A 69-year-old woman has told an inquiry into allegations of poor professional performance by a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist that a hysterectomy operation ruined her life.
Helen Cruise also said she was horrified at the way Dr Peter Van Geene spoke to her after it.
She said she never met Dr Van Geene until her operation in August 2011 at Aut Even private hospital in Kilkenny.
Ms Cruise said she had seven children and suffered incontinence problems, which had made her life miserable.
She was assessed at St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny and put on the public waiting list there for treatment.
Ms Cruise said she was delighted to later get a referral, under the National Treatment Purchase Fund, for treatment at Aut Even.
Due to severe complications after the operation, she was transferred to St Luke's and she said she thought she was going to die.
She said Dr Van Geene visited her in St Luke's and told her that her post-operative bleeding was because she coughed during the operation.
Ms Cruise claimed that Dr Van Geene "went berserk" and paced up and down the room.
She claimed he said "you did it all yourself" and slapped her on her hands and knees. She said she still suffers from incontinence, has pain and other medical problems.
Ms Cruise said she was attending a mental health clinic after the experience, was very nervous and was on medication.
Ms Cruise claimed that after the hysterectomy, Dr Van Geene told her he had thrown her womb in a bucket on the floor.
Lawyers for Dr Van Geene told the inquiry he will say the hysterectomy operation was uneventful, notes show blood loss was low and post-operative observations were normal.
He will say the most likely cause of a problem was that Ms Cruise later coughed and dislodged a ligature.
Dr Van Geene will also say that it was Ms Cruise who asked to see him at St Luke's.
The second day of the inquiry also heard evidence from Professor Ray O'Sullivan, former clinical director of St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny.
He raised problems with the National Treatment Purchase Fund scheme where public patients are referred to a private hospital, to cut public waiting lists.
Prof O'Sullivan said he ended up seeing a number of patients after complications following surgery by Dr Van Geene and wrote to the Medical Council regarding two patients.
One was Patient A, who gave evidence yesterday, and the second was Ms Cruise, who gave evidence today in public.
Prof O'Sullivan, who is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, said Ms Cruise had been his patient and was on the St Luke's public waiting list, but was taken off it under the NTPF to be treated privately at Aut Even.
He said one of the downsides to the NTPF is that he, as her primary physician, was not made aware of her being moved to the NTPF scheme in 2011, to get public waiting lists down.
He said the next time he saw Ms Cruise was in the St Luke's Hospital coronary care unit, after she was transferred there following her hysterectomy at Aut Even, with significant post-operative bleeding.
He told the inquiry that one of the failings of the NTPF was that when there are complications with private treatment, patients end up back in the public system "and we wind up trying to fix them".
Dr Van Geene is facing allegations that four patients suffered significant and serious complications after a hysterectomy.
In relation to Patient A, Prof O'Sullivan said she had sought his opinion regarding treatment for bleeding.
Patient A had a hysterectomy at Aut Even under Dr Van Geene in April 2009. Prof O' Sullivan said he had not seen complications like it after the type of surgery she had.
He said it should have been first-world surgery. Prof O'Sullivan said if it had been a once-off case, it could perhaps happen to any doctor.
But he said he was aware of other patients who had problems after surgery under Dr Van Geene.
The inquiry has adjourned until tomorrow.
