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Background: News footage of Deborah Lowe discussing her lawsuit against Aurora Sinai Medical Center (WITI). Inset: Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wis. (Google Maps).
A Wisconsin woman has sued the hospital that performed a lifesaving procedure on her, claiming that surgeons left a feeding tube inside her — 35 years ago.
Deborah Lowe, 60, said at a press conference covered by WITI, a local Fox affiliate, that when she was 25 years old in 1989, she was pregnant with twins. The pregnancy resulted in complications, and she was hospitalized at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee now known as Aurora Sinai Medical Center. She was put on life support, including a feeding tube.
Thirty-five years later, during another surgical procedure, that feeding tube was allegedly found still inside her body.
The lawsuit, filed in Milwaukee on Feb. 5, accused the hospital of medical negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and emotional distress. It lists Mount Sinai Medical Center, three unnamed individuals identified as John Does, and the Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund as defendants.
Through tears, Lowe told several local news outlets at a press conference, “Since 1989, I couldn’t do things. I had migraines, shortness of breath, and my stomach constantly swelled. I was 25 years old. That’s my whole life.”
Lowe, alongside her attorney B’Ivory LaMarr, elaborated on the procedure that allegedly changed her life for the worse. The pregnancy ended with an emergency C-section, an early delivery for her twins. When she experienced complications, she endured an emergency total hysterectomy, leaving her unable to have more children. Lowe was on life support for two months. She said, “They took my whole life. I was only 25 years old, and I couldn’t have any more kids, now I’m still going through things. I can’t do things I used to do.”
When Lowe was finally taken off life support, the doctors left the feeding tube inside of her, the lawsuit claimed. And allegedly because of that, she continued to have painful symptoms for the next three decades and beyond. She underwent additional procedures and saw multiple doctors to try to deal with the pain. It wasn’t until April 2024, when she was having another operation, that the feeding tube was discovered.
At the press conference, LaMarr called the case “the most outrageous alleged negligence that I think I’ve ever seen before.”
Aurora Sinai Medical Center told WITI in a statement, “We have not been legally notified of this lawsuit and cannot comment further.” The hospital did not respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime.
