TV Anchor Says Hospital Visit Was Pure Misery

(CN) - A popular Louisville, Kentucky news anchor says in a lawsuit filed May 1 that a local hospital badly mismanaged her care during a potentially life-threatening situation, causing her to experience extreme pain and terror.

Dawne Gee joined Wave 3, Louisville's NBC-TV affiliate, in August 1994,a and is the co-anchor of the station's two early evening newscasts. She has also over the years suffered a number of serious health issues, including kidney cancer. In February she announced on the air that her doctors had discovered a large tumor in her stomach.

The complaint she filed Friday in the Jefferson County Circuit Court focuses on the allegedly horrendous situation she experienced at the hands of nurses at Baptist Health Louisville in May 2014.

According to her complaint, Gee traveled to an emergency care center in the early evening of May 20, 2014, after the sudden onset of severe leg pain. She said she was concerned not just because of the pain, but because her family has a history of blood clots.

She says the staff at the facility, non-party Immediate Care Center, directed her to go directly to Baptist Health emergency room, where the staff would be able to diagnose or rule out a venous leg clot.

This, however, was not the case, the complaint says.

Gee says that immediately upon her arrival in the emergency room, the attending physician ordered a venous duplex ultrasound, but for reasons that are not yet clear - a lack of adequately trained staff or the absence of the necessary equipment -- the test could not be performed until 8:15 a.m. the following morning.

Gee was kept in the emergency department overnight, and while there, the complaint says, "Baptist failed to appropriately manager [her pain] n a timely and reasonable manner" and "Baptist's emergency room nurses negligently inflicted unnecessary severe pain" upon her.

"Because of Ms Gee's previous health conditions, she has an indwelling venous Power Port, which is placed in certain patients to allow easy, immediate and virtually painless venous access," the complaint says. "Ms. Gee had her Power Port information card with her at Baptist, which contains all the details necessary for any healthcare provider to correctly access such a port, if for any reason that provider did not have the necessary training or knowledge to do so.

"Baptist's emergency department nurse refused to review Ms. Gee's Power Port instruction card," the complaint continues. "Baptist's emergency room nurse then attempted to access the Power Port in a negligent fashion, causing incredible pain to Ms. Gee."

Gee says the nurse tried to access the indwelling power port several times, but failed to do so, causing her increasingly terrible pain. As a result of failing to properly access the power port, saline solution surged into her tissue, the complaint says.

The more the she complained, the more aggravated the nurse became with her, Gee says.

Finally, her family intervened and another nurse was sent into the room.

Gee says the second nurse responded to her swollen appearance, by trying to press the saline solution out through the puncture wounds the first nurse caused.

"This caused excruciating pain," Gee says, but ultimately, "after additional painful manipulation," the second nurse was able to correctly access the power port.

Gee says when she was released the next day, she complained of the treatment she'd received, but told nothing could be done to address the conduct of the nursing staff. She claims she was told the nurses would not be disciplined, nor would they be forced to undergo additional training to prevent a similar situation happening to another patient.

Gee is seeking unspecified damages. She is represented by Kirsten Daniel of Clay, Daniel Walton & Adams of Louisville, Kentucky.

A reprensetative of the hospital could not be reached for comment late Monday afternoon.

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