AN American woman plans to take Bahrain's biggest hospital to court after treatment administered by medical staff has allegedly left her bedridden.

Lilian Mills claims doctors at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) ignored her condition, did not prescribe proper medication and were unprofessional, causing major damage to her legs as she is now unable to walk.

She suffered from a lung infection which she developed from a common bug last month and was taken to the hospital by a friend because it was the closest medical facility to her house in Naim.

The sixty-one-year-old, who has taken diuretics to reduce the amount of water in her bloodstream for years, claims that staff ignored her list of medication and prescribed her with other drugs which were damaging to her condition.

"If they had just given me the antibiotics, I would have been fine," Ms Mills told the GDN.

"I gave them a list of medication that my doctor had given me for years, but not only did they not give me the pills I needed, but they ignored the list.

"They also gave me sodium which is the worst thing you can give to someone with my condition, Vitamin K which my doctor has told me I should never take and fluids through intravenous methods, which are very damaging."

Ms Mills, who is a branch manager at a water system company, described how medical staff left her alone in a hospital bed without any care for her welfare, resulting in water accumulating in her body.

She was then forced to discharge herself and after requesting to be transferred to the BDF Hospital, doctors ordered an ambulance to take her there.

"They left me in a bed and didn't move me so therefore all this water kept accumulating in my body, starting with my feet, up to my legs and then it reached my stomach," she claimed.

"I had to discharge myself and the medic in the ambulance taking me to the BDF Hospital told me if I had stayed any longer, the water would have reached my heart and then killed me.

"It has almost been a month now and I still cannot walk properly because of the water build-up in my legs.

"My doctor told me to go onto albumin because that is used to treat low blood pressure, which would raise my blood pressure so I could take diuretics and reduce the water retention.

"I have been out of work for a month and I have no insurance so I have had to pay for this out of my own pocket.

"I intend to take legal action against SMC, which I know is difficult because it is a government hospital, but I want to give it my best shot."

Health Ministry officials were unavailable for comment yesterday.

It was the second time Ms Mills, who has been in Bahrain for nearly two years, received inadequate treatment from SMC, after her ankle was allegedly set in the wrong position when she fractured it.

"I fractured my ankle at work and SMC staff re-set it, but it was set in a way that meant I kept wobbling and fell over," she said.

"I had to go to another doctor to get it properly fixed."

The allegations follow an investigation launched into alleged mistreatment by SMC staff of a Bahraini woman and her 10-year-old son, who were severely injured in a gas cylinder explosion outside their home in Bilad Al Qadeem last month.

Rania Abdulqadir Zain Al Abedeen claimed she was mistreated, misdiagnosed and ignored by doctors. The 35-year-old mother-of-three also alleged doctors tried to cover up the explosion in medical reports, saying they wanted to blame the explosion on a gas leak in her kitchen.

alicia@gdn.com.bh