Multiple Unsafe Equipment Failures at Prince George Hospital

I hadn't planned on even calling a lawyer, until I witnessed the THIRD equipment failure at Prince George Hospital.

After the blood transfusion machine wasn't working, I called another hospital, in desperation, knowing it was an emergency. As soon as I called them, the machine began miraculously "working" again.

I was told it had a "low battery" and hadn't been working because of that. It had been reading low battery, but then worked normally after I placed a call to another hospital, right before I was about to pass out.

I thought this was a little odd, because I had been using my voice recorder at this hospital, to document their refusal to manage my pain after giving me Zytotec, and telling me to go home to take it when I didn't feel it was a safe idea. So I was using this voice recorder, and the battery was fine, but when I tried using it right before the blood transfusion machine was used, I got a "low battery" reading on my voice recorder and it quit recording. Five minutes later, the blood transfusion machine was brought in and quit working, supposedly because of a "low battery" reading they discovered late, which corrected itself (?).

My voice recorder didn't correct. I had to use a new battery and that one went low pretty quick too.

But my concern, was that this wasn't the FIRST time I'd witnessed a serious equipment problem at this hospital. I hadn't mentioned it before, because I had not thought it a big deal, and I thought it was mabye coincidence, but I realized, last night, that my baby most likely died because of a bad MRI scan. I'll tell you why.

When I went into that ER, three weeks, earlier, I was told to have an MRI. So I had it done. It shouldn't have killed the baby. But that's when I lost pregnancy symptoms, and after this is when the heart stopped. I didn't process this all at this time, because I had the MRI and then I didn't think about ME, when I was rolled into the waiting room right next door. I was in the hall, for over an hour, while another man was having an MRI, and the machine kept breaking down. The attendant kept saying the "scanner" isn't "working" and you would hear nothing. So she called for help, and then this other radiologist would come in and as soon as she did, the MRI machine worked again. So the two women were laughing about how strange, that it didn't work at all and only started working whenever this other woman came into the room. I know those radiologists would remember this, because they kept joking about it, and I was overhearing all of this for a good hour. I didn't once think that this may have been happening to me too, or if something was wrong with the MRI machine then, there may have been a problem with it when I had MY scan.

So I was taken back to the ER and told they couldn't find a heartbeat. They took me to have an ultrasound and the ULTRASOUND machine QUIT working. It worked well enough to take the first shots of an abdominal sonogram, but then it blinked out and it said the information was lost. It just stopped working all of a sudden. The woman called in some other techs, because she couldn't get it to work again. So other radiology techs came into the room and helped her "fix it", or, it just came back on screen and she was able to retrieve the other photos. So they got the abdominal photos and the intravaginal photos, which were done after MRI.

I thought it was very strange that first the MRI machine wasn't working after I used it (I never thought, perhaps WHILE I had been using it), and THEN, the ultrasound machine stops working.

I didn't write about it, because I figured it would make me sound "paranoid" again, as if I made a big deal out of coincidence. But then, after last night, when there were witnesses AGAIN to a THIRD equipment failure, right before a serious procedure had to happen for me, I decided these odds were too great.

Either PGH had a very serious problem keeping up with their technology and equipment, or something else was going on, and I'm not making any guesses. What I DID decide, and realize, after the blood transfusion machine quit working, was that if the MRI machine hadn't been working for the man after me, this indicated something was wrong with the equipment, and was probably the cause of my baby's death. A normally operating MRI machine shouldn't have stopped a heartbeat. But one that was surging, or malfunctioning, would have stopped a heartbeat. It is very likely it was an uneven or uncontrolled dose of electromagnetic radiation that killed the baby.

The facts are, the machine was NOT working right. And I overheard at least 2-3 witnesses in radiology knew this. I couldn't hear anything when I was in the MRI machine, so they could have been talking about how it wasn't working for me, and I wouldn't have known it. They did say, "It's not working again" as if this machine had been having problems before. And the first time this other radiologist walked in, was when the other tech said, "Every time you come in, it starts to work" and the other joked that she had a magic touch. But it was clear it had been having problems before they ever tried to scan the man after me.

So, first ER visit--MRI machine wasn't working, going off and on at least an hour after my scan (which was only for 15-30 minutes). Then, the ultrasound machine quit working in the middle of taking photos of my baby after its heart stopped. THEN, last night, my voice recorder seemed to get "drained" down to low battery within minutes, and right after this, the blood transfusion machine refused to work at all, when I desperately needed blood, and the reason, I heard later, was it was reading "low battery" and then suddenly started working again on its own.