My doctor said that the terrible pain was just in my mind

CYNTHIA O’NEILL, 69, a retired secretary, is divorced with three grown-up children and lives in Yorkshire. She was fitted with a mesh implant in October 2009.

WHEN my gynaecologist patted me on the shoulder and said: ‘I think your problems are all psychological,’ I felt so angry. I’d been living with what felt like broken glass digging into me for two years. How dare he say I was imagining it!

I’d first been to see him after suddenly developing problems emptying my bladder in January 2009. He diagnosed a bladder

prolapse. After physiotherapy didn’t work, he suggested a ‘sling’ operation using a plastic mesh to support my bladder. He said I wouldn’t know it was there.

The surgery proved to be a big mistake — the pain afterwards was terrible; sometimes I was doubled over with it. Intercourse became impossible because it was too painful and I was totally uninterested. My partner and I split up in 2012. For four years after the operation I went back to my gynaecologist about the pain, but he was very dismissive and said it wasn’t related to the mesh. Then when he found a piece of mesh protruding into my vaginal wall he said he would remove it there and then: to my horror he put my feet in stirrups and with no anaesthetic put scissors in my vagina to trim the mesh. It felt every bit as bad as it sounds. I went back again a few weeks later and this was when he said my problems must be psychological.

So I went to see a urogynaecologist in October 2013. She found three more pieces of mesh had broken off —‘eroded’.

The next month I had the left side of the mesh and three pieces of eroded mesh removed.

This only provided temporary relief, but when I asked if the rest of the mesh could be removed the surgeon said she’d need to perform it with a bowel surgeon because I might need a colostomy. I wasn’t prepared to take that risk, so now I’m just left with taking painkillers.

It’s made me feel very depressed and isolated. I could have put up with my original bladder problem — I wish I’d left well alone.

This has been a nightmare. The past six years of my life have just passed me by.

I feel very let down by the NHS. I just want some acknowledgement that these devices cause more harm than good.