There is nothing more terrifying than waking up without a body part you went to sleep with. That is particularly true when you wake up from a surgery expecting one body part to be missing but find that the other is gone instead.

That is what happened to one man who went to the hospital to have his right testicle removed. He had been complaining of pain, so his doctor sent him for an operation to hopefully reduce his discomfort.

When he woke up, the surgery had been a success with a catch; one testicle had been successfully removed, but it was the wrong one. How could something like this happen? The surgeon claims it was a result of the right-side testicle being attached to the left side of the body. Four years after the mistake, the jury sided with the patient and awarded him $870,000 with $250,000 for punitive damages.

Although the doctor tried to explain how the incident could happen by suggesting that the testicles had somehow switched sides in the body, the 12-person jury was not swayed. Sadly, this is not the only case of something like this occurring. Although having an operation on the wrong side of the body is relatively uncommon, this kind of mistake still occurs in around one out of every 112,994 surgeries.

If this kind of mistake happens to you, you have rights. You can file a medical malpractice lawsuit like this patient did, so you can get the compensation you need for the losses you’ve suffered. Your health was on the line, and you deserve to be compensated for any errors made.

Source: The Washington Post, “He underwent surgery to remove his right testicle. When he woke up, his left one was missing.,” Amy B Wang, June 18, 2017