An 18-year-old woman in Washington state was told she would die by the hand of her doctor after she was found to have a blood clot in her leg.
Sarah Shafir had received emergency treatment at an intensive care unit in Spokane, Washington, after the clot developed on her leg and became infected.
The clot had spread to her lymph nodes, which would cause the lymph nodes to swell, and then her blood vessel in her left arm, which was to drain blood away.
“I was to be dead within days,” Ms Shafier told the Guardian.
But she was given two days to live.
A video shows the woman lying on the ground with her legs crossed in a wheelchair as the doctor’s assistant, a nurse, removes a bandage from her leg to check for any signs of infection.
The video ends with the woman screaming in pain, saying: “I don’t want to die.”
The clip was posted to YouTube by Ms Shafer’s sister, Rachel, and shows the nurse asking if the patient is OK.
Ms Shafeir, who is African-American, told the Spokane City Council she was told that Ms Shafaier’s condition would worsen, she would have to go to intensive care and that she was going to die.
The nurse says: “We have to make a choice.”
Ms Shafiir’s sister Rachel, who was on the hospital’s medical team, told ABC News that Ms Schafier was diagnosed with a blood clot in the lymph node on the day she was admitted to the hospital.
“She was being told she had a blood-clot in her lymph node,” Ms Rachel said.
“The nurse said she was bleeding profusely and that her blood had turned purple.”
Ms Schafiir was later told she did not need a transfusion, but the clot had grown in the clot that had already infected her liver and kidneys, according to the video.
“It’s very hard to believe that her life was saved when she had no medical team to look after her,” Ms Schafeir said.
The hospital has since apologized for the incident and announced it would be improving patient safety measures.
The clip has attracted more than 200,000 views.
“What she was experiencing was very different to what she is used to and has experienced in the past,” the Spokane Police Department said in a statement.
“This incident did not occur as she was being treated in a non-emergency room.”
Ms Scafier said she had never been to a hospital in Spokane before, but she was familiar with emergency rooms.
She said she would not have been able to leave the hospital in time if she had.
“We just needed to know that she had to go, and she didn’t,” Ms Scafeir told ABC.
Ms Schafer was given a blood transfusion the next day and is currently in stable condition.
The incident has been called an “inadvertent and inexcusable error”, and Ms Schafaier said the hospital should have done more to ensure her safety.
“They should have had someone in the room with me at all times, and they did not,” she said. ABC/wires