Lawsuit: Fort Lauderdale woman hospitalized for weeks, but her family has not been allowed to visit

A South Florida man has turned to filing a lawsuit as his only hope to see his wife who has been hospitalized for weeks.

In a civil lawsuit filed Monday, three family members of Fort Lauderdale resident Lindsay Kennedy are fighting against the Memorial Healthcare System because they say they have not been permitted to visit their loved one who has been in the intensive care unit at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood.

Kennedy is not hospitalized with the new coronavirus but has struggled with health issues after having an aneurysm over 10 years ago. The lawsuit states that the Memorial Healthcare System denied 38-year-old Kennedy medically necessary visitations through improper restrictions.

Kennedy’s husband, Jayson Oneschuk, her mother-in-law, Kathleen Carr, and her younger brother, Andrew Kennedy, are listed as plaintiffs and are seeking for Kennedy to be allowed to have one visitor per day, according to the lawsuit. The Memorial Healthcare System and South Broward Hospital District are listed as the defendants.

Because of COVID-19 policies at the hospital, visitation hours at Memorial Regional Hospital are limited.

A sign outside the hospital says to visitors that visiting hours have been temporarily suspended but that one significant other is allowed to be with obstetric patients, according to the lawsuit. It says because the hospital is allowing this exception, denying Kennedy’s visitation privileges is discriminatory.

Kerting Baldwin, Memorial Healthcare System’s Administrative Director of Corporate Communications, said the decision to limit visitation hours was not an easy one during the pandemic.

“Memorial Healthcare System recog

nizes the value of patients and families staying connected during a hospital stay and ordinarily has an open visitation policy,” Baldwin wrote in an email Tuesday. “However, COVID-19 remains a grave threat to our community, and we must restrict visitations to protect the safety of our patients and employees, while also having the flexibility to safely make specific exceptions as the one already made in this case. While these difficult decisions are never easy to make during these unprecedented times, it helps to stop exposure and spread of this highly infectious disease, keeping our community safe.”

Kennedy was admitted to Memorial Healthcare on April 21. After her admittance, she was in critical condition, according to the lawsuit, though her husband said she is stable now. She is not in an area of the hospital where coronavirus patients are being treated.

“Besides the painful surgical interventions and treatments, the patient is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, isolation, social deprivation, oral deprivation and absence of loving touch from her family and is at serious risk of severe and imminent harm and deterioration of her medical condition” the lawsuit reads.

Oneschuk, 50, said his wife of 10 years was rushed into an emergency surgery to treat her hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid builds up in the brain, a week ago. Her heart rate dropped to 20 beats per minute, and he wasn’t sure she would live.

Oneschuk said his wife had an aneurysm when she was 26. Over the last decade, she recovered and was healthy. But problems reappeared.

On May 6, according to the lawsuit, a nurse manager allowed Carr and Oneschuk to visit Kennedy for about three hours.

The next day, the hospital told Carr, who is Kennedy’s designated healthcare surrogate, that Kennedy would be allowed to have one visitor once a week for 30 minutes and that they must notify the hospital one day ahead of the visit. But Kennedy’s surgeon informed them that she needed more visitation time for her well being.

Kennedy and her three family members weren’t given a written visitation policy, the lawsuit says.

“She’s had so many surgeries. Her head has been cracked open so many times. She has got two external brain drains, one out of each side of her head. Basically, she needs someone here with her,” Oneschuk told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Oneschuk said he has been able to visit his wife once in the three weeks she has been hospitalized. Having family to support Kennedy will give her hope.

“If your wife is having a baby, you can go in as a visitor,” he said. “If she’s dying, you cannot. And it’s disgusting.”