A mum suffered a New Year from hell after a £15,000 surgery she had as a birthday treat went badly wrong.
Joanne Strong decided to give herself a breast augmentation, tummy tuck and a hernia repair after dropping five stone. She wanted the New Year in 2024 to signify her pursuit of a new figure and said she had “worked hard to lose the flab and the tuck was the icing on the cake”.
All Joanne wanted, 42, was a “dream new body for a new decade” as she turned 40. “I used my savings to pay half and borrowed the rest from my family,” she said.
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Joanne and her daughter Eva, seven, and son Toby, five
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Joanne began to lose a lot of blood after her surgery, she says
But the dream turned into a nightmare as Joanne experienced bad complications following her surgery. She feared she would die during the horrendous ordeal and she was also driven to “seriously consider killing myself.”
To The Sun, the brave mum said of her nightmare: “I got so low, I was that desperate but I could not do this to my children, though I know I will be mentally and physically scarred for life by this ordeal.”
Signs something had gone wrong began to appear only a few hours after her operation at Manchester Private Hospital. She was in “horrendous pain”, was “bleeding constantly” from her wound that when from hip to hip and realised she was losing too much blood.
Joanne needed skin grafts using skin from her right leg
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Joanne lost well over a pint of blood, she claims. She said: “I was weak, faint and pale and thought it was not right. I couldn’t even sit up as I struggled to move and if I did the pain was horrific.”
The awful experience caused Joanne to be left facing 50 nights in four different hospitals. She now has scars on her right leg and abdomen.
Such was her torment that she began to think of taking her own life. Only the thought of her daughter Eva, seven, and son, Toby, five, prevented her.
The mental scars remain, however, and she has since been diagnosed with PTSD and depression. During her stay in hospital, there was one moment when she said the staff tried to get her home on January 16 last year, but she told them she was not ready.
Joanne was worried her children would be left without a mum
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“As I was taken to reception, I bled on the floor,” she said. She then slept through most of the day before she lost consciousness and she was helped to the toilet. When she came round, she noticed staff had called for a resuscitation trolley.
She was then taken by ambulance to Salford Royal, but Joanne said the hospital she was previously in did not tell the ambulance crew she had previously lost consciousness. It took a full five hours to stabilise her at Salford Royal before she was taken to Wythenshawe Hospital for a blood transfusion.
By January 22, clots were developing under her skin as she returned to Manchester Private Hospital. The tissue around the wound was also becoming diseased and on February 7, she was admitted to Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary before being transferred to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary for emergency surgery.
In April last year, Joanne had to have two skin grafts to seal the wound in her abdomen. “It has simply been the most devastating thing to happen to us,” she said of the ordeal on her and her family.
Joanne complained. In February, she received a response from the director of Manchester Private Hospital Graeme Hughes, who told her: “It is fair to say the level of care and service we provided you was not up to our usual high standard.”
Joanne was offered £20,000 in compensation
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She was offered £20,000 in compensation for “clinical and emotional complications associated with surgery” in May, according to a letter seen by The Sun. Lawyers told her to turn down the offer.
Two independent surgeons who reviewed Joanne’s case said it was “unlikely that many surgeons would have chosen to have undertaken several surgical procedures on you” because she bled heavily during previous NHS procedures in 2015. Joanne claims she was told otherwise by the hospital.
Now, she claims she emailed the hospital to say she would accept their offer, but that it was withdrawn.
Mr Hughes said: “This is a complex case which requires careful deliberation in relation to the position with Joanne and our indemnity provider.
“I cannot comment on individual patient cases due to confidentiality… We appreciate that this further delay to a potential outcome will be very frustrating to Joanne.
“We asked Joanne for her further patience to allow the full case to be re-reviewed. Including the decision regarding refund of fees.”
Joanne’s battle for the figure she wanted began with her at 17 stone and at a size 20. It took her two years of diet and exercise to lose five stone and she also wanted to lose the “excess skin”.
She said: “My weight has always yo-yoed and I gained a few stone after having the children.
“It was in the run up to me being 40 that I thought, ‘Right, you’ve lost the weight, let’s get rid of the excess skin and help give me my dream body – for a woman of my age.’ I was realistic – knew I’d never be skinny but just wanted to tidy my body up and be the best I could be.”