New mum in 'excruciating pain' after epidural is left inside her back for days

A new mother has suffered "excruciating pain" when an epidural tube was left inside her back for four days.

Selena Gray, 18, from Florida in the US, was given the epidural on June 25 and welcomed her first child, Serenity, the following day.

But her experience as a first-time mum was tainted by the medical complication.

"The doctors have been pulling on the epidural for a whole day but couldn't get the epidural out of my back," the teenager wrote on Facebook.

"Basically, my epidural looped itself into my spine," she added in an interview with news outlet Fox19.

"It’s in a knot in my spine, and they’ve been trying to tug at it and tug at it. I haven’t been able to get up or move or do anything."

Gray decided to leave Sacred Heart Hospital, in Pensacola, for the nearby Baptist Hospital but says doctors there were unsure of what to do.

"They just keep telling me, 'In all my years, I haven't seen anything like this’. So basically, they're just as shocked as I am," she said.

In a Facebook live video, Gray’s mother Patricia Alvarado said the mishap "could even leave her paralysed if she moved the wrong way".

The new mum was transferred to the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital  in Gainesville, more than six hours away, where doctors were able to remove the epidural tube.

"They had to make an incision leaving me with stitches but I'm on the road to recovery," she said in an updated Facebook post.

"Serenity and I are on a road to recovery but with God all things are possible!"

Gray's ordeal is far from over, however. Alvarado posted an update on her daughter’s recovery saying she "could not walk without a walker… she can't stand up and hold Serenity at the same time".

"She is in such agonising pain she couldn’t use the walker to get up, she had to be lifted up off the couch, and is crying in pain," she wrote on Facebook.

"She is not doing to good and she is very scared and upset she can’t barely walk and she is in agonising pain.

"She is also very upset she can’t just get up and pick up Serenity. Someone has to bring Serenity to her."

Representatives at Sacred Heart and Baptist Hospitals declined to comment, reports Fox19.