From the time she was born, life had never been very fair to the young child.
“She always struggled from the beginning,” recalled the mother of the 4-year-old girl, who had a history of developmental delays, seizures and what her doctors called a failure to thrive.
Still, she was a happy child, said her mom.
“Her smile was one of the best things about her,” she said.
Then, last year, tragedy struck. She had found her daughter unresponsive after she had come down with a cold several weeks earlier. They rushed her to the hospital, where later that afternoon the girl went into cardiac arrest. Her heart stopped beating for several long minutes. When she finally emerged from the hospital, she had been left with serious brain damage and could no longer move her arms or legs.
Non-mobile, she was unable to walk and was tethered to a feeding tube and a ventilator. At times, she was unable to breathe on her own. She would end up far from the home in Brooklyn she shared with two older siblings and her twin brother, to be cared for at the Phoenix Center for Rehabilitation and Pediatrics in Haskell, a nursing home in northern Passaic County and one of the few in the metropolitan region specializing in medically fragile young patients.
But in a lawsuit filed this week, the parents of the girl, identified only as “K.A.” to protect her privacy, charged that she suffered a spiral fracture of her left arm while at Phoenix Center, which has a troubled history.
Such injuries are typically associated with concerns of child abuse, according to the lawyer for the parents, Paul da Costa of Sarno da Costa D’Aniello Maceri in Roseland, leading to a notification to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection & Permanency by officials at Morristown Medical Center, where K.A. was being treated for her broken arm.
“The parents are primarily looking to see that no other child at this facility is subject to the same abuse that their daughter had to endure,” da Costa said.
Just exactly what happened is unknown. In an interview, her mother, the director of recruiting at a staffing company, said there had been no documentation of any falls. But in February, according to the lawsuit, a nurse observed that the girl’s left arm had redness, swelling and was warm to the touch. She was crying, had an elevated heart rate and was given Tylenol for pain.
“Then they called me and said the X-rays came back and it was fractured. I was floored,” her mother recounted.
She noted that the girl could not move and the doctor in the emergency room said he couldn’t understand how it could happen.
“They classified it as child abuse,” said the mother. “The facility said they would do their own investigation and they could find no wrongdoing by its staff. They said it was weak bones.”
But the girl’s calcium levels had been normal and she did not buy the explanation.
“Someone did this,” said the girl’s father, who works as an actor. “This was inflicted on her.”
In their lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in Passaic County, they charged Phoenix Center with being “grossly negligent, careless, and reckless” in the care of their daughter. They alleged that the girl “was obliged to undergo extensive medical treatment, incur great expense for medical and attendant care, and was caused to suffer great physical and emotional pain and suffering all of which will continue indefinitely into the future.”
The filing charged that Phoenix Center, its administrator, and unnamed caregivers “deviated from accepted standards of nursing home, rehabilitation and/or long-term care.”
Once known as Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, the nursing home came under scrutiny in 2018 when 11 children died after a viral outbreak. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services later imposed a nearly $600,000 fine and harshly criticized the facility, saying it found the facility to be ill-prepared to react to the rapid spread of the deadly strain of the virus that struck not long before COVID made its appearance.
A year later, it was sold and changed its name to Phoenix.
The deaths prompted legislative hearings and a law requiring outbreak response plans for long-term care facilities that are licensed to provide care to residents on ventilators.
‘Our options were limited...’
The mother of K.A said she had been placed at Phoenix because it was one of the few places with a bed for her after she came out of the hospital.
“We applied to any facility in the tri-state area capable of taking care of her specific needs. Most didn’t have space,” she explained.
Still, she noted, “it looked clean.”
The girl’s father, though, said he “never felt truly comfortable” with her being there.
“I don’t want to talk ill of them, but it just seemed like everything was disjointed there. Sometimes there was no one at the desk and you just walked in,” he recalled. “Sometimes I had to ask for help suctioning her. It just felt that attention was lacking in general there.”
The administrator of Phoenix did not respond to several emails or messages seeking comment.
New Jersey Department of Children and Families spokesman Jason Butkowski said that due to the confidentiality laws governing the work of the state’s child welfare system, he could not publicly disclose information about specific allegations, nor confirm or deny whether or not an investigation had occurred.
Meanwhile, K.A. has been moved out of Phoenix and is now at a specialized children’s nursing facility in New York.
“It’s a beautiful place and they really believe in the kids,” said her mother.
At Phoenix, she said, all her daughter did was stare up at the ceiling at day. Now she’s in a wheelchair and participating in school at the facility.
“I don’t know what improvement is possible considering her brain damage. I would like for her to be fully aware of her family,” she said. “I just want her to have happiness. I do have a lot of hope for her future.”
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Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL.
