Dec 12, 2008 10:05 am US/Central
N.Y. Woman Who Lost Hands, Feet Learns To Walk
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Tabitha Mullings, is suing Brooklyn Hospital Center after her hands and feet were amputated in what her lawyers call a "medical mistake."
CBS
A Brooklyn mother of three is getting a second chance at a happy and
normal life. She's a quadruple-amputee learning to walk again
after a medical mistake.
Tabitha Mullings says she was a victim of medical malpractice on the part of EMS workers and Brooklyn Hospital, and now she's suing.
"My first steps? (They're) like heaven," she tells CBS Station WCBS-TV.
CBS Station WCBS-TV captured Mullings take her first steps using prosthetics from the Rusk Institute, the largest university-affiliated center devoted entirely to inpatient/outpatient care, research and training in rehabilitative medicine.
Mullings' first steps come without the aid of a walker, since losing both hands and feet four months ago to gangrene.
"There's no such thing as you can't," she says. "To me, that word is out of my vocabulary list."
Back in September, Mullings was diagnosed with a kidney stone and was sent home with painkillers. She twice called 911 in the next day, but wasn't taken back to the hospital. She developed a sepsis infection and within two weeks, gangrene. Not only did it cause her to have her hands and feet amputated, she's also blind in her right eye and can only barely see out of her left.
Two hours of physical therapy plus another hour of occupational therapy each day is what she's gone through since. Her spirits are lifted by the kindness of people she's never even met.
"People who don't even know me are opening up their hearts and their wallets and their purses," she says.
The prosthetics are heavy, weighing 5 pounds a piece. But they also make her taller.
"I was 5'5, now I'm like 5'10, bigger than my brother," she says. "He's like, 'Uh-uh, bring her down! She can't be bigger than me!'"
Tabitha says she hopes to eventually run around with her kids. Her doctors say her grit and willpower, will get her through the ordeal.
Her advice to others dealing with hardships in life?
"Don't give up. Don't give up. That word "can't," erase it. If you fail the first time, you will get there, eventually," she says.
Next on Mullings' agenda is to get prosthetic hands that will allow her to do simple tasks like brush her teeth and eat dinner. Her attorney's have filed a claim against the city for $100 million.
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