Woman recovering from surgery is confused when she spots stitches coming out. Then his staff tells her, ‘he didn’t put a single stitch in you’

Hannah Sutherland’s routine recovery from an endometriosis surgery just turned into a mystery, and as a way to deal with her confusion, she took her followers along for the ride. Posting under madebyhannahmae on Instagram and TikTok, she often shared stories from her life with lupus. This time, however, four weeks after the surgery, she found stitches being pushed out of her body down under and freaked out, since she hadn’t expected it.

In a video series that already has over 900K views in two days, Hannah began by sharing her disbelief from her car. She claimed, “Surgery on my insides four weeks ago. And just two days ago, I had stitches coming out from inside of me. And I’m like, hmm, that’s weird. Number one, my doctor never told me that that would happen.” Hannah then added, “Number two, it doesn’t make sense where the surgery was, for stitches to be able to come out from inside of me.”

Her confusion was compounded after she struggled to get in touch with her doctor. Hannah claimed that she called his office on Monday and Tuesday, leaving a message when no one answered. Then on Wednesday, his staff gave Hannah some jarring news. Hannah alleged, “She’s like, oh, yeah, so we talked to the doctor about your message, um, and he said he didn’t put a single stitch in you the whole surgery.”

A surgical impossibility

The information led to a series of panicked questions from Hannah. She vented, “So I’m like, who put stitches in me? Why? Where, when, what?” She even questioned if the surgeon had been in the operating theatre the entire time she was unconscious, and the staff allegedly confirmed he was. 

This piece of information, combined with what she had found, left her feeling scared and questioning the integrity of her care. She noted, “Did they do some sort of testing on me while I was out? Did they mess something up and not want to tell me, so they just. Oops, stitch it up. Hope she doesn’t find this.”

Thousands of viewers jumped into the comments to provide advice and support. A common note was that any surgery needed some method of closure, and that sutures were common in her surgery, which was a laparoscopic procedure. 

One commenter mentioned, “You had laparoscopic surgery..there’s no way your doctor did not use sutures. At the very least the 5mm ports were closed with an absorbable suture under the skin to close and if they places a 10mm port a heavier suture was used to close the fascia to prevent hernia down the road.” 

Another medical professional added, “I’ve NEVER encountered a surgery where we did NOT suture SOMETHING…even laparoscopic/robotic, the ports need to be closed???? So I’m confused why someone would tell you they did not suture you at all?”

In a follow-up post on TikTok, Hannah provided more detail and photos of the ‘stitches’ she had found. She claimed that she sent it to the surgeon. She claimed, “He looks at it, and he’s like, no, that’s like gauze. Like, that’s not stitches. I didn’t put any stitches in you.” 

Hannah didn’t buy it. She ranted to her viewers, “First of all, four weeks ago, how could there possibly still be gauze? Second of all, let me show you these pictures. Let me show them to you. I’m gonna put them up. That’s a stitch. Like, you can see the knots.” She stood her ground, adding, “You can’t try to gaslight me right now and tell me it’s gauze, because that’s a stitch. One hundred thousand, million, kajillion percent.”

Finally, an in-person appointment provided the truth. Hannah shared an emotional update, revealing that the material was indeed stitches. It’s worth noting that the doctor’s side of this exchange comes entirely from Hannah’s own retelling of their conversations, and hasn’t been independently confirmed.

In the caption of her latest post, she explained, “4-0 Monocryl to be exact, and I wasn’t told, nobody told me, the doctor forgot he did them and said he thought it was too insignificant to report and tell me: ‘during the process of placing the HUMI in the uterus the hymenal ring was expanded and the expansion was repaired with 4-0 Monocryl to reapproximate the edges of the hymenal ring’ — that is from the operative report that I asked him to print out and give to me.”

Monocryl is a standard, absorbable, monofilament suture often used for skin closure, according to For The Love of Surgery. These sutures are designed to break down in the body over time, which means they don’t typically need to be removed. 

Similarly, the HUMI device she mentioned, a disposable form of Uterine Manipulator, is a common tool used in gynecologic surgery. According to JDMeditech, uterine manipulators are designed to provide precise uterine positioning and enhanced pelvic visualization during minimally invasive procedures. All in all, just standard procedure.