Lawsuit Filed for Girl Who Lost Her Limbs : Courts: Action on behalf of 7-year-old whose arms and legs had to be amputated after chickenpox complications names hospital, clinic and three doctors.

The mother of a 7-year-old Imperial Beach girl, whose four limbs were amputated when a case of chickenpox led to a secondary infection and then to toxic shock, filed suit Tuesday in San Diego Superior Court, alleging negligence on the part of two medical facilities.

Lisa Esquivel, 26, and her daughter, Jessica Lynn, named as defendants Scripps Memorial Hospital of Chula Vista and two of its doctors, as well as the Interstate 5 Medical Clinic near their home and the doctor who runs it.

The girl was treated at both the hospital and the private clinic in March, 1990, before being admitted to Sharp Memorial Hospital in Kearny Mesa and later being transferred next door to Children’s Hospital with a severe streptococcus infection that led to toxic shock.

In the lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys David D. Miller and George P. Andreos, the defendants are accused of being “negligent or in some other manner responsible for the injuries and damages” suffered by Jessica, now a second-grader at Oneonta Elementary School.

The suit charges two physicians at Scripps Memorial, Dr. Melvin Ochs and Dr. David Vandenberg, as well as Dr. Paul Pettit of the Interstate 5 Medical Clinic, with having “carelessly and negligently examined, diagnosed, treated and cared for” the patient.

Pettit failed to return phone calls Tuesday, and Diane Yohe, a spokeswoman for Scripps Memorial in Chula Vista, said the matter had been turned over to the hospital’s attorney.

“We just got served with it within the last hour,” Yohe said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s going over to our attorney right now, so we don’t feel it’s appropriate to comment on something in litigation.”

Scripps Memorial’s attorney, Cary Miller of San Diego, was unavailable for comment late Tuesday.

Shortly after being seen in the emergency room of Sharp Memorial on April 1, 1990, Jessica suffered from a bloating of the ankles, a rise in temperature to 104 degrees and the loss of circulation to her arms and legs.

The onset of toxic shock caused what Dr. John Bradley at Children’s Hospital termed “full cardiac arrest,” in addition to kidney, liver and respiratory failure, before infusions of penicillin began to minimize the effects of the streptococcus bacteria.

On April 18, 1990, feeling that the chance of an amputation-related infection was minimal, doctors chose to sever her legs at the knees and her arms at the elbows. Soon afterward, she was fitted with a set of artificial limbs and a hearing aid for damage to her ears.

At the time, Bradley, whose specialties include the study of antibiotics for bacterial infections, said the strain of streptococcus bacteria that infected Jessica--after entering through one of her pox lesions--had not been found in any child in the country.

Bradley said the strain of “strep” that infected the girl is particularly virulent, has occurred in “dozens” of adults and is fatal “about 30%” of the time. Jessica’s attorneys said Tuesday that neither Children’s Hospital nor any of its doctors are named in the suit.

“They made a highly professional effort to save the little girl’s life,” said attorney David D. Miller. “If we were grading them on a scale of 1 to 10, they would be about a 9.8. They did some magic with a very sick little girl.”

The suit alleges that medical malpractice occurred on March 30 and 31 of last year, when Jessica was taken to the emergency room of Scripps Memorial, where doctors diagnosed “a simple case of chickenpox” but failed to take her blood pressure or listen to her heart.

At the time, Lisa Esquivel said she was “angry with the people at Scripps because they did not want to deal with her. They didn’t check my daughter’s heart or her blood pressure. They only checked her temperature.”

She said the treatment at Sharp differed, in that doctors immediately tested her daughter’s blood and gave her Tylenol and codeine as pain suppressants. She said she believes that doctors at Sharp and Children’s saved her daughter’s life.

She said the doctor on duty at Scripps Memorial--identified in the suit as Dr. Vandenberg--”told me I worried too much.”

“Yeah, he told my wife that she worried too much,” Felix Esquivel, an Imperial Beach auto mechanic and the father of Jessica, said at the time. “He said, ‘You worry too much.’ But now my daughter doesn’t have hands or feet . . . and it’s hard.”

Lisa Esquivel said she and her daughter returned to the Scripps emergency room several hours later, in the early morning of March 31, 1990, but because her fever had dropped and her hallucinations were believed to be caused by an antihistamine, she was again sent home.

She said that, after getting no sleep after leaving Scripps Memorial on the morning of the 31st, she took her daughter to a walk-in clinic run by a pediatrician in Imperial Beach. He is identified in the suit as Dr. Pettit of the Interstate 5 Medical Clinic.

“He looked at her ankle, which was badly swollen, and said that, if she hadn’t fallen on it, that I shouldn’t worry about it,” Lisa Esquivel said then. “He acted nervous, like he didn’t want my daughter in there. I think he was afraid of her infecting other kids.”

Lisa Esquivel said Tuesday that her spirits are good, as are her daughter’s. She said her daughter was fitted with a new set of prosthetics last week, having outgrown her initial set. She said her daughter recently won a series of awards at school, including ones for handwriting.

“She does real good at spelling and math,” her mother said. “She loves to read. She loves school.”

Despite Jessica’s optimism, her mother said the medical problems--the doubt and uncertainty--continue. She said that, before Jessica can have her teeth cleaned, as she did recently, she has to obtain an “echo,” a special X-ray of the heart.

Infection, she said, is always a danger, and a recent episode of “strep,” which occurred in April, almost exactly a year after the near-fatal episode, was “very scary, although, in reality, it was nothing major.”

“There’s so many times when I wish it had never happened,” Lisa Esquivel said Tuesday. “I get sad just to think about it, but that’s usually when she’s asleep. When she’s awake, she’s so active, like any other child, really, that I don’t even notice it. And, on the whole, it’s been much easier . . . than I ever thought it would be.”

Lisa Esquivel, a homemaker, is the mother of one other child, a 5-year-old boy, Felix Jr., who she said “is doing fine too.”

Although doctors at Children’s Hospital believe Jessica will have full liver, respiratory and kidney recovery, her mother said the girl is considered a risk for heart disease and will be “for the rest of her life.”

Lisa Esquivel said that Jessica is also considered somewhat at risk for lung disease and has to wear a hearing aid, having incurred “severe hearing loss in her right ear and a slight loss in her left ear.” So far, her medical care has been paid for through a combination of insurance money from MediCal and a crippled children’s fund, as well as a trust fund set up through Oneonta School, which collected about $18,000.

David Miller and Lisa Esquivel said the cost of care is now approaching $1 million, with a lifetime of care needed. Lisa Esquivel said her hope for her daughter is that she can be paid enough money “to be secure for the rest of her life.”

“I want her to have something she can fall back on, in case anything, anything at all, comes up that we can’t foresee,” her mother said. “I know she’s the type of girl who wants to work, who will work, but, in case she can’t, I want her to be protected.

“Some day, if they invent arm transplants--we heard of so many things in the hospital, so many possibilities--I want her to have the money to explore that. I want her to have the most that she can, medically and for herself, for the rest of her days.”