- Medical negligence during a knee operation caused him to spend almost four decades in a vegetative state.
- His body reacted badly to the dose of anesthesia injected, he suffered a bronchospasm.
- The trainee quickly admitted guilt, saying, “I wasn’t up to the task I was given,” but it would be more than 10 years before any punishment was meted out.
Jean Pierre Adams died at the age of 73 and had been in a coma for 39, but in the 1970s he was one of the best central defenders in French football. A medical negligence during a knee operation caused him to spend almost four decades in a vegetative state. On March 17, 1982, Adams was to undergo surgery for a torn ligament. Before the operation, he spoke with his wife to reassure her: “They are starting to prepare me. In a few minutes the anesthetist will come.” She never spoke again. His body reacted badly to the dose of anesthesia injected, he suffered a bronchospasm, a contraction of the bronchial tubes that makes it difficult to breathe, and his brain was deprived of oxygen.
HIS STORY IN FOOTBALL
Adams, who has since passed away, had enjoyed a successful playing career in France, spending spells in nice and Paris Saint-Germain. As well as 22 caps for the French national team, which he had chosen to play for after leaving Senegal for Europe with his family when he was just 10 years old.
Adams had started coaching, and it was in a training ground of coaches that the knee injury escalated and required surgery on the damaged tendon.
The medical malpractice occurred during your stay at the hospital they would lead to Adams being in a coma for more than half his life.
On the day of Adams’s non-urgent operation, many of the Lyon hospital staff were on strike.
His wife Bernadette insisted they could and should have called off the procedure, but with an anesthetist caring for eight patients and the former soccer player supervised by a trainee, catastrophic mistakes were made.
Poorly intubated, Adams suffered cardiac arrest and brain damage, and the mistakes made caused him to run out of oxygen.
The apprentice admitted guilt…
The trainee quickly admitted guilt, saying, “I wasn’t up to the task I was given,” but it would be more than 10 years before any punishment was meted out.
Both the anesthetist and the trainee received suspended sentences of one month and fines of around €750, and Adams remained in the hospital for the next 15 months.
Bernadette was then told to consider putting her husband in a home, but she insisted on caring for him at his home in Nimeswhere the couple lived for the remainder of their marriage, until Adams’ death.
“He was a force of nature, physically very strong, and he had great determination and will,” Henri Michel, Adams’s former teammate in France, told CNN.
“He was formidable, very patriotic and it was a pleasure to play with him.
He started out as a striker, but later played defense.
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