The 6 Most Horrifying Ways Routine Surgeries Have Gone Wrong

Seventy-four-year-old Dirk Schroeder went into a hospital in Germany to undergo surgery to treat his prostate cancer, which is surprising, because we assumed that all buildings in Germany were terrifying old castles made of chocolate. Everything seemed to go well at first, but for the next several months, Schroeder's pain level gradually intensified to an excruciating degree, which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Then one of his nurses noticed a pad of gauze beginning to ooze its way out of one of his surgery wounds. So Schroeder was sent back to the Bavarian Medical Palace, where it was soon discovered that his doctors had left no less than 16 different items in his body, as if they had confused his vivisected torso for the floor of a taxicab.

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"Open him back up; I need somewhere to spit out my gum."

The treasure trove of medical waste left inside Schroeder's body for no conceivable reason included an entire roll of bandages, a compress, several more gauze pads, a fucking needle, and part of a surgical mask, because why the hell not? Evidently the doctors expected Schroeder to die right then and there and were doing their best to turn his body into a time capsule.

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"Heartbeat? No, I'm listening for ticking. I lost my watch a week ago and I've looked everywhere else."

It took two additional surgeries to remove all the bullshit they had dropped inside the elderly man's body, putting a whole lot of totally unnecessary strain on a man in his 70s dying of prostate cancer. However, without a doubt the most beautiful detail of this story is the fact that the negligent surgeons refused to apologize or even acknowledge that they had done anything wrong. They went so far as to suggest that the items probably got inside his torso after the surgery, although they knew better than to try to concoct a specific scenario in which more than a dozen items directly related to surgery could've osmosed their way through his skin.

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"Looks like you managed to wedge my keys into your esophagus."

Schroeder sadly succumbed to cancer a few years later, but his family is currently suing the hospital that turned him into a medical waste pinata for $127,000, roughly $8,000 per item that the doctors left inside Schroeder's body and later claimed he crammed in there himself.

A man who elected not to be identified for reasons that will soon become dazzlingly clear went in for surgery at a hospital in Wiltshire, England, to have a cancerous testicle evicted from his scrotum. One would assume that a procedure like that would be fairly straightforward -- the doctor slices open the man's wrinklepurse and cuts out the gonad with the facial scar and sinister goatee, leaving the gonad with the gelled hair and lantern jaw intact. However, due to some spectacular collision of fate and error, the surgeon chopped out the wrong testicle.

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"Eeny, meeny, miney, moe" really has no place in the OR.

In what we can only assume was a stammering, panicky, medical-tray-juggling recreation of a Mr. Bean sketch, the doctor quickly put the disembodied testicle on ice and called in a plastic surgeon to try to reattach it, because apparently he somehow graduated from medical school by only attending the classes about hacking things off of people and had no idea how to staple balls back in place himself. It was too late, however, so the doctor had no choice but to remove the remaining testicle (the one that was actually full of cancer) and send the patient home, while the hospital courageously pretended that the mishap never occurred.

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"Bayside Memorial Hospital, how may I ... what about a testicle? Um ... no hablo ingles, senor."

They were quickly forced to reconsider that position when the patient hired a lawyer to sue the tap-dancing thunderfarts out of the hospital, pending an extensive investigation. A spokesman for the hospital apologized for the "regrettable incident," although sadly his kind words will not reinflate the maligned patient's filleted scrotum.

However, what should have been a quick outpatient surgery became over 20 separate procedures that gradually turned Thakkar into Gary Oldman from Hannibal, because Cuzalina apparently misheard Thakkar's request for a new nose as an impassioned plea to save money on Halloween costumes for the rest of his life.

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This might not have lived up to the concept sketch.

Ironically, Thakkar was originally pleased with the results of the surgery but began to have trouble breathing and had to return for some adjustments. The problems kept compounding, requiring Thakkar to come back for more and more surgeries, until the nose allegedly became so badly infected that Cuzalina just chopped the whole thing right off his goddamned face.

The cobbled-together understudy for Thakkar's nose includes pieces of cartilage from his ear and his freaking ribcage, along with metal implants and gusts of mad-scientist laughter. (Thakkar specifically requested that his ear not be harvested for parts, gravely mistaking Cuzalina for a person with an overabundance of shits to give.) Thakkar is now left with a single giant nostril hiding beneath a lump of bulbous flesh vaguely resembling rest home nudity.

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"I also used both your thumbs and a spinal disc to even out the sides."

Thakkar has to keep the hole propped open with a plastic straw in order to breathe or else his "nose" will collapse in on itself like a coal mine tragedy and suffocate him. Frankly, we're amazed the doctor didn't just Scotch tape some Play-Doh to the front of Thakkar's head and call it a day. And, yes, he's suing the doctor.

Crist (who, incidentally, is autistic) was sent staggering back to his family with fewer teeth than a jack-o'-lantern, completely unable to explain what had happened. He insists that he repeated explicit instructions to remove only the three specified teeth several times, but by the time the Great Molar Harvest fell into full swing, he was too groggy from the novocaine to do anything about it. The local news generously referred to the incident as a "communications mix-up," but one would assume that such a staggeringly life-altering measure as "ripping all of the teeth from your goddamned head" would require at least one or two carefully informed signatures and not simply be the dentist's default setting.

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On the plus side, if you put 28 teeth under your pillow, the Tooth Fairy comes correct.

Crist and his family are preparing to file a complaint with the state, which we can only assume will lead to a substantial lawsuit, because there is no logical reason for a medical professional to extract all your food grinders without a seriously compelling and thoroughly documented reason. The dentist being some kind of goblin trying to make a necklace or a set of keys for a tiny piano doesn't count.

Sixty-seven-year-old Hurshell Ralls underwent surgery back in 1999 to carve a sizable chunk of cancer out of his bladder. When he awoke after the procedure, his wife was waiting by his bedside to deliver the good news that he was now cancer-free. However, that uplifting diagnosis came with an asterisk -- in order to prevent the spread of the cancer, his penis and testicles had been scooped out like soft-serve ice cream. And that sounds like a reasonable "better safe than sorry" measure until you hear the details.

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Guess which sentence is going to come to mind every time you visit Dairy Queen from now on!

First, neither Ralls nor his wife were informed that depenification was a possibility before the surgery began, and once the operation was underway, neither one of them was asked for their consent before the doctor decided to yank Ralls' man-tube out like tickets from a skeeball machine.

To make matters worse, the doctor didn't even bother to check if the cancer had actually spread to Ralls' genitals until after the surgery was over and Ralls' penis was already festering in a medical waste bin. A tissue sample from his doomed wang was eventually tested and found to be 100 percent clear -- no trace of cancer whatsoever. They'd guillotined his groin steak like a French king for no damned reason.

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"Diseased, not diseased ... whatever. Come on; it's half past beer o'clock."

This left Ralls feeling understandably put out, and he sued the hospital for $5 million, which is probably enough money to cybernetically revive his severed dick like RoboCop. The case was settled out of court for an unspecified amount, thereby alleviating the castration-happy doctor from having to admit to any wrongdoing. Which means he's probably still working there, performing surgeries.

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Pro Tip: If the doctor has a cigar cutter sitting beside the forceps, that tonsillectomy might not be worth it.

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Related Reading: Speaking of horrible surgery, how about a a patch sewed onto your tongue to encourage dieting? But on the plus side, moustache surgery is a thing. And have you heard about these doctors who went crazy on the job?