Donda West's doctor left another woman with an 18-inch infected wound

WHEN RAPPER KANYE WEST'S MUM DIED SUDDENLY IT SHOCKED THE SHOWBIZ WORLD.

WHEN RUMOURS BUZZED THAT SHE DIED BECAUSE OF COMPLICATIONS AFTER ALLEGEDLY SEEKING COSMETIC SURGERY THE RACE WAS ON TO FIND OUT WHO OPERATED ON HER.

NOW ONE WOMAN WHO CLAIMS TO HAVE SUFFERED AT THE HANDS OF THE SAME DOCTOR REVEALS HER HARROWING STORY OF HOW HER NIP/TUCK EXPERIENCE ALLEGEDLY WENT WRONG.

BONITA HOVEY SAYS SHE WAS CARRYING HER COLLAPSED VAGINA IN PLACE WITH A TOWEL AFTER A TUMMY TUCK ALLEGEDLY LEFT HER WITH AN INFECTED, GAPING 18-INCH WOUND...

A woman says she was left with a gaping 18-inch infected wound after being operated on by the same surgeon who allegedly worked on Kanye West's mother hours before she died.

Bonita Hovey, 62, of Sacramento, California is suing Dr Jan Adams for professional negligence after a tummy tuck that she claims went horribly wrong.

Hovey says Adams "gutted" her and, within a few days she had to hold a towel to her underwear.

She says: "My wound was so wide open I had to take a towel and put it in my underwear to hold up my vagina because the gravity pulled it down when I walked.

"It was so uncomfortable that every time I walked the sides of the wound would tear. It was painful. I had to shuffle to go to the bathroom.

"I could barely get out of bed. My daughter had to take care of me because I bled all the time. I was bleeding for months.

'There was some fluid coming out of the wound but that was the inside of me bleeding.

"You could see inside of me. My insides had separated from the layers of flesh. It collapsed on the inside. It was a horrible sight."

Hovey, who paid Dr Adams $10,000 up front for the surgery is suing him for professional negligence, breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation.

She says: "I was so upset to hear that Dr West had died.

"It made me cry because I thought that could have been me two years ago. And it made me sad to think that he was still practicing medicine given what I know today about his history.

"I just can't believe that he did another surgery. It's a travesty. It truly is. My heart goes out to the West family."

Now Bonita Hovey, 62, tells her heartbreaking story:

"When I met Dr Adams I was so impressed by his list of credentials. I heard him give a talk at a health and beauty conference for black women in 2005.

It was in Los Angeles and MediSpa - a centre I had been going to for facials - sent me an invitation. Thinking it might be interesting I went along.

To be honest a tummy tuck wasn't initially my intent at all. But the way that Dr Adams presented himself brought to mind a cancer scar that I had for a number of years.

"I had colon cancer in 1992 and the operation left me with a raised, ugly scar that started just above my bellybutton and went down to the top of my pubic area.

Dr Adams claimed to be board certified plastic surgeon and said the Black Women's Physicians of Los Angeles endorsed him.

With such recommendations I thought he could remove my embarrassing scar. Why wouldn't I think that he was reputable?

He came with high recommendations - his peers and a prestigious group of Los Angeles women who excelled in their fields.

He had 'before' and 'after' pictures posted up showing his 'success stories'.

As a sensible person you would think this information must be okay.

Even if I checked him out on the web, back then I didn't know which site to go to? And even if I did, what would it really say about a doctor?

If it listed information about it might not say whether or not someone filed a malpractice suit against him. It was a crapshoot.

Besides I had no reason to doubt Dr Adams. When I approached him at the conference he assured me he could get rid of my scar.

Saying he could take care of it he told me to make an appointment to see him.

But when I met Dr Adams at his office I immediately sensed that something was wrong. During my consultation he didn't want me to look at him.

He insisted that I look in the mirror while he tried to convince me to have plastic surgery done on my face, around my eyes.

I was scared to do that so I said: 'No'.

Meanwhile Dr Adams became irritated with me because I kept on trying to look at him while he spoke - as people normally do when they are having a conversation.

I thought his behaviour was strange but I dismissed it, thinking he was eccentric.

