£10,000 Compensation Secured After Gallstone Misdiagnosis

We have recently completed a claim on behalf of a client who was suffering from gallstones and was waiting for an operation on the NHS. Her pain was so bad that she went to A and E. She told them that she had already been diagnosed with gallstones, and the pain was in the same place it had been for the last year, but she was in the most pain she had ever had. The hospital did a blood test and her white cell count was high. Nonetheless, the hospital discharged  her with Oramorph painkillers ,saying she had gastroenteritis. Her parents came over to her house to try to look after her because of the pain. They eventually telephoned the ambulance., but the paramedics  refused to take her into hospital because she  had only just been discharged . They did treat her for an allergic reaction to the oramorph. On the next day she was able to see a private urologist who treated her with antibiotics and after the inflammation had died down, operated to treat the gallstones. 

As a result of the extreme pain that she went through and her conviction that she was going to die , she suffered a psychological reaction.

We wrote a letter of claim and the hospital trust admitted that she should never have been discharged. She should have being kept in and given antibiotics. Had she been kept in, her allergic reaction to the oramorph would have been quickly addressed , and the antibiotics would have quickly suppressed the infection which was causing the pain. The defendants initially offered compensation of £500, and thereafter £2000 and the case eventually settled for damages of £10,000.