FENTON, Mo. (KSDK) – It was a botched brain surgery with massive consequences. A St. Ann woman went in for surgery on the left side of her brain, but the procedure was mistakenly performed on the right, and now the hospital is facing a lawsuit.

Pictures show proof. Fifty-three-year-old Regina Turner is seen in a photo with an indelible marking on the left side of her head. It was taken just before her April 4 surgery to put an end to a series of mini-strokes she’d been suffering from for several years.

Another photo shows Turner bandaged up on the right side after what’s called a craniotomy bypass.

“I think everybody in the operating room screwed up. I think somehow her head was marked for the correct side,” said Turner’s Clayton-based attorney Alvin Wolff. “The incorrect side was prepped for surgery. A whole surgery was performed, and nobody noticed that the side was wrong.”

Friday he filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against SSM Health Care St. Louis and neurosurgeon Dr. Armond Levy. He said negligence and carelessness led to the wrong-side surgery performed at St. Clare Health Center in Fenton.

According to the Journal of Neurosurgery, Wolff pointed out, there have been 35 documented cases of wrong-side craniotomies ever in the U.S.

“Sometimes the x-rays can be flipped,” he explained. “Sometimes the doctor doesn’t look at the medical records. Sometimes the surgery comes off late and everybody’s in a rush. Sometimes, if a doctor has a whole lot of surgeries, let’s say he’s got eight knees to do that day, and he’s got four right knees and four left knees, and the first knee cancels and they start moving everybody up, the wrong knee goes in the wrong room.”

Turner, who was mobile before, is now wheelchair bound. Her speech is unintelligible.

h/t – Grio