A patient safety review is underway after a 48-year-old man underwent a right leg amputation at Grace Hospital, but at the end of the procedure he discovered that his left leg, under his knee, had been removed.

Jason Kennedy, a former commercial fisherman, knows he could eventually lose both legs, but said his right foot is in worse condition due to a bone infection he lives with and is one that his doctor at another hospital told him it would have to be amputated. .

“Coming out of the anesthesia and waking up from my bed, from my recovery area, I was in disbelief. Disbelief that they took the wrong leg,” Kennedy said. “I knew for a fact they had taken the wrong leg.”

Kennedy, who lives in Winnipeg but is originally from Bloodvein First Nation, said he went to Seven Oaks General Hospital on Oct. 23 because of pain and bleeding in his right foot. He said the amputation at Grace Hospital was ordered on October 28 and took place on October 31.

Kennedy said he was taken from Seven Oaks to Grace before 7 a.m. that morning. He explained that it was only after the amputation that he discovered his left leg had been removed.

“I was just wondering if it was a bad dream,” Kennedy said. “The pain is still in my (right) foot and it’s there as we speak.”

A spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said in an emailed statement that patient confidentiality limits the amount of information it can provide “in this complex clinical situation.”

“We are aware of the incident and the distress it has caused the patient, their family and healthcare providers,” the spokesperson said. “Members of the healthcare team personally met with the patient to offer their sincere apologies and discuss next steps.”

“The incident is currently being reviewed by our patient safety team to identify potential system learning opportunities. The results of this review will be shared with the patient upon completion.”

Kennedy said his surgeon and “two other colleagues” apologized to him.

“This can’t happen.”

He said he was speaking out to prevent this from happening to anyone else, but he has already accepted the fact that his left leg is missing and is offering forgiveness.

“I knew right away it was my left leg that was gone and I thought, ‘This can’t be happening,'” Kennedy said.

“All I could do was think, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ I felt like it would be my right leg because that’s where the worst pain is.

“And my first thoughts were that forgiveness was on my mind, I could easily forgive a person because I had learned from my family, like my mother, my father and my grandmother. I learned from them how important forgiveness is.”

Kennedy, who also lives with diabetes, said he was first given antibiotics at Seven Oaks to help fight the infection and that he could still wiggle the toes on his left foot and that the The swelling was going down.

“I was telling them it’s getting better,” Kennedy said. “And it’s way better than my right foot because I can’t even wiggle my toes on this one.”

His right foot, meanwhile, was in worse condition, Kennedy said.

“Obviously it’s the right foot that needs to be removed, because I know which leg is by far the most painful,” he said.

He recognized that his left foot also had blood and pus coming out of it.

Kennedy said he was told that if the antibiotics didn’t work, he could lose both legs, and if they didn’t work to save his right foot, he could lose that leg as well.

Yvonne Young, Kennedy’s mother, came from out of town to visit him in Seven Oaks after the amputation. But it wasn’t until he returned to Waterhen, Manitoba, that he told her what had happened to his leg.

“He said, ‘Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.’ He said, “I didn’t want to tell you when you had to go home. He said, ‘They cut off the wrong leg,'” Young said.

Young said she is proud of her son for offering forgiveness, but she believes responsibility for what happened should be taken.

“He needs to be compensated for what happened to him,” Young said. “It’s wrong.”

She said he should receive prosthetics to help him continue his life.

Young said he was homeless for a few years until January 2023 when he found housing. But now, with one leg lost and another in bad shape, he worries what the future holds.

“I have to live with that,” he said. “And it changed my life because I was always up, I was always doing something.”

Test underway after patient says wrong leg was amputated at Winnipeg hospital

A patient safety review is underway after Jason Kennedy, 48, said he had his right leg amputated at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, but when the procedure was over, he had discovered that his left leg, below his knee, had been removed.