Victim of a medical error, a 30-year-old woman had to have her penis amputated completely. The administrative court condemned this Wednesday the CHU of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) to pay him 61,000 euros. Displeased, he appealed the decision, hoping to receive nearly one million euros.
A case far from finished. The victim of a medical error, a 30-year-old father had to have his penis amputated completely. The administrative court condemned this Wednesday the university hospital of Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) to pay the latter 61,376 euros in compensation.
The justice recognized in its sentence “illicit infractions capable of engaging the responsibility of the CHU” and having led to “a total removal of the penis” of the patient treated between 2014 and 2017. The error found caused the victim to lose a “70% chance of avoiding recurrence” of his carcinoma, a type of skin cancer that struck in the 1930s.
In detail, the total compensation was divided between the various damages suffered by the victims, including “the suffering suffered” (12,000 euros), the “permanent functional deficit” (16,000 euros) and “sexual harm” (31,500 euros).
“We will appeal and we will win”
After the sentence, the defense of the father of three announced his intention to challenge the decision taken by the administrative judge. As a reminder, the victim initially asked for a total sum of 976,000 euros for the damages suffered by his client.
“We appeal and we will win. I won’t let them humiliate me,” the man who suffered the medical error reacted after Wednesday’s hearing.
His lawyer, Me Georges Parastatis, regretted a sentence that was anything but commensurate with the violence suffered by the father of the family. “This man suffered a first psychological death due to medical negligence and a second today for this denigrating judgment of human dignity,” he criticized the latter.
AN INDESCRIBABLE PAIN WHICH IS “CRAZY”
His story began in 2014, when he was diagnosed with penile skin cancer at the age of 30. According to him, the doctors didn’t want to “cut off the glans completely” and preferred to try and remove the diseased skin.
But “the cancer took over” and the 30-year-old experienced terrible suffering. So much so that he thought of amputating himself, “with a box cutter”, to put an end to his ordeal. “I was in a lot of pain. I even made myself some codeine cocktails to calm me down. It drives you crazy after a while,” the bruised man testified.
The expert finally concluded that it was a medical error (not all cancer cells had been removed) and in 2017 penectomy, i.e. the total removal of the penis, was recommended. Since then, the father of the family has not been able to regain only a “very limited” sexuality. “The level of sensitivity is zero,” concluded the latter.
