I had my reversal in September 2014 with Dr. Edward Zbella with Tubal Reversal Experts in Florida. I researched my decision pretty thoroughly and took out a loan to cover the $6000 cost of the surgery. I signed a document when I arrived at the hospital saying that I was paying for the surgery myself but could ask for reimbursement from my insurance company if I chose to.
I met Dr. Zbella the day of my surgery. He seemed nice enough. He had a lot of experience in the type of surgery I was to have. I wanted a reversal because of the problems I had with Essure and because I wanted the chance to have children with my now-fiancé. Dr. Zbella and I talked about my negative experience with Essure. He even told me that he was doing an Essure removal just before my surgery. He said that he was hearing more about women having problems with Essure. I told him about the Facebook group Essure Problems so he could reach out to our community and hopefully help more women.
Six months after my reversal surgery, imaging showed that my tubes had scarred back closed. No guarantees were made to me about how long my tubes would remain open. I knew going into it that the surgery would not necessarily mean I would go on to have a successful pregnancy. All he said was that if I wasn't pregnant within a year to have the dye test redone.
Once the tubes scarred back closed, the scar tissue continued growing and I ended up with stage 4 endometriosis, also called "frozen pelvis." No doctor I've seen since knows why this is. Those of us who have suffered through Essure know that it is possible that during my reversal the PET fibers inside the coils may have been left in my body. There is no way to know this for sure.
In September of this year, I had surgery to remove the scar tissue and free up my internal organs. I'd asked Dr. Zbella to give me my coils once he'd removed them. He did. They were given to me in a clear plastic jar, kind like a prescription medication bottle. One was straight, the other was bent and a fragment had broken off. The insides of the coils were not present in the container I was given. This was pointed out to me by the Dr. I saw this past September.
At that point I contacted Dr. Zbella's office to see what had happened to the PET fibers inside my coils. I knew from the description of the procedure that Dr. Zbella was supposed to cut the parts of my Fallopian tube that contained Essure out and then reattach the ends of my Fallopian tubes to my uterus. But where did the fibers go? And why was one coil in such bad shape?
Dr. Zbella didn't contact me back, but his partner did. His partner said that the fibers were not left in my body, that they were probably washed away by the surgical assistant as she removed any of my tissue that was stuck to the coils after removal. This wasn't described in the surgical notes and the Dr. who called me back did not do my surgery. He said he felt bad that my tubes had closed so quickly and they offered me a year of free IVF to make up for it. I live out of state and my fiancé is Catholic so this offer is of no value for us, but I was surprised they were prepared to offer something so expensive when I had not been promised fertility and nothing seemingly had gone wrong. But I did wonder where those fibers actually were.
I requested reimbursement from my insurance company. They were prepared to reimburse me except for one problem-Dr. Zbella did not mention my issues with Essure in my surgical report. I didn't think this was a huge deal, maybe he forgot or maybe it wasn't pertinent information for a surgical report. Either way, I contacted his office to get written confirmation that I'd had problems with Essure so we could be reimbursed the $6000 we paid for the surgery. This was not money coming out of Dr. Zbella's pocket, it was coming straight from the insurance company to me. He didn't place Essure so he wasn't setting himself up to look like he'd done something wrong by putting my problems with Essure in writing.
Yesterday, I received a call from Dr Zbella's office manager. She sounded very annoyed. She informed me that Dr. Zbella would not correct my records to include the problems I'd experienced with Essure. I asked why and she said that they had no evidence of my having problems with Essure. I recounted my conversation with Dr. Zbella, pointing out that he had mentioned the lady having a removal prior to my surgery (how would that have come up without us discussing Essure problems?) and she firmly restated that my medical records would not be amended or updated. I asked if I could speak with Dr. Zbella, thinking that I could jog his memory about the conversation we'd had and she said Dr. Zbella would never be willing to speak with me, that my records would never reflect my problems with Essure and she hung up on me.
I decided to warn people now about this practice because of their refusal to correct their mistake. read more
