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Matthew is a 22-year-old handicapped person with a condition like cerebral palsy that was the result of an accident he had at 19 months of age. He was given two to four months to live a at the time of the accident. Contrary to expert beliefs, and inspite of his condition, he has thrived living at home under his parents care. Throughout his life Matthew has been nourished via nasogastric tube feeding. This means that there was a tube routed up his nose down through his esophagus and into his stomach. This type tube feeding is problematic long term. After a misrouting of his tube that nearly drowned Matthew, his family decided to |
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with what the doctors told them was a newer more effective and safer method of of feeding. This required surgery
that attached his stomach to the abdominal wall. There was a canal constructed
through the abdominal wall and into the stomach. His new feeding tube passes
through this canal. This new tube feeding is called "percutaneous endoscopic
gastrostomy". It has shown in many studies to be more effective at providing
nourishment to patients that use it. This surgery was performed in November 2002 at Cleveland Regional Medical Center
in Shelby, NC. In Mid January 2003, Mathew returned to CRMC to have his tube reinserted since it had come out. The ER phisician pushed the tube with extreme force. Matthew's mother noticed that it was hurting her son and since he couldn't speak for himself she explained repeatedly that it was hurting Matthew. The doctor insisted that he was only using the required amount of force. The pain was so bad for Matthew that his mother reported seeing him shaking in addition to yelling. The doctor was also shaking from his exertion of inserting the tube. The situation appeared so dire that Matthew's mother tried several more times to interrupt the proceedings. She simply wanted to express her opinion that something must be wrong. The doctor ignored Mrs. Greene. After the tube was inserted the doctor ignored the Greenes over and over and sent them home to wait for a follow-up appoinment for the next day. The Greenes fed Matthew in the normal manner that night. Matthew was in pain that night and they found blood coming from his mouth the next morning. Something was obviously wrong. Matthew showed signs of infection in addition to the bleeding. They rushed him back to the Hospital Emergengy Room. After an investigation it was found that the doctor had ripped Matthew's stomach from the abdominal wall and shoved the tube into his abdominal cavity. The nourishment instead of going into Matthew's stomach went into his abdominal cavity. Not surprisingly, the food caused a severe infection.
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