyed to really upset in a few seconds and all it takes is one little thing to set it off. ‘The dreams I have when I'm asleep are really vivid, I can feel the pain in the dream and sometimes it even feels like someone is touching me, it's really terrifying.’

Chloe has already to drop two subjects at school because she cannot keep up with the workload. She said: ‘When I go into auto pilot behaviour I don't really remember anything that happens, and luckily I've never been really hurt.’

Chloe, who was officially diagnosed with narcolepsy and catalepsy in December last year, added: ‘It can happen at any time. ‘Like standing up or sitting down. I've really been lucky that I've not hurt myself falling asleep while standing up and I ask myself everyday how I've managed. ‘At school I'll be sitting at my desk and this wave of tiredness takes over. Then you're eyes start to roll and droop and that's when you know what's about to happen. You just go out.

‘It’s like a rollercoaster of emotions sometimes and at first it was really embarrassing. ‘No one really got what was going on so they would kind of laugh about it. Even the teachers joined in at first. I've been reduced to tears so many times.’ Chloe’s mother, Rebecca, said: ‘It's just frustrating that it's taken them this long to admit there is a link. ‘Almost everyone involved knew that was the case and we're just trying to prove it. You just start to blame yourself.’

She added: ‘Chloe had to get the vaccine because she is asthmatic but now she's left with this condition for the rest of her life.

‘The scariest moment so far was when Chloe went missing for over two hours. She was meant to meet my mum in town but went into an automatic behaviour state and disappeared. ‘We were all frantic with worry and I had to call the police.’ Ms Glasson said the falling asleep was not even the biggest problem.

Chloe now also suffers from the debilitating muscle condition cataplexy.

Ms Glasson said: ‘Her cataplexy means she can collapse at any time and there is so many day to day things that we take for granted that she can't do.

‘No bubble bath, no swimming and she can't even use public transport on her own. She fell asleep on a bus once and ended up miles away.

‘For us it’s not just about the compensation, it’s about making Chloe's life better. We want people to realise what she's dealing with and to help make her feel more accepted. ‘Chloe is a really, really bright kid and she loves drama and art but it’s really unfair that she has had to drop two subjects. ‘It's been life changing for Chloe and the rest of the family.’

The UK Government recently admitted that the Pandemrix jab could be to blame in certain cases of narcolepsy. Families will get £120,000 through the Vaccine Damage Payments Scheme if they can prove 'severe' disability.

It is thought that for every 55,000 children who were given the injection, one has developed narcolepsy. Researchers, who published their findings in the British Medical Journal, studied 75 children with narcolepsy and found that 11 of these had received the vaccine before their symptoms began. Since 2011 it has not been given to people under the age of 20 because of the risk of narcolepsy. The UK Health Protection Agency has found that giving the jab to young children increases their chance of developing narcolepsy by 14 times.

Narcolepsy affects the brain's ability to regulate the normal sleep-wake cycle, causing excessive sleepiness throughout the day.

The long term neurological condition can cause sleep attacks, daytime sleepiness and, in some cases, cataplexy. There is no cure for narcolepsy but medication is available to help manage the symptoms, which cause side effects such as nausea, hallucinations and headaches. A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions confirmed they had written to four families previously rejected for compensation inviting them to reapply. Saying individual cases could not be discussed, he added: ‘The Vaccine Damage Payments Scheme provides support in the very rare cases where someone becomes severely disabled as a result of a vaccination. ‘Decisions on vaccine damage payments claims take into account the individual circumstances of each case and the latest available accepted medical evidence.

‘DWP has looked at some vaccine damage payments cases again in light of new information regarding swine flu and narcolepsy provided by the Department for Health. ‘Once this new information was taken into account it was decided, on balance of probability, in some cases that causation was proved.’

This article is courtesy from the Daily Mail.