Quaids Recounted Harrowing Experience
Dennis Quaid is not at all prepared for the harrowing real-life scenario he and wife Kimberly found themselves facing late 2007.
In a 60 Minutes dialogue, the Quaids narrated witnessing their infant twins’ battle for dear lives after they were erroneously given an overdose of the blood thinner heparin.
“It was the scariest, most frightening day, I think, that either of us have ever been through,” the actor said.
The pair received twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, delivered by a surrogate mother, on Nov. 8.
After a couple of days, the babies were found have staph infection and were admitted to Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for treatment.
The Quaids accounted that they were guaranteed the twins were in good hands and went home to get some shut eye. Nevertheless, Kimberly Quaid out of the blue had a sense that something was off beam with the twins, even though no one from the medical staff had called to inform the parents of any problems.
Solely based on motherly intuition, the pair went back to the hospital only to find doctors and nurses fighting to save their twins’ lives.
The overdose of the blood thinner had transformed the twins’ blood to the “consistency of water, where they had a complete inability to clot,” Quaid recounted.
“They were basically bleeding out at that point.”
Quaid described the shocking sight, with “blood everywhere.”
“They were working on Boone, whose belly button would not stop bleeding, and while they were trying to…clamp it, blood squirted across the room about six feet and landed on the wall.”
Luckily, the babies have since made a complete improvement. Though, the Quaids are exerting efforts to ensure that other parents don’t have to go through the same traumatic position.
The pair has filed legal action against heparin manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corp. in December, asserting that the company was neglectful in packaging different doses of the medicine in similar containers.
Reacting to the couple’s accusations, Baxter rep Debra Bello advised that the merchandise was “safe and effective, and the errors, as the hospital has acknowledged, were preventable and due to failures in their system.”
Subsequent to an in-house investigation, Cedars-Sinai recognized that errors were made. The hospital has since amended its procedures concerning administration of heparin and other high-risk medicines and taken steps to retrain employees operating with such drugs.
Quaids thinks it’s not good enough, they are now on a mission to draw attention how run of the mill medical mistakes are.
“These mistakes that occurred to us are not unique,” Quaid told 60 Minutes. “They happen in every hospital, in every state in this country
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