Transvaginal Mesh...
feels like a
Gadsden, AL: Christie was in a serious car accident many years ago and suffered hernias from it and later a collapsed bladder. “I had transvaginal mesh implanted in my pelvis, around my bladder and other prolene mesh in my abdomen, according to my medical records,” says Christie. “But this TVT mesh has eroded and moved around so much it feels like a porcupine inside me—I just want it out.”
Christie has been unsuccessful in trying to find a surgeon to remove the mesh. “I’ve been telling the doctors here that this vaginal sling has been hurting me since day one, but they won’t listen to me,” she says. “I live in a hick town with hick doctors.”
Like countless other women who have suffered transvaginal mesh complications, Christie is frustrated, to say the least. “I guess these doctors think I am lying; why don’t they acknowledge that I am in pain?” she asks. “With every doctor I talked to, my problems went in one ear and out the other. And now my bowel has collapsed. Nobody thought it was the mesh because back then it wasn’t known—I had the TVT implanted in the late 90s and I have had problems with it ever since.”
Christie has so many unanswered questions. “When I didn’t have health insurance they wouldn’t listen to me and now that I have insurance they still won’t listen. Why won’t they send me to a specialist? I think they don’t know what to do, or who to send me to.”
Christie might be right. There are a just a handful of surgeons in the US who will attempt to remove eroded transvaginal mesh, a very dangerous TVT complication. Christie says that her injuries were so severe and the TVT procedure so new that she has even been reported in a medical journal.