Sometimes, you loan stuff to people and they lose it. I know I’ve loaned out some books that, alas, I’ve never seen again. Some losses are worse than others, however. One pretty bad case is that of a Georgia man who recently loaned a local hospital part of his skull (you know, for the purposes of brain surgery), only for them to lose track of it. The hospital then had to operate on the man again multiple times, and he and his wife allegedly wracked up an additional $100k in medical charges. Now, understandably, the man is suing the hospital.
The Washington Post reports that Fernando Cluster and his wife, Melinda Cluster, are suing the Emory University Hospital Midtown, which is located in Atlanta, after the hospital accidentally misplaced a rather large part of Fernando’s skull. The skull fragment, which measured 4.7-by-5.9 inches in diameter, was originally taken out of Fernando’s skull during emergency surgery related to a brain hemorrhage, the Post reports. It was supposed to be put back in several weeks later after brain swelling related to the operation had subsided. However, hospital staff apparently lost that chunk of Fernando’s skull.
“When Emory’s personnel went to retrieve the bone flap, ‘there were several bone flaps with incomplete or missing patient identification’ and therefore, Emory ‘could not be certain which if any of these belonged to Mr. Cluster,’” the Fernandos’ legal complaint states.
Instead of his real skull fragments, hospital staff had to patch up Fernando’s head with “synthetic material.” This material was implanted during yet another operation, which would take place 12 days after the first one. The synthetic material itself would cost the couple another $19,000, the Post writes. Then, Fernando suffered an infection from the previous operation, which led to yet another surgery. All told, the couple claim they were forced to pay more than $146,845 due to the initial operation and the hospital’s subsequent screw-ups.
Gizmodo reached out to the Emory University Hospital for comment and will update this story when we receive a response.
