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61-year-old Andrew Lane is suffering from prostate cancer. His doctor determined that the most appropriate way to treat Lane’s disease was to operate, hopefully removing all parts of the tumor in the procedure.
What was meant to have passed as a routine surgery went terribly wrong.
During the operation, doctors had accidentally punctured Lane’s bowel – but no one had realized until several days later, when Lane returned to the hospital complaining of discomfort.
At that point, the contents of his bowel had spread throughout the inside of his body, causing necrotizing fasciitis, a potentially-fatal bacterial infection on the skin. Lane was left, fighting to survive.
Doctors worked as fast as they could to remove the infected, damaged tissue – that had started to cause Lane’s stomach to protrude – but it wasn’t completely successful. Lane was forced to rely on a catheter and a colostomy bag for two years as doctors slowly repaired his body.
But by the time Lane made a full recovery, some things just simply couldn’t be saved.
The infection had not only taken over his stomach, but also his genitals. “That night I was taken to theatre three times while the surgeons took more and more tissue away,” he recounted. “I lost from my belly button to just above the groin and I've not got much left of a penis.”
The damage, Lane has been told, is irreversible.
All of these events transpired about two years ago, and Lane has only begun coming around to his bodily changes now – which is why he is now finally pressing charges against his doctors and the hospital for poor treatment.
He hopes that the news and attention brought to his story will help others avoid the suffering he had to go through himself. “I'd never even heard of the bug before and had no idea of the damage it could do, but if speaking out can raise awareness and stop one more person having to go through what I've been through then it will have been worth it,” he explained.
