An eye surgeon is being sued by a patient who claims that he operated on the wrong eye and then tried to fix his mistake by operating on the correct eye without giving her anesthesia. Sutton Dryfhout says that she went to Dr. Benjamin Ticho at the Eye Specialists Center in Chicago Ridge, Illinois to get her lazy eye fixed and confirmed that he would be operating on her left eye.
Dryfhout says that when she woke up in a recovery room, she realized that Ticho had performed the surgery on her right eye instead. When Ticho came into the recovery room, he was informed of his mistake and asked a nurse to hold Dryfhout down while he performed the surgery on her left eye.
"I was awake during the second surgery," Dryfhout said in a statement. "I could feel the needle going into my eye, see the scissors he was using and smell the cautery burning my eye."
Dryfhout says that Ticho conducted the second surgery using instruments from the surgical tray of a previous patient and did not wear gloves during the procedure. She screamed for him to stop, but Ticho continued to operate on her eye.
"Any time a patient asks you to stop, especially in a non-emergency situation, not only as a lawyer but also as a parent, there's an obligation to stop," Dryfhout's attorney, Valerie Leopold, said.
Her lawsuit also accused Ticho of altering the consent forms following the second surgery. He allegedly crossed out the word "left" and replaced it with the word "right" and then had her mother initial the form.
Dryfhout is seeking unspecified damages and says that she continues to suffer from headaches and double vision following the two surgeries.