He was arrogant and he rude but that didn't mean he wasn't a good doctor.

In fact he assured me he was a brilliant surgeon and when I told him I was scared about the operation he said:

'Don't worry. I'll take care of it. You'll be running on the beach in two weeks.

'It's a simple surgery. I've done this many times. You'll be fine'.

In hindsight it's scary how little Dr Adams told me. As I stood up, he sat down and drew lines on my body with a felt-tip pen and although my daughter repeatedly asked him questions he stayed silent and continued to draw lines on my belly.

He didn't go into a lot of detail about the abdominoplasty.

At no point did he tell me he was going to cut me from one side to the other - from hip to hip.

Or that he was going to pull back my skin, cut it and pull it so far down that when I woke up my breasts were not where they used to be.

They were pulled down. All Dr Adams told me is that he was going to make a low incision. It sounded so simple.

Instead, he gave me a new bellybutton - and an ugly one I might add.

He sliced me from above my original bellybutton, pulled the skin all the way down, cut it and reconnected me.

He literally gutted me to such an extent I needed two subsequent operations to rectify his botched surgery.

On the day of the operation I arrived at the clinic around 6.30 in the morning and my operation started about an hour later.

In the late afternoon I remember being woken up from the anaesthesia.

Still groggy from the medication I awoke to the staff urging me to leave.

'I'm not ready to go', I said. 'I feel sick. I want to throw up'.

'I'm sorry, you have to go', they insisted.

It turns out that another patient needed my bed.

There were people waiting in the lobby waiting to go in.

So I had to walk out - after major surgery - with the clothes I came in with.

I was freezing cold because I didn't have a jacket.

My daughter begged the staff to give me a blanket to wrap around me and after her insistence they reluctantly gave me one.

That was the Monday - December 12, 2006. By that night I was throwing up at home.

I was so sick that I was vomiting throughout the next day and sweating profusely.

There was also a lot of blood coming from my wound.

My next appointment with Dr Adams was on the Wednesday and when I went into the office and I started throwing up again and he seemed a little irritated.

'Why have you come here if you're throwing up?' he asked.

Then, without wearing gloves, he started to inspect my wound and I was horrified by his reaction.

There was a patch of skin right over the bellybutton and as Dr Adams reached over and touched it and it stuck to his finger and he drew back and said:

'Ewww. Nasty' and he flicked it off.

Meanwhile I was still nauseous, lying on this table with my bottom half naked and exposed.

I was wearing this garment that was like a girdle that had zippers up the side.

When I loosened it I remember sweat pouring down my skin and Dr Adams saying that he was trying to understand why I was so antiphylactic.

In no way was he sensitive to the pain I was going through. In fact, at one point, he stood back and he looked at my surgery and he said: 'I must say I did an excellent job.'

Mind you, I'm sicker than hell, vomiting. He never took my temperature or anything.

By that night, I realised that something was really wrong because the drainage tubes that I had to wear were not holding the air anymore.

I kept squeezing them to get them to inflate to suck out the fluid because they fill your abdominal wall with fluid but they refused to work.

At 2 o'clock in the morning I terrified. I went to the bathroom and I suddenly noticed that my wound had opened up. Something was wrong.

Of course there was no one to call so I had to wait until the morning when I thought their clinic was open - around 7 o'clock.

I left a message. No one called me back all day.

That was Thursday. I called on the Friday. No one returned my call.

On the Saturday a young lady from the MediSpa called to remind me that I had an appointment to have a facial done. I had booked it weeks ago and had completely forgotten about it.

'I've just had surgery day and by the way, I've been calling the clinic for two days and nobody's called me back. That's not right', I told her, frustrated.

She called Dr Adams' other clinic and the receptionist called telling me to come to the office on Tuesday because he was leaving the country on Wednesday.

Dr Adams never told me that he was going abroad. In fact he told my daughter and I to come into the office that Wednesday!

Nevertheless I went into his office on the Tuesday and told him the tubes weren't working anymore.

'You have an infection', he said matter-of-factly. He got some scissors, shuffled around the room. He did put gloves on that time and he cut my sutures and my wound opened up.

