On March 28th, 2023, I received a liver transplant at Northwestern Medicine. Due to post op negligent care, I was rushed into emergency surgery on April 6th for liver fascial dehiscence repair. After that a surgeon came to my room and apologised, saying, This surgery shouldn’t have been necessary. If we had done our job and kept that area dry you wouldn’t have had to go through this. This is on us.
Letter to an Attorney

In part:

Before the dehiscence repair, post liver transplant, my surgeon, DR Caicedo, examined me in my recovery room and was irate that my sutures, my dressings, my gown, and sheets, were soaking wet with wound leakage. He explained that if the area was not kept dry the sutures would pull apart from the skin and they would have to rip me open again and resuture their work with a synthetic mesh which unlike skin, can not replace its cells as it breaks down over time, which, he assured me, it would eventually. And then you will need to have this surgical repair repeated over and over. For the rest of your life. Mr Enright, he said, you don’t want to go there. I explained I was restricted to the bed by nurses orders and bed alarms and the nurses refused my repeated calls. He said he had put orders into my chart requiring the area be cleaned, dried, and the dressing changed 4 x day. He said he would speak with them about that. They still refused to change my soaking dressing or answer my repeated calls for help, telling me they didn’t have time for me and I was just “being a pain in the ass.” They called psych services 3 times in an attempt to gaslight me into thinking I was the problem and insane and I “need to be transferred to the psych ward.” Psych never found for them and I was never transferred. When I set off alarms several times, attempting to leave my bed to grab a towel to dry myself from the bathroom, they showed immediately to force me back to bed even calling security once. They repeatedly prevented me from following my drs oders. Dr Caicedo came in on a following day and saw his orders were still not being followed. He scolded me! I said do you see gauze, tape? I don’t have the means to change my dressing. The nurses, especially Drew, the Charge Nurse, insisted on ignoring my calls, except when to show up and insist “we don’t have time for your nonsense,” we will send you to the psych ward if you keep pushing the call button. My soaking sutures and belly and bed remained neglected and because of their negligence I was, on the 6th of April, sent for emergency surgery, as Dr Caicedo predicted because a scan showed the skin closing my transplanted liver had separated. They used the synthetic mesh which, Caicedo explained, will be a lifelong and potentially deadly issue for me.