A MUM was left fighting for her life after a routine operation went horrifically wrong.
Michele Price's fiance and daughter sat by her side for five days while the 48-year-old lay in a medically induced coma.
Michele, from Long Eaton, went in for routine keyhole surgery at the Nottingham Treatment Centre, at the QMC, to help cure pain that had developed in her pelvis.
She returned home the same day but was rushed back to hospital early the following morning suffering terrible pain and vomiting.
Doctors believed that it was a simple complication but it turned out that her bowel had been sliced open and was leaking fluid into her body.
A section of her bowel was removed and her stomach was left open for two days to help avoid her having to have a stoma bag fitted.
She was then left in a medically-induced coma to help fight the infection that was causing her organs to shut down before having staples to close the wound.
Her fiance, Stephen Harcourt, and daughter Leah Price, 14, were by her side.
Stephen, 47, a self-employed window salesman, said: "I sat by her bed day after day not knowing whether she would live or die.
"I wasn't told anything."
Michele suffered further complications after being released from hospital, including a hernia, and had to close down her cleaning business.
The family is now surviving on one income.
Now, after the initial operation on August 9, 2011, her solicitors at Irwin Mitchell have found a catalogue of errors by staff at the hospital.
They have also secured an admission of liability from The Secretary of State for Health and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust that paves the way for a settlement to be reached.
Michele said: "My life has been turned upside down.
"I feel truly let down by staff as I suffered so many needless complications and my life has been devastated. It was meant to be a routine procedure but I was left fighting for my life."
Dr Stephen Fowlie, medical director at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "We reiterate our apologies to Ms Price and her family for the shortcomings in our care in 2011.
"Although Ms Price was reviewed by specialist registrars or consultants on each of the three days between her initial and second operation, we accepted our external expert's view that senior review should have been more frequent.
"Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has done considerable work in the last two years to improve recognition of deterioration in patients, and to speed-up escalation to senior doctors when it does occur."