By the end of the day, because of gravity the vaginal wall dropped down. It was so uncomfortable that every time I walked the sides of the wound would tear.

It was painful. I had to shuffle to go to the bathroom. I could barely get out of bed.

My daughter had to take care of me because I bled all the time. I was bleeding for months.

There was some fluid coming out of the wound but that was the inside of me bleeding.

You could see inside of me. My insides had separated from the layers of flesh. It collapsed on the inside. It was a horrible sight.

In desperation I asked Dr Adams: 'Can't you redo the surgery?'

That's the first thing that I thought. Let's go back and close it up again. Clean it all out and sew me back up.

No, that wasn't going to happen.

He said: 'No, we can't. You have an infection and we have to clean it out. We can't redo it'.

Instead he said that I would have to clean my wound with saline and it was going to take months to heal.

He said that in his absence his colleague Dr Knight was going to take care of me.

By the time I met up with Dr Knight the following week my wound was so wide open I had to take a towel and put it in my underwear to hold up my vagina because the gravity pulled it down when I walked.

When I went Dr Knight took a syringe and said:

'I'm going to make a cocktail for you to clean your wound. It's part saline and part hydrogen peroxide'.

If you've ever had a cut and you put hydrogen peroxide on it, burns and bubbles up. That's what I had to put on that wound.

I had to do that three times a day and every time I thought of having to do it I cried and cried.

I sat on my toilet, gripped the side of sink and poured it because they said that's what I had to do because I had an infection.

They never took a swab, never took my temperature, my blood pressure nor did any blood work.

They just assumed it was an infection.

I semi knew something was quite wrong when I went to Dr Adams' clinic on the 27 or 28 December.

I wasn't getting the sense that these people were really taking care of me.

They weren't referring me to anybody else. I cried and said: 'I'm a diabetic.

'I'm afraid I'm going to have an infection.

This is a very big wound.

I'm very susceptible to having another more serious infection'.

Dr Knight said: 'No we don't need to refer you, we can take care of you'.

Again he made this cocktail and gave me a bunch of 4-by-4 pads telling me that I had to soak them in saline, squeeze them out and I would have to stuff my wound at least two to three times a day.

Eventually in desperation I visited my local Emergency Room and the senior doctor took one look at my wound and said:

'Who did this surgery? Where did you have it done?'

His nurse technician recommended that I go to a wound vac clinic where than close wounds but I couldn't find anyone who was prepared to help me.

Even the certified plastic surgeon that he recommended refused to touch me and suggested that I return to Dr Adams and Dr Knight.

No other doctor wanted to get involved. It was only when I returned to my hometown of Sacramento, because I had earlier requested a job transfer that my old GP took me back.

Eventually almost a year later exploratory surgery revealed that Dr Adams had left stitches in my wound that hadn't dissolved.

One was so high up that we thought it was an infected hernia.

To this day I still suffer pain. I'm limited to doing certain physical things. I can't stand a really long time.

I can't go to a shopping mall and go from shop to shop or go to an amusement park or take a walk in the park.

I can't do that anymore. I have to sit because my wound hurts. After all this time it still feels like a wound.

I'm now suing Dr Adams. He needs to know how much I suffered - for months - when they could have taken care of me a lot earlier.

I sensed that Dr Knight was covering up what happened because what doctor with good sense or humanity would allow someone to have that kind of wound and not refer them to a specialist?

I had to borrow 240 hours of sick leave to recover which takes two years to repay so if I take time off from work I either have to take leave without pay or I have to wait every two weeks to earn eight hours of annual leave to go to my doctors appointments.

I can't even afford to take a day off of rest or a vacation.

After my subsequent surgeries I went to work with my staples in my belly. If I didn't work I didn't get paid. If I didn't get paid I can't pay my mortgage.

Only one positive thing can come out of this. If Kanye West could use his celebrity to create a foundation in honour of his mother to help women of colour who are targeted by this clinic to have a site or place they can go to properly screen a doctor to find out what you should and should not do.

He preyed upon women of colour - the most vulnerable women in the community, many of whom don't have medical insurance that can follow up there can't afford a $25,000 tummy tuck so they go to Adams who is going to charge less."