A pregnant woman who was about to go to hospital for a planned caesarean section tried to wake up her partner on her son’s birthday and found him dead in Manchester, England.
Thomas Gibson, 40, suffered a heart attack while sleeping on the sofa after being misdiagnosed by a doctor eleven days earlier.
Rebecca Moss reports that on June 7, 2023, she tried to wake up her partner at 5:15 a.m. saying it was “baby day” but found his body “cold and stiff.”
Even after Thomas’s death, Rebecca had to give birth a few hours after she learned of the misfortune.
The tragedy was in front of her eyes, and as soon as she realized something was wrong, Rebecca called 911, who ordered her to perform chest compressions on her partner.
“The shock and trauma – not to mention the physical strain of having to drag ‘Tom’ from the couch to the floor and having to do compressions at 39 weeks pregnant – was devastating,” the woman told the court.
Thomas spent the last few years of his life euphoric that he was about to become a father, taking the opportunity to build furniture for the child.
“Tom – concerned, charming and funny – will live on through his daughter, but that doesn’t change the fact that he should still be here with us today,” he added.
The hospital accepts responsibility for negligence
Thomas, who was admitted to hospital on May 27, 2023, suffered from a stomach illness for three weeks. Doctors recognized the possible blockage from an electrocardiogram.
One of the doctors in charge admitted that there were abnormal signs, but at the time he did not consider them clinically “significant”, reports BBC.
The patient was advised to return to the hospital if the insect remained in the stomach. “Now, looking back, I see that there are anomalies that I did not detect,” the doctor explains.
The family’s lawyers said the hospital admitted liability for medical negligence. The hospital consultant acknowledged that the complex situation required more “expertise” to diagnose.