During what Dr. Ziff claimed would be a routine hysterectomy, he burned my ureteral tube on the left side of my kidney. I woke up in excruciating and on day two, with my kidney being completely blocked, he came into my room and told me he thought he had accidentally cauterized my tube shut. Testing confirmed this and I was rushed into a second surgery to insert a ureteral stent. The stent had to be kept in for five weeks and was extremely painful. I was kept on pain meds that entire time. During that time, I had read that being in that level of pain with a stent could mean it was improperly placed. When I mentioned this to him and his IHA colleague who inserted the stent, Dr. Gimenez, I was completely ignored. Later that month, I started having severe incontinence. Again, when I told them about my concerns that the stent was not healing the burned tube, I was blown off. Then, I went to have the stent removed. About an hour after Dr. Gimenez removed the stent, I realized I had a hole in my ureteral tube when I started gushing urine uncontrollably. I called Dr. Gimenez, panicked about what that meant, and again was blown off. Get this, she literally told me to wait and see if it cleared up overnight. She had been rude during every single interaction I had with her and that was the last straw. I ended up rushing myself to the ER at Michigan Medicine and was assigned new doctors there. I was diagnosed with a vaginal fistula. I went to Dr. Ziff because he came highly recommended by my IHA OBGYN. I used to think the world of Dr. Vicari, but she never once called me during all this time to check in on me, even knowing what was going on. In my medical research to try to learn about how to cope with a fistula, I learned that this type of surgical error (ureteral tube injury) during hysterectomy is rare in the US (less than 1%), though it happens more frequently in third world countries where doctors are not as well trained. In one article, it was called a venal sin because it can easily be avoided if a surgeon knows what they are doing. In half of the cases when this occurs, the patients die from sepsis. Now I had this fistula. That meant I’d either have to undergo another surgery where they placed a urine tube and bag out of my back or try to live with the total incontinence. I was so petrified to get another surgery at that point; I chose to try to cope with it. My new urology surgeon said my insides were such a mess and so inflamed, we had to wait several months before he could cut away the damaged part of my tube and reinsert it into my bladder. The reinsertion surgery seven months after the medical error was as painful as the total kidney block I’d had after the surgery with Dr. Ziff. The pain was off the charts, despite an internal pain port and IV meds. I woke up with three tubes sticking out of me and literally felt like there was a chance I might not make it. I was inpatient for five days both times and on medical leave for more than four months total that year, some of which caused me to lose pay. I incurred debt from the expenses - medical supplies, copays and loss of pay. Meanwhile, IHA just opened their brand new shiny building on the west side. Never once have they reached out to me to offer any kind of compensation. I’m still, more than two years later, recovering from what happened to me during that surgery. This has been a total nightmare! I wish I had never gone to Dr. Ziff or Dr. Gimenez and I would highly recommend patients think twice before scheduling surgery with either of them!