PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. -- Doctors left a foot-long sponge inside a woman's abdomen after she underwent a cesarean section six years ago. Now, she is suing as she is faced with never being able to give birth again.

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"I can't imagine that that was still inside of me for such a long time," Karlene Chambers said.

On the morning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the first-grade teacher underwent a cesarean section.

"I was pregnant with my first child," Chambers said. "I was happy."

As soon as she returned home to Pembroke Pines with her new baby, who is now 6 years old, she felt excruciating pains in her abdomen. She went back to Memorial Hospital West to find out what was wrong.

"I couldn't walk," she said. "I had to double over because the pain was horrendous."

When antibiotics did nothing to alleviate what doctors said was an infection, Dr. Joseph Becerra took an X-ray.

The radiologist noticed a foreign object lodged in the 37-year-old's abdomen, but it took days before Becerra removed the 1-foot by 1-foot surgical sponge that eventually damaged her uterus.

"He was careless for not following up on the films that he had ordered for his patient," Crane Johnstone, Chambers' attorney, said.

An X-ray would have never detected the cotton gauze alone inside Chambers' abdomen, but incidents like this have happened before. So, manufacturers attached a blue thread to the gauze so that it could be picked up on an X-ray.

"One of the significant things is my ability to have more children," Chambers said.

Becerra wasn't available to speak, but his wife, Amy, said he has admitted responsibility and is devastated.

A jury awarded Chambers $2.4 million in damages on Tuesday.

"We wish that things could have been different for everyone," Amy Becerra said.

Chambers said she is trying her best to move forward.

"It's hard," she said. "Everyday I wake up and think it's a nightmare."

Becerra was never disciplined for the incident. He is still a licensed physician, but he has since retired on disability three and a half years ago.

According to Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration, there were 88 surgeries in 2005 in hospitals statewide to remove objects left in patients from a previous operation.