$7 million awarded in death

Victoria Lynn Brown Harmon of Wilkes County was 54 when she went into a Mooresville hospital for what she thought would be an overnight stay for a hysterectomy.

She was the hub of her family and a teacher who had been motivated by her bright son's learning problems to go back to school and get a special-education teaching degree at the age of 40.

But during the surgery, something went wrong.

Harmon was sent home the next day, despite complaining of pain, court records show. She returned to the hospital the same day she went home, but by the time doctors figured out that her bowel had been perforated, it had gone untreated for almost 80 hours.

She developed sepsis, suffered multiple organ failure, including brain and kidney problems, had pneumonia and was on dialysis before her family and doctors decided that further treatment would be futile. She died on Sept. 24, 2007.

A Wilkes County jury this week awarded $7 million to Harmon's estate. The civil trial started May 2.

"It's a large verdict in a wrongful-death case," said Tom Comerford, of the Winston-Salem law firm Comerford & Britt, which handled the case. "I thought what was really interesting about this case is the jury picked up on the value of a life, and what's lost is more than what the person might earn."

The jury decided that Harmon's death was caused by the negligence of Dr. Susan Lovejoy Roque, who performed the procedure at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center. The jury decided that co-defendant Dr. David Gish, who treated Harmon after she came back to the hospital, was not negligent.

"We're disappointed in the result, but wish the best for the Harmon family and hope everyone involved will be able to achieve some sort of closure, and maybe, peace," said Roque's attorney John Minier, of the Raleigh law firm Yates, McLamb & Weyher.

He said they don't know if they'll appeal and declined to answer questions about the case.

The complaint said Roque failed to attend to Harmon after the surgery and failed to recognize obvious signs of infection and bowel perforation.

Comerford said Harmon was sent home the day after her surgery despite symptoms such as an elevated white blood count that was an indication of inflammation. She traveled an hour and a half back to her Wilkes County home and was sitting in a chair when she sneezed and experienced acute pain that was another signal something was wrong, Comerford said.

The pressure from the sneeze blew bowel contents out into her abdominal cavity, he said, causing searing pain.

Harmon went back to Lake Norman Regional Medical Center the same day she had been released, a Friday. Roque made a note that she had seen Harmon at 11 a.m. that Saturday, but Harmon didn't see another doctor until the next morning, when she was dying, Comerford said.

That Sunday is when Gish ordered that Harmon be taken to an operating room for a diagnostic laparoscopy, possible bowel resection and possible colostomy, according to the complaint.

Harmon developed so many complications that her organs started failing. She was transferred to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center on July 19, 2007, at her family's request. She remained there until her death.

Her son Shawn Harmon, 36, of Lawrenceville, Ga., said his mother was the center of the family. She left behind another son, Eric Harmon, a daughter, Julieanna Shaffner, and a husband, Philip.

"I could not think of any amount of money that would bring my mom back," Harmon said. "(But) none of us hate the doctors. If we did that, we would be doing Mom a disservice."

Vickie Harmon was a special-education teacher at the high school. She had been inspired to earn her degree while already in her 30s, when she wanted to figure out why her son Shawn, a bright elementary school student, couldn't learn to read or write. She graduated in 1993 at the age of 40, with a teaching degree in special education from Salem College.

Shawn would go on to graduate from the UNC School of the Arts and works in lighting design for television productions, mainly working with churches that want to broadcast services.

Her husband had a learning difficulty, as well, and had graduated from high school without being able to read. She helped him, motivating him to earn a degree in criminal justice at Appalachian State University. He became a corrections officer.

They had met at Wilkes Community College when he was there to study diesel mechanics. He filled in an empty spot at a card game, and they hit it off. Neither ever dated anyone else.

She was a 5-foot-tall high school teacher who commanded respect from students who towered over her. But she taught with love, said her son, who remembers how she brought home a student to live with her family for three months when the girl didn't have anyplace else to go.

Harmon was the person who made a quilt for anyone she knew who was having a baby, including about everybody born in the church family at Wilkesboro Church of Christ from the 1980s on.

In lieu of flowers at her funeral, the family requested that donors establish the Victoria Brown Harmon Scholarship Fund, which awards a scholarship to a graduating senior at Wilkes Central High.

Shawn Harmon said the loss of his mother has affected every member of the family deeply. He regrets she didn't live long enough to be a grandmother.

She had experienced the loss of an infant grandchild, but her first surviving grandchild was born two weeks before she died. Each of her children has now had at least one grandchild she never got to hold.

"The big things about her legacy are education, education, education and the love she shared with all of us," Harmon said.

mmitchell@wsjournal.com

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