"Has anyone learned lessons from what happened to me?"

At the Day surgery unit at City Hospital, Nottingham I had keyhole surgery to remove my gall bladder, because of gall stones. I came home later the same day. I was in considerable pain, but I expected that.

Over the following two days the pain got worse, and I developed a fever and felt sick and couldn't eat. I felt that this wasn't right so I called out my GP who agreed something was wrong and referred me to the Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham.

There they did blood tests and a CT scan, which showed there was free fluid in the abdominal cavity. I was scheduled for an operation to investigate this.

By the time I went for this emergency surgery I was feeling very ill, and the strain was affecting my heart, which was skipping beats. I came out of surgery with a large scar and 2 drains inserted. The surgeon had discovered that bile and blood had been leaking inside me because some vessels had not been sealed off.

After a night in Critical Care Unit I was taken to a normal post-surgical ward, where I remained for another 7 days. It is only now, 2 months after the operation, I am starting to feel normal again and able to relate what happened, although I get very tired. The operation site still gives me pain.

What concerns me particularly is that no-one has expressed regret for what happened to me, and I wonder if they have learned any lessons from it. Is it a feature of keyhole surgery that such things are likely to happen? The only explanation I was given was that I had an extra bile duct, but surely it must have been cut to make it leak, so it must have been accessible? I was passed between three different surgical teams during the sequence of events, and no-one seemed to take responsibility.

I am also worried about possible permanent damage to my health from the experience, especially the effect on my heart.