Sacramento girl needed amputations after 5-hour wait at emergency room

[Liberal_in_LA]

Sacramento girl needed amputations after 5-hour wait at emergency room

By Cynthia Hubert
[e-mail]

As his tiny daughter's skin turned blotchy and her body went limp during a lengthy wait at Methodist Hospital's emergency room, Ryan Jeffers panicked.

"This wasn't a simple flu," he said. "My daughter needed help."

Little did he know that the girl was near death from a common infection that had invaded her blood and was raging out of control, ultimately causing the amputation of both of her feet and one of her hands.

Malyia Jeffers, 2, is still fighting for her life at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and her Sacramento parents are left wondering how a simple Strep A bug turned into a medical horror story.

"What could I have done differently?" asked Jeffers, who along with the girl's mother, Leah Yang, has been keeping vigil in Palo Alto for nearly a month. He wonders, he said, whether he should have pushed harder to get his daughter care in the emergency room where the family waited for five hours to see a doctor.

"I'm angry, but I can't deal with that right now," he said. "I just want my daughter to get better."

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/31/3290271/sacramento-girl-needed-amputations.html#ixzz1A0mqh0Am

[delightfulstar]

1. Peace and good thoughts to this little girl and her family.

This is exactly why we need universal health care. The people like little Malyia who actually need urgent care will be able to get it, instead of going through an terrible ordeal like this. To make a sick child wait five hours for care is inexcusable. I hope this little girl and her family get justice in any way possible. It won't give her back her limbs, and it will be a long road ahead, but hopefully she will be given a chance at the treatment and physical therapy she will so desperately need, to give her the possibility of a relatively normal life.

[dkf]

3. This is the hospitals fault. ERs need someone who understands if something is urgent.

Apparently they didn't have someone capable of doing this.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Whoever made her wait should lose both feet and a hand.