Jane Vaughn Wright

My wife only had a broken ankle, however, the podiatrist needed to operate to join some broken bones in her foot. They inserted a small metal plate with stainless screws holding the bone together. (Sepsis and Surgery) After the operation, she went to a new $75 million nursing home facility nearby.

She was not allowed to walk, so the health aides needed to assist her daily. The surgeon had ordered a wound vacuum pump on the foot incision site for the plate & screws. The facility nursing staff did not know what a wound vacuum pump was, nor were they knowledgeable of its function or operation, so it was removed. Then, one afternoon, on one of my daily visits to her, I found that she had been sent back to the hospital where she had the operation, because of an infection that may have developed because the vac. pump was removed.

There, the hospital medical staff found that she may have walked on the splinted ankle, breaking the same bones again and also breaking others. The podiatrist announced that another operation was necessary. They operated and installed an ‘external fixative brace’. This involved numerous holding pins, which penetrated my wife’s foot and ankle at various points. These many penetration points and the previous infection, all added up to my wife having sepsis. She also had very small blood vessels in her feet & legs, which caused constricted blood flow. This all happened over a 6-month period while she was bed-bound and in and out of the same hospital and two different nursing homes because the first one would not let her back in.

From all that time lying in bed and little or no exercise, she got gangrene in her small toe and on the heel of her other foot. At her last appointment to the podiatrist doctor’s office, my wife Jane was smiling and bubbly and she greeted the doctor with a kiss and hug. After she heard the doctor’s diagnosis, alas her demeanor changed drastically and when I brought her home, she just turned on her side in her hospital bed and was not talkative again and she became very uncooperative.

Two weeks later, the homecare nurse said I needed to bring her back to the hospital; besides the gangrene areas, the wounds were infected again. I tried to bring her to another hospital, but at the outpatient clinic, they called 911 and Fire Rescue took her to the same hospital where she had the two previous operations. From the emergency room, they moved her to intensive care. Three days later, the doctors announced that she should be moved to another hospital, however, not for more intensive care, but for hospice. The only option was amputation but the doctors did not feel she would live through that. Three days later, she passed, from the complications to her wounds and the sepsis that caused her organs to shut down.

Source: Tim Wright (Jane's husband)