An endometriosis sufferer has claimed a private surgeon unnecessarily took out her womb and left a plastic tube inside of her body in a botched £14,000 operation.
Cath Kendall, 36, has spent most days of the last three years depressed, bedbound and in agonising pain after the horror surgery caused blood clots the size of her hand to fall out of her body.
‘In the end, the biggest regret of my life was ever letting them put me to sleep,’ she told .
The animal rights activist travelled three hours from her home in Coventry for the surgery just nine days after a £400 consultation with a specialist she says is seen as the ‘best of the best’ in his field.
During the 10 minute meeting he diagnosed her with having adenomyosis – a condition where the lining of the uterus grows into the muscular wall of the uterus – from looking at a picture of a scan on her mobile phone.
He carried out an examination on the vegan and former carer with her fiance Jamie Hammond, 32, by her side by pressing down on her womb which caused her to scream out in pain before he allegedly declared: ‘Yep, it’s the womb that’s causing the problem.’
He advised Ms Kendall to have a hysterectomy, an earthshattering announcement that left her ‘heartbroken’, but she hoped the surgery would rid her of the crippling pain she had suffered every month since the age of 15.
But her life has been hell since the bodged surgery as she has developed intestinal problems, her ovaries are adhered to her bowels and scar tissue is causing her organs to stick together.
Ms Kendall is now fundraising for further surgery to ‘get her life back’, a decision she says she did not take lightly.
She said she felt ‘pressured’ in to having the major life-changing operation after the specialist said he could ‘squeeze’ her in just over a week later on a day when he had four other people booked.
‘From that examination I trusted what he was doing,’ she said. ‘He knows what he is doing he was the best of the best. He’s told me “yes, it’s the womb that is causing the problem”. So if it’s the womb that’s causing the problem then we agreed with whatever needs doing.’
An anxious Ms Kendall said on the day of the operation there was a five hour delay for her keyhole surgery and everything felt ‘stressed’.
‘Then, when I got taken down, the lady was going “come on, come on, we’ve got to go”, and she was running me down the hallway,’ she said.
‘She was like “have you got your socks on? Have you got them on? No, we’ve got to go now we’ve got to go now”. It was horrible, really horrible.’
When she woke from her hysterectomy still heavily dosed with ketamine she was told to her horror that they had removed her womb despite finding that it looked ‘healthy’ and that they no longer believed she had adenomyosis.
A shocked Ms Kendall said: ‘Why would you take someone’s womb if it’s fine? Why didn’t we have this discussion before that if it’s fine you’re not going to take it?’
Ms Kendall, who has autism and sometimes struggles to consume water, claims hours later the surgeon berated her down the phone telling her to drink, that he had ‘put my neck on the line for you’, and ordered medics to not give her anymore IV fluids.
Mr Hammond said: ‘I can’t even tell you what he sounded like. He was so nasty.’
Around 13 hours after surgery Ms Kendall was ‘kicked out’ of the hospital in a wheelchair still ‘high on drugs’ with her pleas for ‘another bag of fluids before she left’ being rejected.
The NHS website states between a one and four day stay in hospital after a laparoscopic hysterectomy.
Ms Kendall claims her discharge notes, which she didn’t receive when she left, detailed that she had eaten, and drunk fluids. She says this is not true.
‘It was a very sad drive home and for me it was heartbreaking, she looked so frail and so unwell,’ Mr Hammond said.
‘I felt dirty to be honest with you. And I was thinking what have we done? I felt like something was up. It just felt really dirty and like we had done the wrong thing.’
Within 24 hours a panicked Ms Kendall was struggling to breathe and was taken by ambulance to an NHS hospital.
She was admitted to hospital for six days after doctors found a blood clot on her lungs and excess air in her stomach.
A fortnight later Ms Kendall noticed she was bleeding which progressively got worse over the next month.
At its worst she was passing blood clots the size of her hand which left her in tears and fearing she was going to die.
‘I genuinely thought I was going to die,’ she said. ‘I’ve had my womb removed I shouldn’t be having these.
‘It was like a constant. If I got up I could feel one coming out of me and then I would start crying and it was a cycle over the next few weeks.’
Frantic emails to her private surgeon were rebuffed and when he did finally agree to meet face-to-face again Ms Kendall said he spoke to her like she was a ‘naughty schoolgirl’.
She said: ‘I think that he really wanted rid of us at that point. And he thought, “I’m going through absolutely everything, so they don’t have anything else to say or ask me”.
‘And he didn’t really go through anything. He just shouted at us the whole time.’
She continued to send emails to the specialist detailing her agony and begging for help, but to her shock she received a response from his secretary saying she had been discharged.
To add insult to injury he also sent her a £2,000 bill, which Ms Kendall has refused to pay, on top of the £14,000 she had already paid.
An NHS doctor carried out an ultrasound where he found a nodule at the top of her vagina and said she needed an emergency operation.
But when she went to take a urine sample a plastic tube came out of her body and fell into a pot leaving surgeons baffled who then immediately cancelled her surgery.
Six weeks after her hysterectomy Ms Kendall had to have further surgery to make sure nothing else was left inside her body and to remove an endometrioma – a fluid-filled cyst that forms on the ovary.
She described having to have another operation so soon as ‘traumatising’ and now has post-traumatic stress disorder.
Holding back tears, Ms Kendall said: ‘I became severely depressed, like extremely depressed. I was suicidal.
‘I would wake up every single morning crying. It was the worst time of my life.’
Now, her endometriosis has spread with her ovaries adhered to her bowels and extensive scar tissue sticking her organs together.
She is also suffering with upper intestinal and gastro issues, and the constant feeling of an ‘air bubble’ inside her stomach.
A tearful Ms Kendall described the toll it has taken on her life saying she has not been out of pain since ‘his surgery’.
‘Even like just doing my hair… By the time I’ve washed my hair and put my makeup on I’m knackered. I’m in too much pain,’ she said.
‘I want to get back into bed. So it’s very rare that I actually do anything anymore. I’m in bed a lot of the time.’
The couple have since taken to Instagram to document their ordeal after ‘almost three years of agony caused by someone who was meant to help me’.
They had hoped to wed this year but the pain Ms Kendall goes through on a daily basis means they have had to put those plans on hold.