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Wellington, FL (WPTV) – Imagine that you were going to have surgery in the back of the hospital to wake you up and learn that one of your main organs was taken by mistake.
This nightmare was a reality for a West Palm Beach woman at the Wellington Regional Medical Center.
"It was an ordinary day," said Maureen Pacheco, who was 51 when it happened in April 2016.
Pacheco suffered from back pain following a car accident. After a long process and the diagnosis of her doctors, she was admitted to Wellington Regional for a back surgery.
"There were no red flags or anything," she said about the day she went to the operating room.
But she has finished leaving the hospital without one of her healthy kidneys. Dr. Ramon Vazquez, one of the surgeons, mistook him for a cancerous tumor and extracted it from his body without his consent.
"He just took my life and just rejected it," said Pacheco.
Pacheco recently filed a lawsuit against his doctors – Drs. John Britt and Jeffrey Kugler – and Dr Vazquez.
However, a complaint from the Florida Department of Health is still ongoing. Pacheco added that Dr. Vazquez was not her doctor, but that her job was simply to cut her off so that her doctors could perform back surgery.
"If he had examined the MRI devices he had been given, he would have realized it," she said.
According to the website of the state health department, Dr. Vazquez has an active medical license.
The site shows him practicing with Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, St. Mary's Medical Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, as well as Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach.
"The doctors have a second chance," said Pacheco's lawyer, Donald Ward III, of Searcy's Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, PA in West Palm Beach.
"It is unlikely that he will lose his license for something like this.What is most likely is that he would risk a fine and would eventually be forced to undergo continuing medical education in order to learn how to do not make the same mistake in the future, "he added.
Ward said Dr. Vazquez should pay this fine out of his pocket because he did not have insurance against malpractice.
"What is not common is that you meet this general surgeon that morning and you're told that if anything should happen to you, this general surgeon does not have any health insurance," he said.
Dr. Vazquez's lawyer, Mike Mittelmark, said his client had settled the case for a nominal amount because of the uncertainty of the dispute. He added that Dr. Vazquez had in no way acknowledged his responsibility in accepting the settlement.
"I do not want any ill will against him. Everyone has the right to make a living, but you should have consequences if you commit gross negligence and negligence, "said Pacheco. "I just wish he learned a lesson from the consequences."
Pacheco said that no amount of money would solve the problems she would face for the rest of her life.
"It's always in my mind – a kidney transplant or a dialysis for life," she said. "Now I'm always scared."
The Wellington Regional Medical Center issued this statement in response to WPTV's request for comment:
Dr. Vazquez is not and has never been employed by the Wellington Regional Medical Center. Dr. Vazquez was an independent physician who enjoyed the privileges of the Wellington Regional medical staff as well as other Palm Beach County hospitals. Dr. Vazquez is no longer part of the Wellington Regional medical staff. Wellington Regional has taken all necessary and appropriate steps to examine the circumstances surrounding this most deplorable incident. In the last 30 years of the Wellington Regional Medical Center, no such incident has occurred before.
Dr. Vazquez could not be reached for comment.
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