Celebrity News January 15, 2008
Quaid: 'Our Twins Could Have Been Dying'
For the first time, Dennis Quaid is speaking out about the overdose that could have killed his children.
Quaid and his wife Kimberly told the Los Angeles Times that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center not only placed the twins in jeopardy by overdosing them, but that staff actually lied to them about their condition.
"Oh, they're fine," Quaid recalled a nurse telling him Nov. 18, the night of the overdose. "They're just fine."
In reality, little Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace were bleeding, suffering from 1,000 times the normal dosage of the blood thinner heparin.
"Our kids could have been dying, and we wouldn't have been able to come down to the hospital to say goodbye," Quaid said.
Quaid even believes that someone at the hospital leaked information to the media. They say their own family members didn't know about the error until reading it online.
The Quaids have not sued Cedars, but they've done so with Baxter Healthcare Corp., one of the manufacturers of heparin. They say the labeling and design of the product led to what the hospital called "a preventable error."
According to state regulators, pharmacy technicians mistakenly delivered the wrong vials of heparin to the pediatric unit. The babies have since fully recovered, along with a third baby who was overdosed.
"We have our babies back, and they seem to be doing great, and they're just a lot of fun to be with," Quaid said. "We really do feel that prayer saved them."