Photo: Laura Jokinen

Laura Jokinen believed her abdominal pain after a caesarean section was normal — until one day, 10 weeks after delivery, she returned home from walking her newborn son and the pain intensified to the point that she buckled and screamed for help.

“At that point, I could barely make it into the house,” said Jokinen, who lives near Parksville on Vancouver Island. “I knew something was really wrong with my body. I wasn’t sure what.”

Jokinen had a difficult labour at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. Son Harlan, who was overdue, was born via emergency C-section on Aug. 11, 2018, and had to spend days in the neo-natal intensive care unit.

Once home, Jokinen endured a post-surgical infection of her incision, heavy and prolonged vaginal bleeding and breastfeeding challenges. She chalked up her stabbing abdominal pain to normal healing.

Then, on Oct. 18, she doubled over in pain.

“I think out of instinct, I reached below, between my legs, and there was a metal object coming out of me with wires attached, and it was at that point I freaked out,” Jokinen said.

Jokinen, a public health researcher and a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, said it was “like a scene from The Matrix.”

“It was attached to wires that led up inside me,” she said. “I had no idea what the device was, where it had come from and if it was attached to my insides or not. I was very, very concerned about removing it, but also very concerned about keeping it in.”

She removed the device, then took a photo and sent it to her midwife, who explained it was a fetal scalp electrode. It had been inserted through her cervix and used to monitor her son’s heart rate.

A Nov. 7 report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information showed rates of foreign objects — sponges, clamps, needles and scissors, for example — left behind in patients after surgery increased by 14 per cent across Canada over the past five years.

Between 2016 and 2018, a total of 553 objects were left in Canadian patients after surgery, the report said.

Foreign objects are left inside patients’ bodies in Canada 9.8 times out of every 100,000 surgeries for people age 15 and older. That’s more than twice the OECD average of 3.8.

In Canada, medical errors account for 28,000 deaths each year, says the Canadian Patient Safety Institute.

“While our goal is for this to never occur, when it does happen, we take these events very seriously, conduct full investigations and implement resulting recommendations to improve patient care,” Island Health said in a statement.

Jokinen said she had to request her own diagnostic tests and her complaints were directed to Island Health’s Patient Care Quality Office.

Island Health said it has made changes in the hospital’s perinatal unit to prevent such an incident from happening again. As well, the physician and hospital apologized.

“We have added all non-surgical devices that are used internally, such as the fetal scalp electrode, to the surgical checklist to ensure that these items are always retrieved,” Island Health said in response to questions. “This checklist is reviewed during the general pre-operative safety check and is verified again at the end of the procedure.

“We deeply regret that this patient had a poor care experience and we have sincerely apologized to her.”

Photo: Laura Jokinen