Jury to decide fate of jail MD

A medical malpractice lawsuit continues this week, accusing a doctor of missing signs of prostate cancer in a former inmate of the Steele County Detention Center – cancer that eventually killed him.
Breyana Larkins, the daughter of Elbert Larkins, filed the suit in 2019. It originally named 10 defendants, including Steele County and Sheriff Lon Thiele, but charges against nine of them have been dismissed with prejudice – meaning their cases can never be brought back to court.
That leaves Dr. William Scheidt, a general surgeon who practiced in the Mankato and New Prague area before treating inmates, accused of “negligence in care and treatment” of Larkins while he was housed in Steele County.
Scheidt contends that he followed accepted standards of medical practice in his care and treatment of Larkins and that he did not cause the death.
According to court documents, Larkins complained of blood in his urine several times from February of 2015 until February of 2017, when he was referred to a urologist because he was unable to urinate. A month later, he was diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer.
Larkins died in May of 2018, at age 54.
In addition to the time spent at the Steele County jail, Larkins was housed at the prisons in Rush City and Faribault. Larkins told doctors at all three facilities there was blood in his urine and semen, according to the complaint.
He complained five times in 2015, from January through July, while at Rush City, prompting a urinalysis each time. Though no bacteria appeared in the test, an antibiotic was prescribed in July. At an August follow-up, Larkins reported seeing no more blood, but complained of back and lower abdomen pain. He was advised to start core-strengthening exercises.
In December of 2015, he was transferred to Steele County, and in January 2016 was prescribed a medication to “treat a possible infection causing blood in the semen,” according to the complaint.
Larkins reported blood in his urine, semen and stool on three separate visits in March 2016, undergoing two more urinalyses and another round of antibiotics, which reportedly didn’t help. According to the court documents, Scheidt told a nurse that he had consulted with a urologist, who advised him that the blood in the semen was nothing to worry
The next report of abnormal urine was in August 2016, when Larkins told a nurse it was darker in color, but didn’t mention blood. She told him to increase his fluids and not skip meals.
Larkins was transferred to the prison in Faribault in October 2016. In December, he told a doctor there that he was having trouble urinating. The doctor explained to Larkins he may have an enlarged prostate, and prescribed a medication to treat the symptoms.
The next month, when his symptoms hadn’t improved; the physician increased the dosage. Three weeks later, he was unable to urinate at all. After catheterization, his urine contained “small clots” and blood, according to court records.
A week later, Larkins was referred to a urologist, who ordered a blood test and biopsies. The result was a Gleason 10, which one expert described as “as bad as it gets.”
In April 2017, six weeks after his referral to the urologist, imaging tests revealed the cancer had spread to his bones, and he was told the cancer was incurable.
Larkins began chemotherapy, and was released from prison in November 2017. His family helped him travel home to Louisiana in mid-April of 2018, where he died May 7.
The lawsuit alleges that the two years before Larkins’s diagnosis, “the doctors … missed numerous opportunities for urological referral that would have revealed Mr. Larkins’s prostate cancer much sooner… an earlier diagnosis would have likely prevented his premature death.”
The suit seeks damages in excess of $100,000; the trial is expected to last through next week.