Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 days ago

    Absolutely horrifying.

    The second ER diagnosed her with sepsis and then sent her home because her fetus had a heartbeat.

    I’m disgusted. If you are a woman, you need to get the fuck out of these death trap states. It is not safe for you there.

    • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
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      20 days ago

      The second ER diagnosed her with sepsis and then sent her home

      That right there should be criminal charges. Pregnancy staus is irrelevant at that point. Sepsis will kill you if untreated.

      • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        It was the politicians in Texas that harmed this woman. Not the hospital. The Texas AG sent letters to every hospital in Texas saying he would press criminal charges to anyone granting an emergency abortion. As hard as it is for poor and middle class workers, there’s no way any nurse doctor or hospital is going to put themselves in front of the Texas government. If they could they would have left the state already. (many have.) Small towns in forced birth States literally have no pregnancy care facilities because the staff has all left.

        • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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          20 days ago

          But they “saved” the “baby” right?

          Fify - the baby didn’t make it.

          …they said it may have been possible to save both the teenager and her fetus if she had been admitted earlier for close monitoring and continuous treatment.

          There was a chance Crain could have remained pregnant, they said. If she had needed an early delivery, the hospital was well-equipped to care for a baby on the edge of viability.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Maybe don’t let your conservative colleagues know that. They tend to think less of men who get vasectomies for some reason. That could negatively affect how you are perceived at work. Just FYI, from a guy who spent a lifetime working with these cunts.

        • clif@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          I tell everybody as soon as they ask me if I have kids and I live in a very, very conservative area. Fuck em.

        • FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee
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          20 days ago

          I’ve known (or dated) a few conservative men who refused to get vasectomies because they “lower testosterone”. And, of course that means they’re less of a man (to themselves and others who think that way).

          • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            20 days ago

            Is that even true?? You still have your balls, the sperm just doesn’t have an exit route anymore. Like, biology is weird as shit, I could see that somehow causing testosterone to drop slightly for some weird ass reason, but I’ve never heard of it.

            • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              It is absolutely not true. A vasectomy cannot lower testosterone.

              Unfortunately, conservatives are opposed to science, so the research on this topic will be ignored by them.

              • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                20 days ago

                I figured, but man, they’re always learning weird new shit about the body, lol.

                The funny thing is the dudes worried about low T don’t know T that is too high (according to your body, not according to what you want) just converts to estrogen… which you would think they would be a lot more concerned about, given their anxieties about being too feminine!

                  • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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                    20 days ago

                    Incidentally, there’s a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome that relates to this property. For someone with AIS that has XY genes, their appearance can range from phenotypically male, to phenotypically female, and anywhere in-between. This happens because their cells don’t respond properly (or at all) to male hormones, such as testosterone. As a result, the unused testosterone gets converted into estrogen, which their cells usually can respond to. For someone with complete AIS, they are usually born and raised as female, only finding out about their condition when they get to puberty and never have a period.

                    A quick note: excess estrogen can turn into testosterone, too. And yes, there is also an Estrogen Insensitivity Syndrome, but it’s extremely rare (fewer than 10 reported cases.)

    • ogler@lemmynsfw.com
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      the second ER did not diagnose her with sepsis, they diagnosed her with strep throat and a UTI. some portion of responsibility IMO lies with that OB-GYN for screwing up that diagnosis, although i understand the larger point of the article seems to be that doctors are reluctant to diagnose or treat really any condition in pregnant women for fear of getting legally crushed by the state

      • Tower@lemm.ee
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        The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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        At the second, she screened positive for sepsis

        From the article.

        The first one said strep. The second one said sepsis.

        • ogler@lemmynsfw.com
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          it’s possible that I’m misunderstanding here but I think the sepsis diagnosis is from a retrospective review of her file. at the time there was no sepsis diagnosis. they even specifically call out that doctor for having been under review for missing diagnoses in the past

          After two hours of IV fluids, one dose of antibiotics, and some Tylenol, Crain’s fever didn’t go down, her pulse remained high, and the fetal heart rate was abnormally fast, medical records show. Hawkins noted that Crain had strep and a urinary tract infection, wrote up a prescription and discharged her.

          Hawkins had missed infections before. Eight years earlier, the Texas Medical Board found that he had failed to diagnose appendicitis in one patient and syphilis in another. In the latter case, the board noted that his error “may have contributed to the fetal demise of one of her twins.” The board issued an order to have Hawkins’ medical practice monitored; the order was lifted two years later. (Hawkins did not respond to several attempts to reach him.)

          • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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            Could be. I read the strep and UTI as having been written down either from the previous hospital or by the patient and her mother based on the previous hospital visit.

            And while it sounds like Hawkins is not someone you’d want to be in charge of your care, it seems like there were a lot more failures here than just one bad doctor.