Paraplegic patient accuses Concord nursing home of giving him bleach to wash down his pills

Staff at a Concord nursing home gave a -year-old paraplegic subject a cup of bleach-based wound-cleaning fix to wash down his morning pills the man claimed in a lawsuit against the facility Steven Sharp and paralyzed from the waist down checked in at Diablo Valley Post Acute in April for six weeks of post-surgery rehabilitation the lawsuit in Contra Costa County Superior Court commented On his first morning a staff member handed him a clear plastic cup holding five or six ounces of clear liquid to go with about a dozen pills and he drank it down with the medications the lawsuit filed last week alleged Sharp felt immediate burning in his mouth and throat the lawsuit declared He alerted the staff that they had given him bleach to drink and that his mouth and esophagus were burning the lawsuit claimed Sharp with the burning sensation spreading to his stomach urged staff repeatedly to call believing he d been poisoned by the substance identified in the lawsuit and a paramedics account included with it as Dakin s Explanation which uses bleach as the proceeding ingredient The lawsuit accused the facility and its parent company PACS which across the U S owns more than post-hospital care facilities including more than in the Bay Area of gross recklessness deception and willful delay of curative care Sharp claimed he suffered severe and ongoing bodily injuries and emotional distress He is seeking unspecified damages A spokesman for Diablo Valley Post Acute responding to this news organization s inquiry to PACS about the lawsuit disclosed the facility has an unwavering commitment to providing safe compassionate and high-quality care to every individual We take all concerns seriously and have initiated a thorough internal analysis into the accusations spokesman Dan Kramer noted The lawsuit echoes a event that saw three patients poisoned and two of them die at a San Mateo senior-care facility with the facility s owner care giant Atria saying a staffer broke guidelines by filling a pitcher with commercial-dishwashing detergent and another staffer mistook the liquid for juice and served it Employee Alisia Rivera Mendoza of East Palo Alto was charged with two counts of felony involuntary manslaughter and three counts of felony elder abuse in connection with the deaths of Trudy Maxwell and Peter Schroder Jr both Mendoza last month pleaded no contest to felony elder abuse State agents fined Atria after concluding that employees weren t properly trained to handle potentially dangerous chemicals A similar episode occurred just days earlier at Atria s facility in Walnut Creek which led to the death of Constantine Canoun and an elder abuse conviction and -day jail sentence for staffer Lateshia Sherise Starling of San Pablo State government concluded Canoun suffered injuries consistent with ingesting a caustic liquid cleaning agent and that the facility failed to have staff with adequate competency to provide the services necessary to meet residents demands Atria was fined over Canoun s death In Sharp s event about minutes after he drank the liquid the staffer who gave it to him came into his shared room and reported she was sorry for what had happened the lawsuit declared Sharp informed her he was in burning pain and questioned her to call for an ambulance to take him to a hospital for exigency restoration the lawsuit announced But for more than two hours facility staff refused to call or tell him what toxic fluid they had given him and no one offered curative care the lawsuit alleged It was only after staff learned that Sharp solicited to borrow his roommate s cell phone to call that a staffer called urgency services the lawsuit claimed Related Articles Preliminary hearing continues for two Bay Area felons charged in fatal robbery of East Bay man San Jose th Circuit ruling puts excessive force suit against racist text cop in La Victoria shooting back on track Peninsula CEO accused by ex-wife of forging her signature in fraud scheme that left him with breathtaking living standard while she struggles New perjury charges for Bay Area man facing million civil judgment in wife s death in Taiwan Zizian pair files pretrial motions in Bay Area court including one request for new attorney He was taken by stretcher to an ambulance the lawsuit reported The paramedics summary commented facility staff notified them Sharp drank about a third of an ounce of Dakin s Response but Sharp notified them staff brought him about six ounces of clear liquid which he drank with his pills The ambulance delivered Sharp to the emergency department at Kaiser Permanente Anatomical Center in Walnut Creek where the lawsuit revealed doctors consulted with a poison control center substantiated that Sharp had ingested Dakin s Method four hours earlier and rendered appropriate therapeutic care