In the “incredible but true” category, this story of a nurse from Wisconsin, in the northern United States, who made a radical decision when nothing allowed her to. It all started with Mary Brown, a 38-year-old nurse at a nursing home where a 62-year-old patient arrived in March 2022 after falling at home. Only in addition to the fall, the man suffered from severe frostbite on his feet. In question ? The lack of heating in his house. Because of the extreme cold that reigned there, the patient had such severe frostbite that the tissues of his feet had begun to necrotize.
It was because of this necrosis that the nurse decided, quite simply, to amputate one of her feet. A complaint was, of course, filed in the relevant county, in which it was stated: “The administrators of the nursing home agreed that it was not within the scope of Brown’s practice to carry out such a procedure , and that a doctor’s prescription was necessary before any amputation”. In her defense, Mary Brown explained that she wanted to relieve her patient’s suffering and offer him some dignity. The man died a few days after the amputation.
An extreme preventive message
But that’s not the wackiest element. After cutting off her patient’s foot, the nurse explained to her colleagues that she had a very specific goal: “to display it in her family’s taxidermy workshop with a sign saying ‘Wear your boots children'”. A message of extreme prevention that would surely have resulted in more trauma than real prevention. The nurse was charged with mutilation, physical abuse of an elderly person and intentional abuse of a patient causing great bodily harm. She pleaded not guilty.
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