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Belmont resident gets $280,000 medical malpractice award January 13, 2006 BOSTON --A Belmont woman living as a man was awarded $280,000 on Thursday by a jury that found two doctors negligent for leaving a surgical instrument in his abdomen following an operation. Alex Mitchell, 38, said his pain and vomiting after the January 2001 operation were at first written off as gallstones and ovarian cysts. But an X-ray confirmed the presence of the foot-long surgical instrument, called an Adept Med Fish, which is designed to shield internal organs during suturing. "The first time I went to the emergency room, I thought I was having a heart attack," Mitchell said. The judgment was "fair compensation for what Alex Mitchell has been through," said his lawyer, William J. Thompson. The jury deliberated only briefly on Thursday before finding that Dr. Kathaleen Porter and Dr. Aqeel Siddiqui were negligent. Because Siddiqui was only a third-year surgical resident at the time, the Suffolk Superior Court jury put the blame on Porter, the attending surgeon. "I'm not looking for them to lose their licenses. But they have never taken responsibility for what they did wrong," Mitchell said.
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