Newport mum disabled after hip fracture misdiagnosis

Gemma Johnson, 29, paid frequent visits to hospital, sometimes crying because the pain was so great, only for staff to tell her x-rays showed there was “nothing wrong”, before sending her home.

Nearly a year on from her first GP visit, she has had two major operations to repair fractures, but the ordeal has left her “drained” mentally and she is unable to do simple things like play with her young children.

“I’ve been made disabled by somebody that didn’t listen to me – that’s how I feel,” she told the Argus.

Ms Johnson said she first went to her GP with “a really bad achy feeling” in her right hip last spring, and was diagnosed with bursitis, an inflammation of the joints.

But as the pain “got worse as the days went on”, she visited hospital, where staff “gave me an x-ray and told there was nothing wrong”.

Within days, she was back, but the outcome was the same, despite the pain “increasing and increasing” as time went on, forcing her to stop working.

Gemma Johnson during one of her hospital visits. (Image: Gemma Johnson)

During a third visit, Ms Johnson said she was told she may be suffering from an infection, so a sample was sent for testing, only to come back negative.

“I was just told to put up with it, basically,” she said.

The fourth visit to hospital was in an ambulance, where she waited for 11 hours “screaming” because she “couldn’t put up with the pain”.

“It was like somebody trying to pull my leg off, it was horrendous,” she said. “I’ve had two kids and the pain [of childbirth] was nothing like this. It was like being crushed.”

Told she may have a stress fracture, Ms Johnson was given morphine for the pain and discharged, but the pain wouldn’t subside.

“I rang my [GP] the next day, and said ‘I can’t deal with this,’” the mum-of-two explained. “She said ‘I’ve got your x-ray in front of me and your hip is actually fractured.’”

An x-ray showing the metal fixings in one of Gemma Johnson's hips. (Image: Gemma Johnson)

Ms Johnson went straight back to hospital, where “they x-rayed me and said I needed an operation”.

That surgery went ahead in June, but five months into her recovery, Ms Johnson felt a familiar pain, this time in her left hip.

Unable to walk, she “ended up in a wheelchair” at the hospital and was “crying”, but despite suffering “exactly the same sort of pain” as she had done months earlier, staff who did an x-ray “told me there was nothing wrong and sent me home”.

A few days later, a consultant rang Ms Johnson and offered to pin her left hip “before it fractures”.

She agreed, but two days later her hip did indeed fracture. Ms Johnson needed another operation and now has a metal plate, three screws and a bolt in each hip.

“I was told by a consultant that if [the fractures] had been found sooner, it would not have led to where I am today,” Ms Johnson said.

“I’m deemed unfit to work, and mentally it’s completely drained me. It hasn’t just affected me physically, it’s affected everything.

“I’ve had to claim for things I never thought I’d have to claim. I have a disability, I’m not able to walk through town. I just feel like everything’s been ripped away.”

A spokesman for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board said: “It would be inappropriate to comment whilst legal proceedings are ongoing, but our thoughts are with Ms Johnson and her family.”