An Oklahoma nurse is taking a plastic surgery clinic to court after awakening from a procedure paralyzed.
When 44-year old Rolanda Hutton scheduled an appointment with Dallas Plastic Surgery Institute in January, she’d expected a simple outpatient procedure. The woman wanted a “Brazilian butt lift.”
But after going under the knife, Hutton awake unable to feel her feet or legs.
The $5m lawsuit filed by Hutton and her attorney say the Institute botched more than the procedure.
After telling staff that she lost feeling in her legs and lower extremities, they placed her in a post-operative hotel room rather than taking her to a hospital.
That mistake, court documents say, means she’ll never walk again.
“I have no feeling in my feet or movement from my ankles down,” Hutton said.
“I just went in for something for a slight enhancement, nothing to alter my body too extreme,” the woman lamented.
She was supposed to be on her way home within a day of receiving the treatment.
WFAA recounts the suit’s accusation: that the doctor responsible for conducting the procedure injected too much fat into her gluteal muscles, putting too much pressure on her sciatic nerve.
Hutton’s attorney, Les Weisboard, says the miscalculation constituted a medical emergency. But by the time Institute staff decided to take the woman to a hospital, the damage was irreparable.
“She needed to be emergency transferred to capable people at a hospital, and that wasn’t done,” said Weisboard.
“It’s a real medical emergency, and you need a vascular surgeon, orthopedic surgeon or neurosurgeon to go in and take out the fat and relieve pressure off the sciatic nerve to save the function,” explained the attorney.
Yet Hutton’s situation was dire by the time she was transported to a hospital. Aside from losing sensation in her feet, organ failure began to develop.
“I was in acute kidney failure, and it went downhill from there,” said Hutton. WFAA reports that Hutton says physicians told her she wouldn’t be able to walk again – and now the woman wants to make sure that others are well-aware of the risks associated with an otherwise ordinary cosmetic surgery.
“I just want people to realize what they can go through. It’s not easy,” she said.
The suit, brought on by Hutton and Weisboard, names the Dallas Plastic Surgery Institute as well as the doctor who performed the procedure as defendants.
The $5m sought by Hutton and her attorney is intended to compensate for a lifetime’s worth of lost wages, as well as the medical care she’ll need in coming years.
WFAA attempted to contact the surgery center for comment but were referred to their legal counsel. Attorneys for the Institute didn’t return reporters’ phone calls.
Sources
Lawsuit: Botched butt lift paralyzed woman 00:03 01:58
Lawsuit: Woman claims Brazilian butt lift left her paralyzed
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