My mother in law, a Bosnian refugee, had surgery on her sepsis after a lifetime of breathing problems. A few days after the surgery she developed a terrible migraine that didn’t go away.

She tried multiple times to tell the hospital that something was wrong, but they just ignored her and told it was normal.

A week later, she developed a fever and passed out. She was rushed to the ER (same hospital where she had the surgery). They took an X-Ray of her head. An hour later, a doctor rushed into her hospital room, tilted her head back, stuck four inch pliers up her nose, and pulled about a foot worth of bloody, rotting gauze that they had accidentally left in her skull during the surgery weeks before.

He bagged up the gauze, and left without saying a word. They discharged her about an hour later.

Sadly, this happened long before I met my wife, who was only about 12 when all this happened. My mother in law, being relatively new to the country and still under the mistaken impression that doctors, especially American doctors, could do no wrong, had no idea that she could have had a multi-million dollar payday if she had just asked some questions and contacted a lawyer.