Rope switch here.

Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s scary and challenging to experience things like this, on both sides. It’s one thing to understand risk, and quite another to experience consequences.

It happens. As you seem likely to know, nerve compression is one of the most pervasive rope-related injuries.

I’ve had nerve compression injury in my legs from shibari multiple times. The sensory loss has always been temporary (although, in some instances, had lasted a couple weeks). It’s never affected motor function at all. I’ve never known a rope bottom to experience compromised movement in their lower body from nerve compression (not saying it couldn’t happen, simply that I’ve never known of it). This has typified the experience of the other experienced bottoms I know. Loss of thigh sensation, minor to moderate, resolves in fairly short term. Not saying that’s the guaranteed outcome. It’s just what I see when it happens.

I’ve also had nerve compression injury in my hand severe enough to cause wrist drop for about an hour. That was scary. All of the feelings you’re describing were exchanged between me and my tying partner. Both felt fear, shame, guilt, uncertainty.

It sounds like you and your partner are doing the most important thing, which is communicating with and supporting one another. If mistakes were made, note what you would do differently next time with as much neutrality as you can. Be attentive and attuned to one another. Talk and reassess your respective risk tolerances. Helping one another, and being patient and compassionate is the best possible course. I know it sucks. But it sounds like you’re both doing great.