From the Hosital - MaryEllen

So, after 20 hours of surgery I only have one breast. The whole point of doing the immediate reconstruction was to have it all over with and now its worse than ever. The first surgery was 15 hours. There was a lot of pain after. The second night I was in excruciating pain. The left breast was so hard and swollen. It was extremely discolored and the stitches were pulled almost to the point of breaking. I made numerous complaints to the nurses and the resident. I called Dr. Keller from my cell phone. No one did anything.

I told the nurse I needed some help and he said he wasn't going to wake the resident again. When the resident came in he said he thought the capillary refill looked fine. It didn't look anywhere near fine. It was obviously filling up with blood that had no where to go. It was strangulating. He just did nothing. The nurses didn't know what they were looking at.

In the morning two surgical residents were doing rounds. They looked at it, freaked out and said we had to go back to the OR. Dr. Keller came in and looked at it and said he was going to try to save it. They took me back to the OR. When I woke up it was 5 hours later. They couldn't save it. The ironic part is that it is not the breast with the cancer.

I spoke to Dr. Keller this morning. He said there were numerous errors made. He feels it could have been saved if he were notified in time. I will need at least two more surgeries.