A mother from Yorkshire has been left permanently injured and terrified of injections after a routine pneumonia vaccination went disastrously wrong, causing damage so severe that medical professionals compared it to injuries sustained in car accidents.
The Routine Jab That Turned Into a Nightmare
Natalie Witherington, a 42-year-old mother of two from Scarborough, visited Lawrence House Surgery in North Yorkshire on 22 September for what should have been a straightforward pneumonia vaccination. The procedure quickly turned traumatic when she experienced excruciating pain immediately following the injection.
"I'd given the nurse full access to my shoulder, but she came up behind me and appeared out of nowhere to give me the injection," Natalie recalled. "I've had loads of injections, but this one felt different. It felt like it had gone through the bone and brought tears to my eyes."
The pain failed to subside and instead intensified dramatically. "The excruciating pain just didn't seem to die down and kept getting worse to the point of me climbing the walls with pain," she described.
Emergency Treatment and Shocking Diagnosis
Natalie's condition deteriorated to the point where she required emergency hospital admission. She was rushed to Scarborough General Hospital's A&E department, where medical staff were astonished by the extent of damage to her shoulder.
"I rang the doctor, who said he'd never seen anything like this before in his life," Natalie said. "When I was in hospital, a consultant said that for a woman of my age, he'd never seen so much damage to a shoulder unless they'd been in a bad car accident."
Doctors diagnosed her with hemarthrosis - a condition involving bleeding into the joint space - which they believed was directly caused by the vaccination. Natalie underwent emergency surgery to clean out the affected joint and spent 11 days in hospital recovering from the procedure.
Long-Term Consequences and Legal Battle
Despite three months of physiotherapy following her hospital discharge, Natalie continues to experience significant limitations and discomfort. "I'm in continual pain and still can't move my arm properly - I don't think it will ever be the same again," she revealed.
The psychological impact has been equally profound. "This has been a nightmare, and it's left me terrified to have any kind of injection," she admitted.
Natalie sought legal representation from Hudgell Solicitors, who obtained medical evidence from a nursing expert concluding there had been a breach of duty in failing to correctly identify the injection site and properly administer the vaccination.
Although Haxby Group, the healthcare organisation responsible for Lawrence House Surgery, fully denied liability, they agreed to a £35,000 out-of-court settlement. Despite the financial compensation, Natalie expressed frustration that the practice never acknowledged fault.
"What annoyed me more than anything else is that they kept saying they didn't do anything wrong and that it didn't happen," she said. "All it would have taken was an acceptance they were at fault, but it never came."
A spokesperson for Haxby Group Scarborough declined to comment on the specific case, stating: "We do not comment on the detail of cases involving individual patients or those managed by the NHS Resolution service. We are grateful to all patients who share their experiences with us and always strive to provide the best possible care to our communities."
