A La Pine couple has filed a lawsuit in Deschutes County Circuit Court against Cascade Healthcare Community and local physicians, demanding about $4.25 million.

The lawsuit was filed May 30 by Stacy Dedmon, 36, and her 37-year-old husband, Shane. They are suing Cascade Healthcare, the parent company of St. Charles Medical Centers in Bend and Redmond, along with Central Oregon Magnetic Resonance Imaging and the La Pine Family Chiropractic Clinic. Dedmon says that four physicians and a chiropractor with these companies failed to properly perform their work and did not get her consent prior to treatment that resulted in brain and body injuries.

“I still have medical issues,” Dedmon said Wednesday. “That’s pretty much the most disturbing thing about it.”

Officials at Cascade Healthcare and Central Oregon Radiology Associates, which works in partnership with Central Oregon MRI, said they had not received a copy of the lawsuit and declined to comment.

A representative for the La Pine Family Chiropractic Clinic could not be reached for comment.

Dedmon received spinal manipulations from Ronald Nowack, a chiropractor, between June 8 and July 3, 2005, according to the lawsuit. During those weeks, she said Nowack did not “obtain Stacy Dedmon’s informed consent,” the lawsuit states.

In addition, the lawsuit states that Nowack was negligent in one or more of the following: “failing to perform a proper neurological examination,” not conducting “adequate tests to rule out any neurological abnormalities” and “causing injury to Stacy Dedmon’s cervical arteries” during the process.

The La Pine woman also said that between June 30 and July 22, 2005, she came under the care of physicians with Cascade Healthcare Community and Central Oregon Radiology Associates.

Dr. Michael J. Donley and Dr. Traci Clautice-Engle with Central Oregon Radiology Associates, along with Dr. Edward O. Palmer and Dr. Susan J. Decker, performed a CT scan and MRI in 2005 on Dedmon, according to the lawsuit.

All of them, according to the lawsuit, were negligent in one or more areas, including failing to “properly evaluate (her) for vertebral artery dissection,” failing to “properly evaluate (her) for stroke” and “failing to diagnose Stacy Dedmon’s vertebral artery dissection on July 7, 2005, when the MRI study defendants performed revealed her vertebral artery dissection.”

As a result, Dedmon “suffered a vertebral artery dissection, the diagnosis and treatment of which was unreasonably delayed, causing her to develop a stroke, resulting in permanent and severe injury, pain and distress, including permanent and catastrophic brain injury.”

Dedmon — who is asking for noneconomic damages of $3.25 million and economic damages of $1 million — said she could not walk for about four months after the treatment.

In addition, she could not feel hot, cold or pain on the left side of her face. To this day, she still has no such sensations on the entire right side of her body from the shoulder down, Dedmon said.