*An Oregon mother of six is seeking $68.5 million from the physicians and hospitals she blames for a delayed sepsis diagnosis. She says the missed warning signs cost her both legs, a hand, and parts of her mouth.
Trisha Stevens, 46, now paralyzed below the waist, claims her doctors let a postsurgical infection spread unchecked until it nearly killed her. “Before becoming ill, she was a full-time mother and an active, independent partner in her household,” her attorney, Rhett Fraser, told Oregon Live, according to the Daily Mail.
Her kids ranged from 7 to 21 when she got sick, and her husband, Brian, is a firefighter. Fraser said she “cared for their family, managed daily life at home, drove, cooked, cleaned, attended the children’s activities, and was fully engaged in the life she and her husband had built.”
Both of her legs now end above the knee. Her right hand is gone, along with her left thumb and part of the neighboring fingers. The infection also destroyed tissue in her mouth, taking parts of her lips and tongue. A spinal cord injury left her unable to move below the waist, and open sores require daily tending.
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Her ordeal began Oct. 4, 2024, when Dr. Alvin Nakamura performed a hysterectomy and removed her fallopian tubes at Bridgetown Medical Group. Four days later, lab work showed inflammation in the removed tissue. The suit says Nakamura never looked at it.
Her stomach pain worsened for weeks until she suddenly felt something rip and pop inside her abdomen. On Oct. 22, she called the doctor’s office about fever, cramping, ongoing bleeding, and a baseball-sized clot. Staff advised her to watch things at home and come in if a second clot appeared.
Roughly 13 hours later, she reached the Legacy Mount Hood emergency room. Tests revealed an inflamed abdominal lining, acid building in her blood, and struggling kidneys before she spiraled into septic shock. The on-call doctor, Gregory Eilers, found an infection where her incision had pulled apart. The suit faults him for not urging surgery or checking deeper in her abdomen.
General surgeon Dr. Robert Azar chose antibiotics, and the filing says he also should have recommended an operation. The infection kept spreading and shut down multiple organs. Her amputations followed on Nov. 6.
She described the toll to KGW8. “There are days I still do not know which was harder: almost dying or waking up and realizing everything that was taken from me.”
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