'Dead' Woman Sues

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When Louis Johnson brought his wife to the emergency room on May 6, 2007, he didn't think they would be there long -- she just had a bad case of indigestion.

About an hour later, Johnson said, he was "blown away" when staffers at Beebe Medical Center in Lewes took him into a room to tell him his wife was dead.

But she wasn't.

As they later learned, when the body of Judith Johnson, 61, was set to be taken to the morgue, someone noticed the "corpse" was breathing -- even with a tube still down her throat.

The Johnsons, of Georgetown, now are suing Beebe Medical Center and hospital personnel in federal court, charging doctors and staffers did not provide adequate emergency medical care and were negligent in both the way they treated her heart attack and in declaring her dead.

The Johnsons' attorney, Leon Aussprung of Philadelphia, who is also a doctor, said Judith Johnson's recovery has been "surprising."

"She is brain-injured, but can walk and talk," he said.

At the same time, according to the lawsuit, she still suffers from liver damage, chest pain, memory loss, speech problems, seizures, a change in personality and permanent neurological injury as a result of what happened.

The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

Beebe officials would not comment directly on a pending lawsuit.

However, Beebe Vice President of Corporate Affairs Wallace Hudson said "the situation that you described, while rare, is not unheard of. It is called spontaneous return of circulation, otherwise known as 'Lazarus syndrome.' "

"Medical literature points out that since 1982, there have been at least 25 reported cases of survival after failed resuscitation," said Hudson, with eight of those surviving patients emerging neurologically intact. Others, he said, lived only a few hours or days longer.

According to the lawsuit and a hospital record provided by Aussprung, Judith Johnson's medical problems started earlier that day when she complained of indigestion. She also complained of chest pains when they got to the hospital around 7:35 p.m. She was seen by a nurse almost immediately and an electrocardiogram showed a heart attack was developing.

Apparently while she was being moved to a room, Judith Johnson collapsed and became unresponsive, according to the hospital report. The lawsuit said she went into cardiac arrest at 8:04 p.m. and was not given supplemental oxygen or put on a cardiac monitor.

Louis Johnson said he was sitting in the waiting room and heard the call of "code blue," meaning a dire emergency, but had no idea it involved his wife.

The ER record indicates Judith Johnson was "given multiple meds and asynchronized shocks but never regained a pulse." The report also stated that the doctor "felt everything that could be done had been done." Care was halted "due to no response" and Johnson was pronounced dead at 8:34 p.m. At that time, the nursing supervisor was sent to contact Johnson's husband.

Judith Johnson was then moved aside, her gurney pushed against a wall, according to Aussprung, to be sent to the morgue.

Her husband said he became impatient for news and went to inquire about Judith.

"They said, 'We need to talk to you,' " Johnson recalled, adding they claimed to have been looking for him for some time. "I knew something had to be wrong."

Johnson said they took him into a room and a doctor told him, "We did all that we could do."

"That was it. He left the room," Johnson said.

Around 9:50 p.m., someone noticed signs of breathing. Judith Johnson "was found to be alive and breathing with her endotrachial tube still in place," according to the emergency record. A nurse found Johnson was "warm with good skin color," though she reported difficulty in finding a pulse.

Johnson was stabilized and admitted, according to the lawsuit.

About 20 minutes after the doctor informed Louis Johnson of his wife's apparent death, Johnson said, he was told his wife was "in bad, bad shape," was on life support and it was his option "to pull the plug."

"I was lost. At the time, I didn't know what to say or what to do," Johnson said. "They told me she'll never be functioning again. I didn't care as long as she was living."

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