You would hope if you need surgery that you can find a skilled individual who can do it with no issues. Many times, that’s what happens. However, every once in a while, someone might operate on you and make a mistake. 

The US sees about 15 million yearly surgeries. It’s hard to say exactly how many go wrong. We do know, though, that some people regret getting surgery afterward. 

Regretting a surgery and having someone botch the one you wanted don’t feel quite the same, though. In the latter situation, you might feel angry or despondent because things didn’t turn out like you expected. Let’s talk in greater detail about what you might do after a surgeon makes an error during your operation.

Figure Out What Went Wrong

First, you must determine what went wrong. When you wake up after a surgery, you might feel disoriented or groggy. You should expect that. The anesthesia can make you loopy, and you won’t feel like yourself for a bit. 

Once you’re feeling more yourself, though, you might quickly realize someone made an error. For instance, maybe you needed surgery on your left arm, but the surgeon targeted the right arm instead. 

It sounds like the sort of thing that could never happen, but it does. Surgeons can make mistakes, just like anyone else.

You might figure out on your own that something went awry if it’s very obvious in the surgery’s aftermath. In some cases, though, you won’t know a doctor did something wrong till they tell you. If they did something inside your body, you probably can’t tell that without someone letting you know.

Decide How the Accident Makes You Feel

If you hear that a surgeon did something wrong, then you need to take a little time and think about the damage and how it makes you feel. You also need to think about whether the accident will negatively impact your life or not. 

If the incorrect surgery will negatively impact your life in some way, you may figure that out on your own, or the surgeon may tell you. Either way, if the mistake did no damage, or very little, then you can probably recover much more easily. 

If it’s a situation where the surgeon did no real harm, then you can probably laugh it off. If you still need a second corrective surgery, then you will probably want to go with a different surgeon, since this one seems incompetent or careless. 

However, maybe the incorrect surgery impacted you negatively in a strikingly obvious way. If so, you may feel furious. Even if the surgeon committed an honest mistake, if that error negatively impacted your life, that’s not something you can probably shrug off.

How Does the Surgeon React?

You must probably consider whether you want to file a medical malpractice lawsuit or not. If you do, then you might go after the surgeon, the medical facility where you got the surgery, or both. 

When deciding what you might do, you may take into account how the surgeon behaved after the procedure. Maybe they’ll come tell you in person that they did something wrong. Perhaps they will seem contrite and apologize profusely. 

However, some surgeons won’t ever admit they made a mistake. They can sometimes have excessive pride. Maybe the surgeon won’t even come tell you in person that something went wrong. Instead, they will have a nurse or orderly come tell you because they don’t want to do it in person.

Frankly, even if a surgeon admits they made a mistake during your surgery, you may still feel that you have to sue them if the error will negatively your life going forward. If the surgeon seems haughty and won’t admit they did anything wrong, though, then you might find suing them to be a lot easier.

Retain a Skilled Personal Injury Lawyer

You should next find a personal injury lawyer and hire them if you decide that you need to sue the surgeon after they made an error and harmed you. You can look around and find an attorney in the personal injury niche who you know handles medical malpractice cases.

You can tell them about what happened. They can discuss a lawsuit with you. They might have an idea of how much money you should ask for based on similar prior cases. Your lawyer’s investigator can then start to locate evidence that you can use at trial to prove your version of what happened. 

You May Need Help with Your Mental Health

Unnecessary surgeries or ones where a surgeon made a mistake and harmed you can impact you both physically and mentally. You will need to find someone else in the medical field who can advise you regarding how you can move forward physically to hopefully try to get past this unfortunate episode. However, you may also find that you’re not doing so well psychologically.

If you know that a surgeon made an error, but that you should eventually recover, that’s not the best scenario, but at least you’ll feel it’s likely that you will eventually get back to your old self. Maybe the surgeon did something from which you will never completely recover, though. Perhaps you will have to make adjustments and your life will now have severe limitations that did not exist before.

If that happens, then you must mourn your old life. You may feel very sad and bitter. You can always talk to your family members, friends, and others that make up your support network about that.

You may also want to seek help from a qualified mental health professional, though. You might need some therapy sessions where you can talk about how this surgical error made you feel. 

Perhaps the therapist can’t help you physically, but this kind of treatment can work wonders psychologically in many cases. It’s part of the road to recovery you may have to follow.