My goal is to get the attention of the Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry to Hold Ochsner Health Accountable and demand Justice for what they allowed their pediatric surgeon to get away with doing to my infant son by attempting to cover it up by threatening me into being silent.

In May of 2020 I took my son to Ochsner Health in New Orleans, LA because he had an air way defect called laryngomalacia. I was told that he needed a gtube(feeding tube surgically placed in the stomach) and a nissan fundoplication.(surgery to wrap the esophagus around the top of the stomach to prevent vomiting)

I consented to allowing Dr. Rodney Steiner MD a pediatric surgeon with Ochsner Health to place a gtube and perform the nissan fundoplication, but I  explicitly stated that I did not want him to place a brand of gtube by the company BARD because they were non- balloon gtubes. 

BARDS, have a plastic backing in the stomach and cannot be deflated to come out of the stomach easily, and are known to be painful; I knew of this and did not want my son to have that type of gtube. 

After expressing that I did not want a BARD placed, I was told by Dr. Steiner that it would be no problem to not place a BARD that a he could place a kind called a Mic- Key gtube that has a balloon backing that is filled with water to keep it in the stomach. 

After my son came out of surgery, I learned that Dr. Steiner not only placed a BARD gtube but the size was an 18fr. 

The average size gtube in an infant is a 12fr to a 14fr. Studies show that larger diameter gtube are associated with leaking and that the smallest size gtube that can be placed should be placed. 

His gtube then started to leak profusely. It was leaking so much that it started burning off his skin. We were told to "deal with it" by the surgeons at Ochsner. 

After months of begging Dr. Steiner to take out the BARD, he finally agreed. When the day came, he had his resident hold him down and yanked it out as hard as he could. The next day, blood started pouring out of his gtube. 

When I took him to our local ER, Dr. Steiner told the ER doctor there to, "send him home, I'm not accepting him as a patient here, that mother is dramatic, he is fine" 

I had to send pictures of the bleeding to his GI doctor through MYchart( Ochsner Health’s patient portal) and beg her to accept him. 

We had to fly all the way to the children's hospital of Philadelphia to get any kind of help for my son. While there they were able to scar his gtube down to a 14fr. 

In October of 2021 I made a second grievance against Dr. Steiner with Ochsner Health's Patient Advocacy dept, and it was never investigated.

I never received a letter regarding the outcome of the first investigation until July of 2022, when I called to find out why they had not investigated the grievance yet. 

I waited 8 months for them to investigate it before I decided to speak out publicly about what they did to him. 

When I started speaking out, it went viral pretty quickly, because of this Ochsner Health decided that instead of taking accountability they would instead try to shut me up. 

I received a cease and desist from their vice president and hospital attorney Shelley Tyman, where she said that if I did not stop speaking out about my sons care at their hospital that they would not only pursue civil action against me, but that they would also pursue criminal action against me for "inciting third party violence." 

I had to pay an attorney 500.00 to respond to their letter, to which he asked them to please send any evidence of any threats I had made against them and if they could not to please produce an apology letter, to which they never responded too. 

Because of how strict Louisiana’s medical malpractice laws are, I cannot sue Ochsner Health anymore because I am passed my statute of limitations. 

Had I not waited the 8 months for patient advocacy to investigate I could have still sued them then at that point, but I believed that patient advocacy was going to do that right thing.

 I genuinely believe that patient advocacy delayed the investigation to push me out of my statute of limitations. 

Since speaking out against Dr. Steiner and Ochsner Health I have met more parents of children that have been harmed by Ochsner Health. 

We have a group chat where we have compared our children's stories.

Allowing hospitals to threaten and intimidate people into being quiet, should not be legal. 

My hope is to get my sons story in front of the attorney general in Louisiana, because I just do not believe that this can be legal. 

Thank you all so much for your support in all of this. 

If you would like to see pictures of the cease and desist, my attorneys response, and the condition of what his gtube looked like you can go to my Facebook post where I tell the story in detail with all of the pictures. 

Click here to go to my Facebook post

Justice For Wyatt