Years of unnecessary pain
A Manawatu¯ woman says undetected injuries left her in pain for years.
When Meredith Turner injured her wrist in 2009, she never thought it would take years of battling to get surgery and compensation from ACC.
An initial test revealed nothing, but a later test did, and she has since had surgery.
She wants a written apology from Palmerston North Hospital and Broadway Radiology, but both say MRIS taken at the time were accurate and there were no abnormalities found.
In 2009, Turner was working as a manager at a supermarket when she hyper-extended her wrist while moving a box.
Unable to lift her two young children, cook or clean, she went to Broadway Radiology for an MRI, only to hear it revealed nothing abnormal.
‘‘I knew myself there was definitely something wrong.
‘‘I would go to make myself a cup of coffee and I couldn’t hold the cup.
‘‘There was no energy in my hand.’’
Broadway Radiology general manager Duncan Scott said not all tissue tears could be found by an MRI and in Turner’s case nothing was detected.
The images were peer-reviewed and still no abnormalities were found, Scott said.
However, Turner is still wary as it was the second time an MRI from Broadway Radiology showed no abnormalities. The first MRI was in 2008, when Turner hurt her back.
‘‘I didn’t really think much of it. I was on that much pain relief, I didn’t have the fight in me to question it.’’
The injured back gave her so much grief she lost her job after being off work for three months.
‘‘Because the X-ray and MRI said it was normal, ACC said they wouldn’t even look at it.’’
Turner found casual work as a waitress despite her back injury. But the wrist injury in 2009, while working at the supermarket, cost her another job and she hasn’t worked since. ‘‘I struggled with picking up my girls. I struggled getting them in
the car seats, cooking, hanging out washing, basically everything. It was hard.’’
Turner became depressed, gained weight and had no job.
She fought ACC to see a specialist after two physios identified the injury, and was sent to one four years after the accident. In 2015, tests from Pacific Radiology in Wellington showed two tears and a fracture in her lower arm, she said. She’s had three surgeries to try to fix it.
Midcentral District Health Board hospital services operational director Lyn Horgan said both the 2008 and 2009 scans showed no abnormalities, which was confirmed recently by an independent review.
On December 13, Turner had a meeting with staff from Broadway Radiology and Midcentral.
At the meeting, it was acknowledged that small tears in her wrist had been found that had not shown up on the initial MRI, Horgan said. ‘‘We discussed and acknowledged the impact this has had on her life.’’
Scott said a radiologist from Broadway Radiology also noted the 2015 MRI was reported as not showing any ‘‘significant abnormality’’.
‘‘Turner’s tears were found after surgery and as we don’t have access to her medical records we cannot ascertain what size the tears were.
‘‘We would believe them to be very small, hence below the level of sensitivity for an MRI scan to find.’’