Oregon Mother of Six Loses Both Legs and a Hand After Doctors Dismissed Her Complaints, $68.5M Suit Says

Oregon Mother of Six Loses Both Legs and a Hand After Doctors Dismissed Her Complaints, $68.5M Suit Says

Pathology Flagged Inflammation Four Days After Surgery

She Called the Clinic With a Baseball-Sized Clot

Thirteen Hours Later She Arrived in Septic Shock

Three Months in ICU Before the Amputations Began

Necrosis Took Her Lips, Tongue and Hair

The Damages Are Broken Into Four Lines

Legacy Health Declined to Comment

Trisha Stevens, 46, a mother of six from Boring, Oregon, and the wife of a Portland firefighter, is suing three doctors and two Portland-area medical institutions, claiming that post-surgical care was botched and that an infection was allowed to tear through her body. The lawsuit seeks $68.5 million.

According to the complaint, Dr. Alvin Nakamura performed a hysterectomy plus removal of her fallopian tubes on October 4, 2024, at Adventist Health Portland. Four days later, pathology results showed inflammation. The suit says there is no record that Nakamura reviewed the results, informed Stevens or took any action. She returned for a post-operative visit on October 17, and her abdominal pain continued to worsen.

On October 22 — 18 days after the surgery — she called Nakamura's clinic reporting ongoing bleeding, a blood clot "the size of a baseball," a low-grade fever, diarrhea and stomach cramping. The suit alleges that neither Nakamura nor Bridgetown Medical Group evaluated her or sent her to an emergency room.

Roughly 13 hours after that call, Stevens arrived at the Legacy Mount Hood emergency department at about 11:10 p.m. Her heart was racing, her blood pressure was low and she was breathing rapidly. The lawsuit says she was "saturating vaginal pads with blood at a rate of three per hour." Doctors diagnosed peritonitis, lactic acidosis and acute kidney injury, followed later by bacteremia and septic shock.

The complaint names Legacy Health and Dr. Gregory Eilers as negligent for delaying treatment of the abdominal infection, and Dr. Robert Azar for delaying and under-treating the infection and for mismanaging her blood pressure. Nakamura and Bridgetown are accused of failing to evaluate her or escalate her care after she reported symptoms.

Stevens spent more than three months in critical care at Legacy hospitals, including the Oregon Burn Center, said her Portland attorney, Rhett Fraser. On November 6, 2024, both legs were amputated above the knee. In the weeks that followed, her right hand was amputated at the wrist and her left thumb and portions of her left fingers were removed. Tissue necrosis destroyed parts of her lips and tongue, the infection reached her scalp and she eventually shaved her head, and spinal cord damage left her paraplegic. She now needs daily wound care for pressure ulcers and uses a wheelchair in a house that was never modified for one.

"Before becoming ill, she was a full-time mother and an active, independent partner in her household," Fraser told The Oregonian. Her husband, Brian, has returned to work as a firefighter and serves as her primary caregiver off duty.

"I came home having lost both of my legs and my right hand," Stevens told KGW. "My left hand was left unusable after the necrosis. I lost parts of my lips and tongue, and I live with paralysis in a body that no longer responds the way it once did."

The suit, filed last week, breaks the $68.5 million down into $2.5 million for past medical costs, $6 million for future costs, $55 million for the "profound and permanent diminution" of her enjoyment of life, and $5 million for Brian Stevens' loss of consortium. Legacy Health declined to comment, citing pending litigation. The other defendants could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment.