£1.5m payout to mother left unable to orgasm after doctors’ blunders
‘The loss is a terrible thing’
A MOTHER left unable to have orgasms after doctors failed to pick up a rare nerve condition has been awarded £1.5million compensation.
Ginny Atchison, 45, has cauda equina syndrome, where the nerves at the base of the spinal cord are squeezed together, causing pain, numbness and weakness in the lower back, legs, buttocks and between the legs.
It also affects bladder and bowel control and sexual function.
Mrs Atchison, a former cosmetic shop manager, first started feeling pain in her lower back in 2008, when she believed she had simply pulled a muscle.
She went to A&E in 2010 when the pain became more severe but was not given an MRI scan. Instead, she was referred to a pain management clinic at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, with doctors suspecting a slipped disc.
It was not until 12 months later, when she visited A&E again having not passed urine for 24 hours, that she was diagnosed with cauda equina syndrome and underwent surgery. The condition requires emergency surgery because the longer it goes untreated, the greater the chance it will lead to permanent paralysis and incontinence. In Mrs Atchison’s case, it left her unable to experience an orgasm. She was forced to give up work in 2011 and still struggles to walk long distances. She also has a permanent catheter.
She said it was ‘amazing’ that she was still able to walk after the operation but ‘ unfortunately, there was lots of damage’.
She added: ‘I still can’t feel the saddle area. I have tried everything to help it – I’ve looked at the psychology of it, physical treatment – but I have come to terms with the fact that my sexual feeling isn’t going to come back.
‘I was always a very sexual person. I enjoyed being intimate, having sex at least a few times a week when I was in a relationship.
‘But I didn’t realise how important that was to me until it was gone.’ Mrs Atchison, a divorcee, said she feels being deprived of sexual feeling is the worst part of her condition. She split up with her partner of seven years soon after the diagnosis.
‘We are still best friends, but after the injury we couldn’t be intimate and the romantic part of our relationship was over,’ she said. ‘I struggled a lot, because loss of orgasm is a terrible thing.’
Mrs Atchison, from Norwich, who has a son, Leo, 20, a student, took legal action against Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust. They settled out of court last month. She said: ‘I won’t be able to work again, so it gives me financial stability for the future.’
Both trusts apologised to Mrs Atchison for the distress caused by the standard of care she received. A spokesman for the hospital trust said all such incidents are investigated to ensure that lessons are learned and to prevent them happening again.
A spokesman for the community health trust said: ‘We have implemented a new protocol improving our response to suspected cauda equina syndrome.’