When Christina Marrongelli woke up from back surgery in 2015, she said she discovered second and third degree burns on her upper thigh.

She said she still has the imprint of a surgical instrument on her skin.

Only, an explanation of the injury appears nowhere in her medical record.

"I need to know what happened to me," Marrongelli said.

She addressed the state Board of Medical Licensure about her case in its meeting Thursday morning. Marrongelli had sent a complaint to the board asking for an investigation, but in its response, it said it couldn't take action.

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"My concern is, why is the board not looking into things that have permanent disfigurement and harm to people? What does it take to go ahead and get an investigation going?" Marrongelli asked in the meeting. "The problem is, I didn't even know what you looked at. I got three pages (saying) you just didn't find anything. My concerns are transparency ... If this happened to me, how many other people were there?"

Marrongelli said she did not believe she had a medical malpractice lawsuit without documentation of her injury and now, the statute of limitations has expired.

"We did what we're legally supposed to do. We don't handle medical liability issues," board president Charles Miles told The Clarion-Ledger later. "If you have something done, you don't think the outcome is what it should be, that's not a licensure issue, unless it becomes habitual."

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But Marrongelli said the issue is recurring — she found two other women who said they, or a loved one, had complications after surgery by the same surgeon. They were also at the board meeting.

Miles said the board has received "a few" complaints against Jackson neurosurgeon Dr. Adam Lewis and that he will be able to talk about the matter in a few months.

Attorney Whit Johnson spoke on behalf of Lewis, telling The Clarion-Ledger that Lewis does not have any information regarding what the medical licensure board is doing and he cannot discuss the cases because of physician-patient privilege.

Together, the three women say their stories show the state's inaction in rooting out bad doctors.

One of the women, Vesta Hathaway, 69, sued Lewis, who performed an anterior lateral fusion on her lower spine in 2004. She claimed Lewis failed to identify and remove a bone fragment caused by the surgery, ultimately causing nerve damage in her lower back, a partially paralyzed leg and lifelong pain.

She walks with a rolling walker.

After the first jury in her case was deadlocked, a new jury found Lewis was not negligent in his treatment of Hathaway in February 2011. In 2013, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied Hathaway's motion for a new trial.

Before surgery, "she could run faster than me," said her son Randall. Now, "I have two beautiful kids, but she can't enjoy them," he said.

The third woman, Kasey Moore-Byrd, was included in a 2011 Wall Street Journal article about the death of her husband, Gary Moore, after a spinal-fusion surgery. Lewis performed the operation.

The women hope their testimony will start a discussion about making complaints against doctors more easily accessible for folks considering surgery.

Contact Anna Wolfe at 601-961-7326 or awolfe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter.