Erica Cristina Bannai Von Hoonholtz, a mother of three in Bragança Paulista, Brazil, had spent months feeling that something was moving inside her body. It was not a sensation; it was 18-centimeter surgical scissors, forgotten inside her abdomen after a hysterectomy performed in January.
For three months, the metal remained lodged inside her, slowly rusting while part of her small intestine became necrotic. The pain was unbearable, the vomiting would not stop, and no medication worked. On April 11, during emergency surgery at Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital, doctors finally found the object that was killing her from the inside.
Erica had to undergo four operations in total: the original hysterectomy, the removal of the scissors, the repair of a hernia with drainage of an intestinal abscess, and a fourth surgery to treat a liver abscess. Today, as she psychologically processes how close she came to dying, the case is moving forward as a criminal investigation into alleged medical negligence.
