Ambar went for a routine surgery and landed in a coma

Ambar-Rose Powell went into hospital hoping for relief after years of agonising periods.
Instead, she landed in a 12-day coma, had to learn how to walk again, and is facing thousands of dollars’ worth of medical bills.
“I only have $100 to my name, and I’m struggling with everything at the moment,” she tells 9honey.
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The 19-year-old from Sydney experienced brutally painful periods from a young age, causing her to miss out on school and struggle to hold a job.
“When I had my period, I would be balled up in bed, bawling my eyes out, calling an ambulance, having really bad migraines, hot and cold sweats,” she says.
Finally diagnosed with endometriosis in 2024, her gynecologist suggested she undergo surgery to remove diseased tissue inside her body and manage her debilitating symptoms.
The procedure was scheduled for July 1, 2024 and Powell was told she’d only have to stay in hospital for a couple of days. Instead, she was there for over a month.
After waking up from surgery, Powell’s gynecologist confessed she’d never seen so much endometrial tissue inside a human being in her entire career.
She’d had to cut the diseased tissue off the teen’s uterus, both ovaries, and her bowel, and it had been spreading towards her liver too.
What they didn’t know at the time was that, in removing endometrial tissue that had been adhered to Powell’s bowel, part of the wall of her bowel had been damaged.
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Two days after surgery, Powell went to the bathroom and felt something strange.
“I was crying in pain and I couldn’t open my bowels,” she says.
“I was sitting on the toilet for so long, and I just had this sudden relief, but I didn’t actually ‘go’.”
Within 24 hours, she was suffering from life-threatening sepsis.
The ‘relief’ she had felt was actually part of her bowel rupturing, allowing bacteria from her waste to spread into her blood. If doctors didn’t act fast, it could kill her.
“I think I passed out,” Powell vaguely recalls, “and they had to put me in an induced coma.”
She woke up 12 days later in the ICU with no clue how she’d ended up there.
It wasn’t until she looked down and saw a “massive” scar down the middle of her stomach, right next a colostomy bag sticking out of her belly, that she realised something had gone wrong.
”I was hysterical.”
The damage to her bowel had caused waste to leak into her abdomen, so surgeons had created an opening for her colon through her belly to allow waste to empty into an external bag instead.
The procedure could be reversed but not until Powell had recovered from her ordeal, and that was going to take a while.
She had to re-learn how to walk after being bedbound for weeks and the first time she stood up her legs collapsed under her, even though she’d lost almost 15 kilos.
“It took about a week to be able to get up on my own with a walker,” she reveals.
Then there was physiotherapy, specialist appointments, and constant follow-ups before she was finally discharged on August 4, over a month after her original surgery.
Being trapped in a sterile hospital room for weeks had taken a toll on her already fragile mental health after such a terrifying ordeal.
“I begged them to let me go home, because I was just so sick of being in the hospital.”
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But once she got home, Powell had to face a new battle: paying for everything.
Even with health insurance, she’s looking at thousands of dollars worth of medical bills across medication to help her recovery, gap fees for follow-up appointments, and the surgery to reverse her colostomy.
Surgeons have told her the reversal will cost between $1000 and $1500, but that’s money the young Australian just doesn’t have.
“I’ve still got to go to shop and get food. It’s the cost of living, which I was already struggling with from the get go,” she says.
Powell has started an online fundraiser in the hopes of raising the cash she desperately needs to cover her mounting medical bills.
And she’s not the only Aussie relying on the kindness of strangers to pay for unexpected medical bills in the cost of living crisis.
“Fundraisers for medical expenses, and associated costs of long-term illness, are the top category of fundraiser on GoFundMe,” Nicola Britton, GoFundMe’s Regional Director, tells 9honey.
“In fact, they represent more than a fifth (23 per cent) of all fundraisers launched on the platform in Australia.”
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With just $100 to her name, Powell hopes that strangers online will be willing to part with their hard-earned cash to help her make up the difference and get the colostomy reversal surgery she desperately wants after such a traumatic ordeal.
Despite all she’s been through over the last two months, she doesn’t regret undergoing the initial surgery for her endometriosis.
“I’m grateful that that pain is gone but I’ve got a different pain now, which is my colostomy bag.”
She hopes to see that gone soon as well.
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