A family broken

ONE April evening in 1997, 34-year-old Sammie Johnson drove herself to King/Drew’s ER, suffering from vaginal bleeding and severe stomach pain. Doctors diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy: A fertilized egg had become wedged in her fallopian tube, according to a subsequent analysis of the case by attorneys for the county.

There was no room for it to grow, and it had to be removed.

Surgeons operated on Johnson in the middle of the night. As the surgery ended, her heart stopped. While reviving her, doctors inserted a catheter in her neck. At that point, they discovered that air somehow had entered her bloodstream and might have caused a blockage, an analysis by county attorneys said.

Johnson was revived but began to bleed internally. About 15 hours after the first surgery, doctors opened her up again -- finding that a small artery had been left open or become untied, causing the bleeding. They sewed it shut. Despite the repair, the teacher’s aide and graphic artist from South Los Angeles died 12 days later of adult respiratory distress syndrome, a complication of the air bubbles, whose source was never determined.

The coroner ruled her death an accident.

The family sued, and the county settled for $225,000 in 2000. County lawyers, in urging the settlement, said experts would fault the doctors for proceeding with the first surgery without seeking more-experienced physicians’ help and for waiting too long to operate again.

Johnson, a single mother of a 5-year-old girl, was at the core of a family of three brothers and two sisters.

“She was the one who kept the family together,” says Johnson’s mother, Annie Tennison.