Woman in surgery for kidney stones has limbs amputated

(CEN) (CEN/America TV)

She thought she was going in for a routine surgery to remove kidney stones, but a 25-year-old Peruvian woman left the operating room without her hands and feet after doctors amputated them due to infection.

Doctors declared Shirley Mendez healthy after she underwent several medical procedures at Guillermo Almenara Hospital in Lima, but the woman returned in January because she could not urinate, Central European News (CEN) reported.

They implemented a catheter, but Mendez later suffered a severe fever and became infected with aggressive bacteria.

On April 5 she was placed in an induced coma, and had both of hands and feet amputated.

Mendez believes doctors did not follow safety standards and claimed an unsterilized catheter caused the infection.

Freddy Pacheco, her urologist, was reportedly caught on hidden camera saying: “Tests show the catheter was infected. It had a germ.” Pacheco claimed the patient misinterpreted the comment.

"I’m a woman, and one day I want to have a family,” Mendez told CEN.

She explained she always dreamt of having her own child and being able to “feel his moving legs with my hands, to be able to touch his face with my fingers.”

“This is something I will never be able to do,” she told the news website.

Investigators are looking into the cause of Mendez’s condition.