Buckle up for the most ridiculous medicolegal case of the year.
Article and
court ruling.
Evie Toombes, 20, was born with a lipomyelomeningocele, a rare type of spina bifida that is not prevented by folic acid supplementation. Somehow, Miss Toombes has managed to make this the central argument; not that the advice to take folic acid would have prevented her illness but that
her mother would have held off conceiving and made an entirely genetically different person.
So was the doctor negligent in his advice? It turns out that he had advised it, and his recommendation was indeed documented in the notes. But Evie's legal team argued that the recommendation was not stressed
enough, with her mother "wouldn't have attempted to become pregnant until she was satisfied that she had protected herself as much as possible," meaning that Evie would not have lost the genetic lottery and exist but instead some hypothetical brother or sister who would have been healthy.
The judge's comments on the credibility of the claimant and the lack thereof of the GP is wacky. Of course the doctor can't remember exactly what he said 20 years ago in a ten minute appointment. Never mind the possibility that Mrs Toombes could be being fraudulent - not accepted in Mrs Justice Lambert's eyes. This girl is winning millions on the judge accepting "he said" over actual documentation of the consultation and a weird hypothetical that if her parents had sex a few seconds later their child not-Evie would have been healthy.
Evie's won her case and is planning to sue for millions, for the costs of being disabled her whole life. So, what do these big costs involve? Evie is a British woman who has been entitled to the National Health Service since birth. Oh wait, she is a showjumper looking to go to the Paralympics. It's harder to ride a horse when you can't feel your legs, she says - any added costs to this? Horses are an expensive hobbie.
She can stand on them and mobilise, but there is some weakness and mobility difficulty. Apparently argued in court that she would eventually need a wheelchair. Bladder and bowel incontinence. No doubt there are some real neurological issues. But there are photos of her walking unaided and squatting down on her own instagram. I wonder if the judge saw these.
What a surprise, her instagram is a
sickstagram. Horse picture, horse picture, TPN, horse picture...wait, what? What's the TPN for?
"I rely on tubes to stay alive every single day." Somehow the bowel issues mean that she requires TPN...and also an NG tube as well as oral intake. The Hickman line has been in place since July, so this is a new issue. I wonder where this has come from, all of a sudden? Evie has been on some television programmes about hidden disability and even met Meghan and Harry!
See below for a small selection of her health antics. I will come back and add the rest for archival purposes at some point. I hope her case gets thrown out at the court of appeals. It has implications for every healthcare professional ever. What next, "I held off having a baby until I was forty and now he has Down's Syndrome, if you had advised me of this risk I would have conceived a whole genetically different individual a few years earlier"?
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www.bestnotes.com
