A mother-of-three had to have all four limbs amputated after doctors were slow to diagnose her with infection following a routine operation.
Priscilla Dray suffered from septic shock after she went to the Pellegrin University Hospital in Bordeaux for an abortion in 2011.
She said that she had arrived in ‘great shape’ but was ‘left to die’ when doctors refused her antibiotics for the infection.
A month after her abortion, the former shopkeeper, then 36, suffered necrosis and ‘was massacred’, having both legs, her right forearm and her left hand amputated.
Two hospital doctors appeared before the Bordeaux Criminal Court today, indicted for involuntary injuries with incapacity.
More than 13 years since Ms Dray’s life was upturned, the courts will try to establish the responsibilities of each party leading to her disfigurement.
Ms Dray has claimed that her temperature soared to 39.6C the day after the operation, prompting her to head to the university hospital emergency room.
Her IUD was removed and a swab taken before an intern allegedly concluded she was likely suffering from endometriosis.
Under advice, Ms Dray requested antibiotics but was allegedly refused by the doctor on duty. She was, instead, sent home.
The next day, on July 24, 2011, she went to see a GP in Cap Ferret, who suspected septicemia.
She was then urgently referred back to hospital with a note to pass on to emergency doctors.
The note was not forwarded by the hospital staff as Ms Dray struggled to breathe and presented with frozen hands and feet, France3 reports.
The ‘flesh-eating bacteria’ had already started to attack her limbs, requiring amputation.
‘I trusted [them] and this is the state they put me in,’ she said on the M6 programme Zone Interdite. ‘They killed me, and normally I should have died.’
According to France3, her chance of survival was estimated at around five per cent during the night of July 24, when she was rushed back into hospital.
In just over a week, she developed necrosis, linked to the septic shock, and was transferred to intensive care for severe burns.
By the end of August they made the difficult decision to amputate.
Ms Dray, who had chosen to have an abortion after only recently having her third-born child, revealed that she was unable to see her newborn for three months after the surgery.
‘They took away all those moments of happiness,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything worse.’
The hospital would ultimately be fined 300,000 euros over the case, and three people were indicted, Femme Actuelle reported in 2023.
A gynecologist was indicted for not having immediately prescribed antibiotics.
In 2018, Ms Dray bravely shared her difficulties of adjusting to her condition.
‘Someone helps me every day at home,’ she told Sud Ouest.
‘For every daily task, you have to be able to adapt and organize yourself.
‘The hardest part is to come to terms with it and tell yourself that there are things you can no longer do yourself. It’s hard.’
‘It’s my three children who give me this energy,’ she said, asked how she overcomes the challenges of daily life.
‘Without them, I wouldn’t have had the same strength. And I still live with the hope of repairing myself. I’m dependent on progress in medicine and technology.’
She has needed more than 50 operations since to implant metal rods in her shin bones to fix prosthetics.
She underwent a costly hand transplant in the U.S. at her own expense, requiring her to spend ‘many months’ back in hospital, France3 reports.
Still, Ms Dray has questions about what happened to her in those crucial moments in July 2011.
‘To this day, I still don’t understand why I was left to die in that maternity ward,’ she told Pourquoi Docteur in 2017.
Sepsis is a life-threatening infection that can be difficult to spot in some patients, per the NHS.
It happens when the immune system reacts aggressively to an infection and starts to damage the body’s own tissues and organs.
Without proper treatment, it can lead to organ failure, tissue damage and death.