LONDONDERRY mother Alison Douglas is grateful to doctors for saving her son’s life but has no thanks for Hawkesbury Hospital.
Her son Levi Douglas, 5, was diagnosed with a brain tumour at Nepean Hospital following a hellish night which she said involved a three-hour wait at Hawkesbury Hospital, after which Levi was told to go home.
She said the nurse didn’t take her son’s temperature and sent him home after a brief assessment by the doctor who gave them a referral for reflux medication on July 6.
‘‘The triage nurse saw him straight away but didn’t check his temperature, she just looked at him and got his weight,’’ Mrs Douglas said.
‘‘When he jumped up on the scale, he had fallen over a little bit. The nurse didn’t say anything, she just told us to take a seat and wait for the doctor.’’
Mrs Douglas told the Gazette her family doctor had given her a referral to get head scans done at Hawkesbury Hospital to find out why Levi had been constantly vomiting, losing balance and sleeping for up to 15 hours a day.
However the hospital told Mrs Douglas he looked fine and told her to wait for her paediatrician to organise the head scans.
Less than seven hours after they were discharged from hospital, Levi had a long convulsive seizure in his parents’ bed and was rushed to Nepean Hospital where he was placed in an induced coma.
A head scan by the hospital revealed he had a non-cancerous tumour at the base of his brain called a craniopharyngioma.
Mrs Douglas said she thought he was going to die and believed this could have been prevented if Hawkesbury Hospital had taken the head scans when they were there.
‘‘If the hospital had scanned him, they may have found this tumour and we could have treated it right away,’’ she said.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said Hawkesbury District Health Service takes all complaints very seriously, which it investigates in accordance with stringent management policies and procedures.
Following the revelation, Levi was airlifted to Randwick Children’s Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery to reduce the size of the tumour, which doctors said was ‘‘the size of a tennis ball’’.
‘‘The doctors told me they have never seen anything that big before. They think it may have been present since birth,’’ Mrs Douglas said.
‘‘He was in the hospital for 23 days and underwent two surgeries where they relieved a lot of pressure from his brain by releasing fluids.
‘‘He will continue to have surgeries of this sort for the rest of his life because the tumour is embedded in the vital blood vessels and nerves.
‘‘It has affected his hormonal growth, sight, hearing and ability to concentrate. He now needs a 24 hour carer and can’t go to school or day care.’’
The Douglas family started noticing a decline in his health 12 months ago when he was vomiting randomly, having cold shivers and finding it hard to concentrate.
Mrs Douglas said no doctor was able to diagnose him with anything even though he had poor eyesight and his speech wasn’t developing.
She said sleeping with him that night was the best decision she has ever made.
‘‘I understand that the tumour is not the fault of Hawkesbury Hospital, but what concerns me is that if I went home and put Levi into his own bed that night, he might not even be here today because we may never have heard him.’’