CAMC, Charleston, WV



This hospital caused my mom's death by letting her fall from a high-tech bed in ICU onto her face.  She hit the floor so hard, it broke her eye socket and the roof of her mouth (her dentures would not fit).  She was taken off life support and restraints were taken off.  Her ICU Nurse said my mom said she had to use the restroom (with all the meds in her system from being on life support and hour before - she didn't realize she was catheterized) .  Nurse said she went back to her phone call at a desk and looked back and my mom was on the floor.  All her medical records say are "Patient fell from bed" , that's it.  My mom died two months later.  During that two months, she was never herself, just a shell of some sort.  She had a hollow look in her eyes and didn't have much to say at all.  This hospital shuffled her out so quick that they didn't even realize her foot had been fractured in the horrific fall.  The rehab center x-rayed it when she was checked into their facility after being transferred directly by Ambulance from CAMC.   At her funeral, I couldn't cry, still can't grieve or something.  I sat there in the "Family Seat" in the front row, and stared at her crooked broken nose she suffered from the fall.  This happened in March 2009, and she died in May 12, 2009, two days after Mother's Day 2009.  There were like 10 of her family and friends in the ICU waiting room.  She has 7 children, and she is #2 of 9 children herself.  We are a BIG FAMILY!  We saw a "trauma team" running into ICU with backboard and black bags.  You know that awful feeling you get in your stomach when you see medical people running inside a hospital to save someone.  About ½ hour later, they told us that mom had fallen from her bed and was going to need a CAT Scan - and about that time, they were rushing someone by us, all bloody, moaning, on a backboard, on a bed.
You can't imagine our horror to learn it was our MOM………...