Patient Blames Knee Surgeon for Year of Severe Pain
4-23-2020 04:25:00
MARTINEZ, Calif. (CN) – A Kaiser patient says she was in significant pain for well over a year after her bungled knee surgery, according to her lawsuit filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court.
Sandy Park sued Dr. John Cummins and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., also known as Kaiser Permanente Hospitals, for medical malpractice.
According to the action, plaintiff Park became a patient of defendant Kaiser physician Cummins during an emergency room visit at defendant Kaiser’s Duarte, California, location. She consulted with him again in September 2018 due to ongoing knee pain, and he scheduled surgery for a meniscus repair and ACL reconstruction.
After the surgery, Park reportedly “had serious issues with the wound, which would not heal and had lots of discharge.” Cummins told her that everything was “fine” at her follow up appointment and several times thereafter, but “it took her wound over six months to fully heal,” the suit states.
Park’s Kaiser physical therapist also told her that what she was feeling was “normal,” according to the action, even though “things didn’t feel good to her,” and “she was in constant pain and felt like her shin was going to split.”
Park changed her insurance to Blue Shield in July 2019 and
saw a new orthopedic surgeon who took x-rays and physically examined her. He “discovered
immediately that defendant Cummins had put a screw in her knee which was too
long and sticking out into her skin, causing her extreme pain,” the suit
states, and, “he felt the screw through her skin-it would obviously have been
discovered by any competent physician, and would have been if defendant Cummins
had done an appropriate post-op examination.”
Due to the problems with her recovery, Park reportedly faces more surgery,
after she has already been in pain for well over a year, with two young
children, and her own business to maintain.
