AN aged pensioner is appalled she was sent home from Cairns Base Hospital to cope alone with an undiagnosed broken pelvis.
"They just dropped me in the gutter to wait for a taxi," Betty Rasmussen, 66, told The Cairns Post.
She could not walk on crutches and had to be wheeled to the taxi rank outside the Emergency Department.
"I kept saying I live on my own, but they didn’t care," Ms Rasmussen said.
"How heartless can you be?"
For the next few days, she had to sleep on a recliner chair at her Woree unit because she could not lower herself into her bed.
The hospital’s medical services executive director, Dr Kathy Atkinson, yesterday admitted doctors failed to diagnose Ms Rasmussen’s injury in X-rays taken on October 3 and her office deeply regretted the pain and inconvenience this had caused.
Ms Rasmussen’s treatment and the way she was discharged were being reviewed and she would be given a detailed written response.
The hospital has also reported the case for entry into Queensland Health’s clinical incident management database.
Dr Atkinson said on receipt of Ms Rasmussen’s complaint, the X-ray was magnified and the break detected.
"We are very sorry that this was not picked up earlier," she said.
Ms Rasmussen said she was appalled a hospital could treat people in their senior years that way.
"There was no follow-up, not even to arrange Meals on Wheels to come around," she said.
"My family doctor said I should have been put into hospital for two or three days so that I had a monkey bar to lift myself up with and a bed that could be lowered up and down."
During that first week at home, struggling on crutches to care for herself, Ms Rasmussen said there were days when she cried in unbearable agony.
"I felt like doing myself in," she said.
"I’m a person who always has a smile on my face, nothing bloody worries me, so for me to get to a point where I want to end my life it’s … just unbelievable how down you can be."
The first she knew she had a broken pelvis was almost two weeks later when her physiotherapist – worried about the pain she was in – ordered a second batch of X-rays.
