Shoddy care caused infection, man says
By Annemarie Timmins
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — Matthew Greenwood, 24, is at Lakes Region General Hospital with his lower right leg in pieces and packed with antibiotics. If those antibiotics don’t work, Greenwood said he will have to have the leg amputated.
Greenwood, of Canterbury, blames the Merrimack County jail for his condition and is contemplating a lawsuit for what he calls shoddy medical care. Greenwood arrived at the Boscawen jail in mid- January with a broken leg and believes its medical staff so mishandled his recovery that he developed a dangerous infection in his leg.
Greenwood, speaking from his hospital room, said the infection had eaten away at the main bone in his leg before he and his family managed to persuade jail officials to let him seek outside medical help at the hospital.
This week, Greenwood had the first of what he’s been told will be a series of surgeries. Dr. Glenn Lieberman of the Orthopedic Professional Association in Gilford cut into Greenwood’s leg Wednesday and shaved away the damaged and infected bone, Greenwood said. Lieberman then treated the bone with protein to encourage regrowth and packed the area with antibiotics.
Lieberman will repeat that process in the coming weeks, Greenwood said. No one will know until the leg is reopened whether this approach will work and eliminate the need for amputation. Either way, Greenwood said he has been told his right leg will forever be limited.
“I’ll never be able to ride dirt bikes again,” Greenwood said. “I won’t be able to go ice skating or skiing. It’s bull---- because it should never have gotten this far.”
Jail officials did not return telephone calls last week. Through an assistant, Lieberman said he could not comment on a patient’s case even if the patient had given him permission, as Greenwood had.
Concord attorney Michael Sheehan said he has spoken with Greenwood about his complaints and is inclined to take the case. Sheehan had just begun to investigate the matter last week and said the question will be whether jail staff contributed to Greenwood’s medical ailments.
Greenwood was sent to the Merrimack County jail in mid-January for violating parole, he said. He had originally been convicted on a drug offense and got into trouble in January when he was discovered with a hatchet and nunchakus in Canterbury, he said.
At the time, Greenwood was recovering from leg surgery because he had slipped on ice and broken his leg earlier that month. He arrived at the jail on crutches and with his surgery incision still healing.
According to Greenwood and his mother, the problems started immediately.
They said medical staff promised Greenwood pain medication but took two weeks to actually get it to him. Greenwood’s leg began to heal, they said, but then worsened rapidly when Greenwood graduated off the crutches and began wearing jail-issue sneakers. The sneakers rubbed the skin where metal plates had been installed during the initial surgery, they said.
Jail staff promised to exchange the sneakers for more comfortable high tops but didn’t, Greenwood said.
“Fluid started leaking through the skin,” Greenwood said. “It was getting redder and redder. I was assigned to the kitchen (for work) and the (guards) would let me sit 15 or 20 minutes for every hour I worked because it was so bad.”
Greenwood said he requested, and demanded, medical attention until he began to irritate the guards watching him. When the jail’s medical staff finally agreed to give him antibiotics for the infection that had developed, they prescribed a drug Greenwood had told them he was allergic to, he said.
When Greenwood worried he had rebroken his leg while walking on it, the jail’s medical staff didn’t believe him, he said. When the infection worsened, staff initially ignored it, Greenwood said. At one point, he said, he was written up for having four ice packs in his cell. That was two too many, Greenwood said he was told.
At one point, the jail transported Greenwood to Franklin Regional Hospital, he said, for the infection. Staff there confirmed Greenwood’s leg was infected but said it was in the skin only, not the bone, according to Greenwood. He was again put on the antibiotic that caused a reaction, he said.
The pain and swelling continued, he said.
By late-May, Greenwood sounded desperate, his mother said. He wrote her a letter begging for help. “I can’t sleep . . . and it kills,” the letter reads. “I can’t take it. Please, please, please help me. I can’t handle the pain.”
In June, Lieberman, the doctor who had operated on Greenwood’s leg before he went to jail in January, intervened at the family’s request, according to Greenwood and his mother. He operated again and took the metal plates out of Greenwood’s leg. Greenwood was sent back to the jail on different antibiotics.
Soon, Greenwood said, the problems at the jail resumed. Staff there did not administer the new antibiotics properly, according to Greenwood. And they responded to his continued complaints about pain by having him walk on his leg, he said. “They said, you need to stretch it out and use it,” he said.
Greenwood’s mother began calling the governor’s office and jail officials. She said she did not get the help she needed. She tried the state police and sheriff’s office. She said a dispatcher from Franklin was the most helpful with advice on how to help her son. The dispatcher also kept Lieberman up to date, Greenwood said.
This month, Greenwood was allowed to see Lieberman again. That’s when he learned how serious his condition had become, he said.
Greenwood said Lieberman told him then that the infection had gone beneath the skin and damaged the main bone in his leg. Lieberman needed to operate again, remove the damaged bone and pack the area with antibiotics. But he couldn’t do the surgery for a week.
Greenwood said Lieberman insisted that Greenwood spend the time waiting at the hospital, not the jail. Greenwood said neither he nor Lieberman believed the jail could treat the leg properly until the surgery.
Yesterday, Greenwood was recovering from Wednesday’s surgery. His leg is in a cast and up on pillows. He can’t walk and is readying himself to go through the same procedure again in three weeks.
“They think they caught it just in time, but they won’t know until the next surgery,” Greenwood said.
Greenwood said he’s trying to look ahead to his release from the hospital. He has a fiancee waiting. She has two kids, and he has one, who lives in Vermont.
In his most recent letter to his mother, Greenwood shared his greatest fear. “How can I be a dad with one leg or do anything I’m good at?” he said.
Copyright 2008 ProQuest Information and Learning