Hospital worker sues bosses after routine toe op leaves husband brain damaged

12 April 2012

A hospital worker whose husband was left severely brain damaged following a simple toe operation is suing her own bosses for compensation.

Carpenter Craig Hooper, 50, suffered three heart attacks after the routine procedure at a hospital already under the spotlight for a string of blunders

Distraught wife Deborah, also 50 and an admin worker at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent, launched a legal bid for compensation this week claiming that a series of errors had "left the family in ruins".

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Deborah Hooper is fighting for compensation from the hospital she works for

The mother-of-three says Mr Hooper has been left a wheelchair-bound vegetable with a mental age of four after he went in to have his big toe on his left foot amputated.

"Our lives have been turned upside down. How can you go in to have your toe amputated and end up with serious brain damage?," she said.

"I owe it to Craig to get compensation - so I can give him as good a life as I can.

"I've already moved to a house with wheelchair access and I've had to cut my hours at the hospital to care for him."

Mr Hooper suffers from diabetes and his nightmare began when he went into hospital last July after his toe turned black.

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Craig Hooper suffered three heart attacks and fell into a coma after the operation - he is now brain damaged

Doctors amputated the toe before sending him home to recover, but Craig was readmitted to hospital after his temperature soared and he started vomiting.

Mrs Hooper said: "After he came home from the op Craig started to feel unwell.

"His temperature rocketed and he kept being sick so I took him back hospital."

But when Mrs Hooper visited her husband the following day she noticed that Craig's leg had swollen up and gone "rock hard", and so alerted doctors.

However, she claims that doctors merely "swept her comments under the carpet" and sent her home.

The next thing she knew she was being woken up at home and told to get to hospital because her husband had suffered three heart attacks and had fallen into a coma - which lasted three weeks.

Mrs Hooper said: "It was heart breaking. I was warned that he would not be the same when he woke up.

"I just can't get my head round it. I noticed his leg was swollen but they seemed to just brush it off as normal. Clearly it wasn't."

"It's like I've been widowed and inherited a four year old child.

"What I cannot bear is the fact that nobody will give me answers as to how this happened.

"I've been fobbed off for long enough and I want someone to take responsibility for this.

"I believe staff at the Medway Maritime Hospital were grossly negligent in their care for my husband and I've written to them telling them exactly why and that I want answers."

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The couple on their wedding day on 11th April 1980

A spokesman for the hospital said: "The Medway NHS Trust received a letter from Mrs Hooper about her husband's care and treatment at Medway Maritime hospital.

"Following an internal investigation a full report was written and sent to Mrs Hooper.

"Within our response we asked her to contact us and offered her a meeting with consultants involved in her husband's care and treatment."

Mrs Hooper said the matter was now in the hands of her legal advisor.

The hospital has repeatedly hit the headlines after a string of high-profile blunders.

Last March a dead patient lay undiscovered for up to 12 hours in the toilet on his ward.

The 51-year-old man was found slumped out of his wheelchair being reported missing.

It was also revealed a cancer patient visited the hospital 37 times in the space of 18 months - but doctors failed to diagnose his life-threatening illness.

Dad-of-two Peter Cura hit out at hospital bosses after medics blamed his illness on kidney stones.

In 2005 17-year-old A-Level student Lauren Simmons died from a brain tumour after doctors at the hospital told her mum she had a "virus".

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