2018Plaintiff had uncontrolled diabetes and underwent an amputation of his right leg, above the knee. The surgery was successful and he was discharged from the hospital to a nursing home. The family visited often and found feces and urine in his bed, diaper and in his stump wound bandage. By the 9th day of admission he had drainage from the stump incision, it was warm to touch, and the drainage was yellow-greenish. These are symptoms of an early infection. The nursing home did nothing except clean up the wound and reapply a dressing. By the 12th day of the admission Plaintiff’s daughter visited and felt that he smelled septic and he had frank puss draining from his wound, a yellowish color. The nursing home tried to prevent her from sending him out to the emergency room, but she called the ambulance anyway and the EMT’s took him over to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a complicated wound infection in his stump, had six weeks of antibiotic therapy and two surgical procedures to debride and revise his stump, losing an additional four inches of femoral bone. As a result he gained weight, became weak, and was unable to be successfully fitted for a prosthetic leg. The nursing home settled the case two months prior to trial as a result of mediation.