A Melbourne woman is suing healthcare provider Western Health over a medical misdiagnosis that left her without fallopian tubes and shattered her dream of having a big family.
Liz and Mouhamad Darwish always wanted to have a big family.
The couple met 17 years ago and have three children together. They were overjoyed when they discovered they were expecting another baby in early 2022.
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But, at 10 weeks, Liz noticed some bleeding.
A visit to Bacchus Marsh Hospital confirmed she had suffered a miscarriage.
“This is life and this is how it is and we have to be thankful for our blessing and sometimes things are out of our hand,” she told 9News.
Liz’s situation took a dramatic turn about five weeks later.
She was coming out of the shower one morning when her blood pressure dropped and she lost consciousness up to five times.
Her sons found her lying on the floor.
Liz was rushed to Sunshine Hospital, where she was asked if she was pregnant.
“I said no, I wasn’t pregnant, I had a cleanout five to six weeks prior in Bacchus Marsh Hospital so there was no chance I was pregnant,” she said.
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But it turned out that Liz was still pregnant and doctors at Bacchus Marsh had missed the ectopic pregnancy in the fallopian tube, which had then ruptured.
“I was bleeding internally and I just thought, ‘I’m not going to make it, I’m not going to make it home’,” she said.
“I just didn’t think I would be able to see my kids again and I thought my daughter’s going to grow up without her mum.”
“Horrifying to get a phone call suddenly to picture yourself as a single dad, as a widow dad with three young kids,” Mohammed said.
“It was horrific, it was absolutely horrific.”
Again, Liz felt the medical staff failed her.
She claimed no one had told her it was an ectopic pregnancy and she thought she was dying, so told doctors to do whatever was necessary to keep her alive.
When she woke up, she was told her fallopian tubes had been removed.
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Three years later, Liz said she has still not received an explanation from Western Health as to why doctors at Sunshine Hospital had decided to remove both her fallopian tubes when it was a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that caused the health emergency.
“It is not usual practice to remove both fallopian tubes when the ectopic pregnancy has only ruptured in one,” her lawyer, Maryse Andrinopoulos-Tsigolis from Shine Lawyers, said.
“They got it wrong every step of the way,” Liz said.
“All the way from beginning to end, they had it wrong,” Mohammed said.
After waiting years for answers, the couple is now taking legal action against Western Health.
“With appropriate care, Liz would not have lost either fallopian tube,” Andrinopoulos-Tsigolis said.
“This shouldn’t have happened, it has had devastating consequences for Liz and is something that could’ve been solved through a simple laparoscopy.”
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Liz and Mohammed said the medical mistakes have robbed them of growing their family.
“That choice and that decision was taken away and that’s what’s hard,” Liz said.
“Take accountability and fix what you’ve done. Fix it so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
In a statement, a Western Health spokesperson said they were “committed to providing patient-centred, high-quality care and the safety and wellbeing of our patients is our top priority”.
“For privacy reasons we will not comment on individual patients in response to media enquiries,” the spokesperson said.
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