In July, a Swedish woman in labor braced herself to get an epidural to help with the pain, but instead of the epidural she thought she was getting, she got a shot of chlorhexidine a disinfectant that is used to disinfect medical catheters. Chlorhexidine is absolutely not meant to be injected into a mother in labor as a pain reliever, but somehow the painkillers that were meant to be used during the epidural got mixed up with this chemical.
How does something like that even happen?
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Somehow the container with the painkillers got switched with the container of the disinfectant the morning of the incident. The woman had the disinfectant injected directly into the nerve canal that is along the spine. Instead of blocking pain, which is what an epidural would do, she was given a dangerous chemical that not only put her in danger, but gave her excruciating pain.
She was still in the hospital a week after giving birth because of the pain. The woman's husband says, "She has extreme pain in her back, and feels something like electric jolts all the way down through her feet."
She was finally able to go home after two weeks. Fortunately the dose of chlorhexidine was weak enough that the risk of permanent damage is small. Geeze, if she suffered that much from a weak dose can you imagine what might have happened with a more concentrated dose?
This is some kind of mess up. Anders Rehn, the acting director of Skåne University Hospital, says, "We have removed the containers so they cannot be switched. The chemical is no longer in the birthing clinic."
I feel so terrible for this mother. She was seriously hurt and not only that, she didn't get to enjoy the first two weeks of her baby's life the way she would have if it weren't for this horrific mix-up.
Image via Corbis Images
