TESTIMONY – In a context of reorganization of emergencies in the Bordeaux conurbation, the chaotic care of Caroline Belfort, seven months pregnant, turned tragic.
Le Figaro Bordeaux
His ordeal began on July 22. Four days after Pellegrin’s emergency regulation was put in place, Caroline Belfort, 22, seven months pregnant and suffering from cystic fibrosis since birth, called the firefighters. She has a fever of 39°C, her red, painful and swollen elbow has tripled in size. And she fainted about thirty times a day. When they arrived at her parents’ home in Haillan, the firefighters examined her, took her constants, but refused to take her to the hospital. “They didn’t listen to me. In the truck, they were like, “Madam, you just have a swollen elbow. Maybe it’s a mosquito bite. You are not going to lose your baby”.“A first error of appreciation, followed by a multitude of others, which will lead Caroline Belfort to experience a tragedy: the death of her second unborn child while coming close to death.
Taken to the Bordeaux University Hospital maternity ward by her mother, the young woman asked her obstetrician to induce her delivery. She is worried about her baby who has not moved in her belly for several hours. According to the doctor’s examination, the child’s heart then shows 190 beats per minute. “He told me that it was normal and that his heartbeat had slowed down a bit because of my fever.“. For her swollen elbow, which actually hides septic peritonitis that will lead to sepsis, Caroline Belfort is directed to the adult emergency room of Pellegrin. Regulated for four days, the service refuses to receive her and dispatches an ambulance to take her to the Bordeaux Nord polyclinic.
Refusal to treat
For long hours, the young woman and her mother wait for an ambulance that does not come. And for good reason: misinformed of the location of the patient, she was sent to Haillan, about twenty minutes from Bordeaux. “I would have saved time, at least four hours, if I had been able to move myself“says the young woman. On the spot, the emergency doctor who examines Caroline Belfort also refuses to take care of her. “He said: “I don’t know her file, I prefer that she be sent back to Pellegrin where she is followed because if she gives birth here or loses her baby, I would blame myself for life”.A statement that will prove to be prescient.
Arrival at 6 p.m. at the Bordeaux University Hospital, Caroline Belfort will not be installed in a room and relieved by an injection of morphine until 2 a.m. He was then asked to wait until the next day to be operated on. “The rheumatologist who examined me had all the same told me that if things were not going well, he had to be called back at night. What I asked for, but the medical team refused“, assures Caroline Belfort.
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Death and sepsis
When she was taken to the operating room at 11 a.m. the next morning, Caroline Belfort was in mortal danger. His body, plagued by sepsis, decompensates. “In 26 years in the business, I have never seen such catastrophic care“, testifies his mother, nurse, “by dint of waiting, they had to ask me who should be saved between my daughter and the baby. They had a 15% chance of saving Caroline. I chose her because she has a 15 month old daughter“. The unborn child’s heart had continued to decelerate as his mother was taken to the OR. He was in cardiac arrest when he was extricated from Caroline’s womb by Caesarean section. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.
“I woke up at 2 p.m. on Saturday. I was wondering where my baby was. Even though deep inside I felt that he was no longer in my stomach, I just wanted an answer and no one answered me“recalls Caroline Belfort. The young woman, who chose to have children early and close together due to her illness making the future unpredictable, is angry: “I blame them. I think my situation was taken lightly. I have cystic fibrosis, I have been followed at Pellegrin since I was very young, but I have not been listened to. He could have triggered the caesarean on Thursday evening, the child was viable.“Sad in the face of a health system that is collapsing, the young woman assures:”Unfortunately, I am not the first and I will not be the last. I can understand that in the summer period it is complicated to detect such an anomaly, but I had felt 30 times during the day. If we could take patients more seriously, that would be great.And above all, she can’t stand the medical team telling her that “everything happened very quicklywhen she was there two days before her operation.
Contacted, the Bordeaux University Hospital assures that “several members of the medical teams of the CHU de Bordeaux accompanied the patient with the greatest attention and the greatest diligence in all its components“by renewing”expression of deep compassion for the patient and her family“. Words that Caroline Belfort would have liked the management of the hospital to come and say to her face. “I stayed a week at the Pellegrin maternity hospital for my diaper follow-up. I doubt the principal’s office is that far away. He could have called or come to my room to apologize.»
Believing that it is useless to initiate a long and tedious legal procedure because the public hospital has no money and that the chain of responsibility is complex, Caroline Belfort has decided not to file a complaint despite her sentence. Her son, who weighed 1.7 kilos at birth, was buried. His name was Marius.