Mother-of-six, 46, lost her legs, hands and lips after hysterectomy went badly wrong, $68m lawsuit alleges

DAILYMAIL.COM • 5h ago

By LAURA PARNABY, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER 15:55 12 Oct 2026, updated 16:25 12 Oct 2026

A mother-of-six has lost her hands, legs, and lips after her hysterectomy surgery went badly wrong, according to a new $68.5 million lawsuit.

Trisha Stevens, 46, from Boring, Oregon, has sued three doctors and two Portland-area hospitals for allegedly delaying crucial treatment by failing to properly diagnose sepsis symptoms which required urgent surgery.

Stevens, whose children were aged between seven and 21 at the time of her operation, almost died from the infection, and has been left devastated by the ordeal.

‘There are days I still do not know which was harder: almost dying or waking up and realizing everything that was taken from me,’ Stevens told NBC affiliate KGW8, speaking beside her firefighter husband, Brian.

Her lawsuit, seen by the Daily Mail, states that she suffered ‘catastrophic’ injuries after contracting sepsis following the removal of her fallopian tubes and a hysterectomy at Bridgetown Medical Group’s Portland center on October 4, 2024.

It takes aim at the surgeon, Dr Alvin Nakamura, for allegedly failing to review pathology results which showed inflammation four days later.

Instead of this being flagged and treated, Stevens endured increasing pain in her abdomen over the next two weeks, according to her lawsuit.

Stevens said this came to a head when she suffered a ‘sudden tearing and popping sensation’ while walking down the bleacher stairs at her son’s football game.

She called Nakamura’s clinic on October 22 to report continued bleeding at the site of her surgery, passing a blood clot ‘the size of a baseball’, fever, diarrhea and stomach cramping, according to the lawsuit.

A nurse picked up her call and advised her to ‘rest and hydrate’. Nakamura told the nurse to instruct Stevens to monitor her bleeding at home and only come in to the hospital if she passed another clot, the filing alleges.

However, roughly 13 hours after the call, at 11.10pm, Stevens’ condition worsened, and she was rushed to the emergency department at Legacy Mount Hood.

Her lawsuit states that she was suffering with a very high heart rate, low blood pressure, rapid breathing, and was ‘saturating vaginal pads with blood at a rate of three per hour’.

Stevens was diagnosed with eritonitis, an inflammation of the abdominal lining; lactic acidosis, a buildup of acid in the blood; and acute kidney injury.

Medics later found bacteria in her bloodstream, and said she had gone into septic shock – a rare and often deadly condition.

On-call doctor Gregory Eilers found that the edges of her hysterectomy wound had separated and looked raw, and diagnosed an infection at the site at about 3.24am, according to the lawsuit.

Stevens has sued Eliers in the suit for allegedly failing to recommend surgery at this point, or test for infection inside her abdomen despite her symptoms suggesting she had this.

Several hours later, the on-call general surgeon, Dr Robert Azar, assessed Stevens’ case, and recommended antibiotics, per the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Stevens’ infection spread throughout her body, causing several of her organs to fail. Dr Azar is also named as a defendant in the suit for allegedly also failing to recommend surgery to clear out the infection.

On November 6, both of Stevens’ legs were amputated above the knee, followed by her right hand, left thumb, and portions of her left fingers.

Tissue necrosis – the death of cells due to infection – also took away portions of her lips and tongue, while spinal cord damage left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Stevens’ lawsuit claims that the doctors and hospitals involved prior to surgery were negligent for delaying treatment of the abdominal infection.

‘Before becoming ill, she was a full-time mother and an active, independent partner in her household,’ her Portland attorney, Rhett Fraser, told Oregon Live in an email.

‘She cared for their family, managed daily life at home, drove, cooked, cleaned, attended the children’s activities, and was fully engaged in the life she and her husband had built.’

Fraser said his client cannot even eat independently or enunciate certain words, and requires daily wound care for her ulcers.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Stevens, and contacted Bridgetown Medical Group, Dr Alvin Nakamura, Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center, Legacy Health, Dr Gregory Eilers and Dr Robert Azar for comment.

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