It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

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.

  • @ogler
    7•20 days ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
      37•20 days ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]English
      28•20 days ago

      At the second, she screened positive for sepsis

      From the article.

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

      • @ogler
        8•20 days ago

        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.)

        • @[email protected]English
          5•20 days ago

          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.