Husband reeling after superbug strikes down new mother
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 | 6:23 PM PT
CBC News
The death of a new mother has left her husband asking how she acquired a deadly superbug following a minor operation at a Vancouver hospital.
Don and Debrah Osborn and their children Marlowe and Ava
(courtesy of Don Osborn)
Debrah Rafel Osborn died from an infection of the bacterium C. difficile after she was admitted to the UBC Hospital in January for a routine surgery.
The 47-year-old was a yoga instructor and life coach who had given birth to twin girls eight months earlier.
"She was one of those 'wow' people that you meet every so often," husband Don Osborn told the CBC on Tuesday morning. "Having children was a life-long dream for her."
Osborn wants to know how his wife got the deadly infection.
"I don't know if somebody screwed up, but I want to find out and put those questions to rest," he said.
Osborn said his wife was still run down from the recent birth of the twins when she was admitted to hospital to have a cyst removed from her ovary.
She went home after the minor surgery, but soon developed a fever and pain.
Osborn then took his wife to the emergency ward at Vancouver General Hospital, where she was diagnosed with the superbug C. difficile.
She was quickly admitted for surgery, and doctors removed most of her colon in an attempt to cut out the infection.
Osborn spent 10 days recovering in the intensive care unit and seemed to be recovering, but the infection returned and doctors operated again.
Osborn then developed toxic shock and died when her heart stopped.
Her husband said he has talked with hospital staff, who told him "there is a bit of an epidemic at some hospitals" of the bacteria, and "everyone has got this bacteria in them, and when you are on antibiotics you are susceptible to it."
Now he wants to know how things went so wrong, so quickly. So far, Osborn said, an autopsy has confirmed his wife died as direct result of the C. difficile infection.
He said he is also concerned about raising his twin girls as a single father.
Friends recently set up a foundation to collect funds to help him raise the twin girls, he said, and at a recent memorial for his wife, family and friends wrote down stories about Osborn so the girls could learn about their mother when they are older.
