Carolin was a cheerful child. Despite her illness, she was always “racing around each other with her friends”, reports her father, Rolf Bretschneider. The parents think she and the doctors have tuberous sclerosis under control. The congenital disease can lead to tissue growth and malformations in all organs. She was diagnosed with Carolin at the age of three months – she had epileptic fits. Because of a slight developmental delay, Carolin later attended the special needs school in Fürstenfeldbruck.
In 2017, tumors appeared on her liver that had to be operated on – otherwise they could become malignant. But then something goes terribly wrong. On August 3, 2017, Carolin was operated on. It wasn’t until April 17, 2018, almost nine months later, that the girl was able to return home. In the wheelchair.
Now everything is different for the Bretschneider family. Carolin, who turned twelve at the beginning of December, is paralyzed from the lower chest down. Her parents Rolf, 53, and Monika, 52, look after her at home. The girl attends the Bavarian State School for the Physically Disabled in Munich. If there is classroom teaching there, she has to get up at 5 a.m. and doesn’t come home until 5 p.m. – a strain for the disabled child.
In addition, it is currently a question of whether the hospital’s liability insurance will cover the costs that the family incurs due to the disability. The Bretschneiders had a house in Eichenau converted to make it wheelchair accessible. According to the parents, these expenses should be covered by the insurance, and they also want their daughter, their only child, to be financially secure. But Basler Versicherung is delaying payments, says Rolf Bretschneider. He himself works in the insurance industry and knows how it works. The public prosecutor’s office stopped investigations against the treating doctors for bodily harm in March 2020. It cannot be proven beyond any doubt that medical errors have led to Carolin’s severe disability, according to the public prosecutor’s decision. Bretschneider emphasizes that he actually only wanted the complete file from the clinic. The public prosecutor’s office determined the possible bodily harm.
What happened in the clinic is documented by three medical reports and is easy to understand. The public prosecutor’s office requested one of them from a professor of surgical intensive care medicine at the Berlin Charité. The other two, by a neurosurgeon and a specialist in anesthesia, were made for the medical service of the health insurance company. The three reviewers describe the process very similarly according to the clinic’s files. The approximately five-hour operation in a children’s clinic in Munich is therefore carried out properly. Carolin is given spinal anesthesia. A needle is brought between two vertebrae close to the spinal cord, anesthetics and painkillers reach the nerves directly. With Carolin, the needle is placed in the area above the liver. The catheter remains in place after the operation to treat pain.
At first everything seems to be good according to the reports. Carolin is awake, she can move her legs, she can sit. But after two days it becomes weaker, limp. Again and again she had an elevated temperature. Above all, she loses feeling in her legs and can no longer move them. This is how martyrdom begins.
Although a nurse reports the findings, also at the urging of the worried mother, nothing happens first. Perhaps because it was the weekend, as the parents assume. Only two days later, when Carolin is already paralyzed, doctors begin to examine the child thoroughly.
The three reviewers agree: That was far too late. The neurosurgical expert writes that, from his point of view, it is incomprehensible “why the (…) diagnosis has been delayed by almost 48 hours since the appearance of the first clinical symptoms. It is a violation of elementary medical treatment principles”. It is also incomprehensible why there was no immediate reaction when the motor weakness began.
The Charité professor calls the “delayed diagnosis of paraplegia” a “malpractice” which “could potentially have led to further, avoidable damage to the spinal cord”. In their opinion, the main damage was “fateful”, although the exact cause is unclear. The parents were told that something like this could happen when they were informed about the anesthesia.
For an MRI examination, Carolin is ventilated via a tube. This is first removed, but four hours later she has to be re-intubated because she cannot breathe. “I was scared”, remembers Rolf Bretschneider. It turns out that the child is infected with four types of bacteria and one yeast that typically affect weak patients in hospitals. After treatment with antibiotics and anti-fungal agents, a dangerous intestinal bacterium also appears, Carolin gets diarrhea and again antibiotics. The child has pneumonia, water in the lungs, possibly a respiratory nerve is damaged. She still cannot breathe. On September 4th, the doctors decided to cut the trachea, through which she was ventilated – until November 12th, for more than three months.
With the ventilation tube in her throat, Carolin will be transferred to a clinic in Vogtareuth near Rosenheim for rehabilitation on September 25, 2017. Your mother is always by your side. They won’t be able to go home until April 17, 2018, after more than six months. “That was really stressful,” says Monika Bretschneider. “But you just keep going. You don’t think a lot and just do it.” She doesn’t let her feelings get to her. “When you see your child like that, you get anger and anger and hatred. But that has to be brushed aside.”
After all, there was enough to do in Vogtareuth. She learns to care for her child: change the urinary catheter, empty the bowel. To this day, Carolin has no control over her excretions. “We do it all alone at home,” says her mother. A nursing service does not come. The parents are pragmatic about the situation. Rolf Bretschneider’s parents move into a rented apartment so that their house can be converted for Carolin’s needs for a six-figure sum. “It’s the way it is. Who knows what’s to come,” says the mother. The Bretschneiders have hope that Carolin’s condition could improve. Even if the medical findings make that seem unlikely.
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