A grandmother has told of her torment after becoming paralysed from the waist down following an epidural.
Eileen Hayes had surgery for an abdominal hernia at the Royal County Sussex Hospital in Brighton after months of pain.
Ms Hayes, 78, said she had concerns at the time about having another epidural, which is an injection into the space around the spinal cord.
This was due to her having problems with her spine previously, as well as having had an epidural when she gave birth to her children.
But she was in such pain she decided to go ahead.
A hospital investigation after the complication noted that risks regarding surgery and anaesthesia, including nerve damage, were discussed with her before the surgery.
Ms Hayes had two epidurals which took four attempts and were noted as a “difficult insertion”.
Two days later, it became clear that she had suffered spinal cord damage in her middle to upper back.
Ms Hayes was discharged and went to the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath for rehabilitation and eventually Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire.
She now requires an electric wheelchair to get around her flat in Wilbury Road, Hove.
The mother-of-three, who also has six "wonderful” grandchildren, wants to warn of the potential risks of the procedure, which she had in April 2018.
She told The Argus: “I want everyone to know what can happen. I feel my life has been taken off me.
“Everything I do is hard, hard work. To get dressed is hard.
“I have ordered carers now to come and help me.”
An investigation by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust concluded that “abdominal-thoracic [middle and upper back] surgery and anaesthesia is very high risk if the patient has multiple pre-operation medical issues”.
Ms Hayes had medical conditions before the surgery, including leg weakness, sleep apnoea, coronary heart disease and had a long-term smoking history.
Surgery for her hernia was discussed in 2013 and again in 2017 but doctors “felt to be very high risk”.
Following her paralysis, an independent doctor’s report noted that it was possible Ms Hayes’s spine was “hanging by a thread” due to her health problems before the operation “which had been finally tipped during the events”.
It was found she had suffered post-operative complications in the form of a spinal cord stroke from lack of blood supply, which caused her to be partially paralysed.
She now has only partial movement in one of her legs but cannot walk.
Ms Hayes, who moved into her flat in 2005 after becoming a widow, added: “I have no chance of walking again. I try my best to not be a nasty person. But some days when I can’t do things, it gets frustrating. When you go to the toilet, you do it and wash your hands and it takes two minutes. That doesn’t happen for me, I have to take a long time.
“Everything takes a long time. I did manage to go to America on my own to see my daughter but it took a lot out of me.
“I used to go on holidays to Ireland every year, I like life. I got on with life.”
Ms Hayes, originally from Wales, lives alone but has support from friends and carers. Her family do not live in the area.
A hospital report at the time noted how "sorry" it was that this "devastating and rare complication" had occurred.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Rob Haigh said: “We are truly sorry for the devastating impact a rare complication of epidural analgesia has had on Mrs Hayes’s quality of life and we wish to apologise once more to her and her family.
“We fully investigated the incident at the time and shared our findings with Mrs Hayes to explain what happened during and after her surgery.”
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