Pain felt like shards of glass cutting my insides

WHEN Cynthia O’Neill’s gynaecologist suggested her problems were psychological, she exploded with anger.

The 71-year-old, left, had the mesh procedure in October 2009 and said that within months she knew there was something seriously wrong.

The pain felt like shards of glass cutting – and investigations revealed parts of the mesh had broken away, causing internal lacerations.

The retired mother of three, from Wetherby, West Yorkshire, had been recommended surgery at St James’s Hospital, Leeds, to insert a plastic mesh to support her bladder. ‘The surgeon said I wouldn’t know it was there,’ she said. ‘It’s now been nearly ten years of pain all the time, it’s the norm to me now. It’s absolutely shocking.’

To her fury, when she went back to see her gynaecologist about the pain, he said it wasn’t related to the mesh.

But investigations revealed five pieces had eroded and had to be removed. The former secretary is still waiting for an operation to remove the rest of the mesh.

She said: ‘I feel I have this piece of plastic inside me that’s festering – it should never have been implanted.’