An inmate at the woman’s state prison in Wilsonville, OR, has filed a medical malpractice suit against the state of Oregon and the physicians working for the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Linda Anne Bond, 62, files this suit alleging negligence and deliberately indifferent treatment of a prisoner. She claims she received no medical treatment for a kidney stone, which resulted in a lost kidney.
Bond was transported from Douglas County Jail to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in December 2013. While still at Douglas County, she had started to feel intense pain in her abdomen, and X-rays detected a large kidney stone in her left kidney.
Once she arrived at Coffee Creek, Bond had blood in her urine and severe fevers, and the pain in her abdomen rapidly increased.
She contends the medical staff did not offer any treatment besides pain medication and names several individual doctors employed at the facility.
Oregon Live reports that her lawyer, Juan C. Chavez, wrote in the lawsuit, “Defendants made no record of tracking her kidneys’ condition, made no effort to treat the underlying medical issue of a kidney stone and ignored plaintiff’s requests for further treatment, often made in writing.”
By October 2014, Bond had difficulty walking due to severe pain and was checked by a nurse. A month later doctors examined Bond and found a severe kidney infection.
The kidney stone had blocked her left kidney function and created an abscess requiring the kidney’s removal.
The suit contends that prison doctors had failed to adequately examine Bond and that the medical staff at Coffee Creek are not properly trained.
Chavez claims that had Bond been given proper care and referred to a urologist, she would have simply passed her kidney stone.
He also argues that had she been a free person and not a ward of the State, she would have been able to seek appropriate treatment immediately.
Bond is not alone. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, malpractice and medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people every year.
Bond remains in custody, stemming from a 2013 assault and unlawful use of a weapon conviction.
