Philadelphia, PAImagine not knowing when you have to urinate. It happened to all of us as babies, and it happens to some elders. But Yolanda is in her 40s and she has been living with this horrific incontinence since having transvaginal mesh implanted five years ago!
Generally, urinary stress incontinence means leakage of urine when you cough, laugh, bend over or exercise. If only that was all Yolanda (not her real name) had to deal with. She had the mesh implanted when she had surgery to remove fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that develop in the uterus. Yolanda never had incontinence problems before having the mesh implanted.
“I was supposed to have a laparoscopy to remove the fibroids but didn’t know I had the mesh implanted until after the surgery,” says Yolanda. “Before getting this transvaginal mesh, I had a normal bladder. When it felt full, I knew I had to urinate. But after the surgery I lost that sensation.”
Definitely the most severe side effect (and there are many) caused by transvaginal mesh is nerve damage, which causes recurrent pain or loss of sensation. It is so bad that Dr. Vigna, writing for meshnewsdesk, said he would “rather be paralyzed from the waist down” than suffer nerve damage caused by transvaginal mesh. Dr. Vigna, a traumatic injury specialist, believes that a small percentage of women involved in mesh litigation have a pain syndrome consistent with pudendal neuralgia. “There are only a few medical conditions as destructive...as a pudendal neuralgia. It is a horrendous pain syndrome that interferes with any meaningful mobility and interferes with sexual, bladder, and bowel function.”
That pretty much sums up Yolanda’s symptoms. “I have to calculate when I need to urinate otherwise I will have an accident,” she says. “It is really horrible. At work I go to the bathroom one hour after I have a glass of water - I always have to time it.”
When Yolanda just touches her lower abdomen she feels pressure and pain. “I also have a problem when I have sex with my husband; it hurts a lot,” she adds.
Linda Gross suffered nerve damage from Prolift vaginal mesh so severe that she was unable to work, have sex with her husband, or sit comfortably for more than 20 minutes at a time. She was awarded a $3.35 million settlement in her personal injury case against Johnson & Johnson (Gross v. Gynecare, Inc., ATL - L - 6966-10). Yolanda doesn’t know which brand of mesh she had implanted, but she does have all her medical records - which her attorney will require.
“I had the surgery in another state, and moved to Pennsylvania two years ago,” she says. “The last time I saw my doctor he said everything was ‘great.’ I complained about these symptoms, which have gotten a lot worse, but he said, ‘Don't worry about it, they will go away.’ That was five years ago.”
Kim, a registered nurse from New Hampshire, told LawyersandSettlements back in 2013 about how her mother suffered nerve damage after having TVM surgery. “There is still a possibility that she has nerve damage from the mesh in more than one place,” said Kim.
“Every woman should know that transvaginal mesh is wrong, period.”
Symptoms of nerve damage may appear immediately after transvaginal mesh surgery, but they might take months or even years to present. Perhaps because of this time gap, nerve damage and its link to transvaginal mesh falls under the radar, particularly if the medical community is unaware of this TVM complication.
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