Real patients remain awake during surgery
Story By: Bea Karnes
Source: NBC
The new movie Awake is based on a rare but terrifying reality; anesthesia that doesn't work leaving a patient awake, but unable to move or speak during surgery. In the movie, actor Hayden Christianson’s character can hear and feel what's happening as he undergoes open heart surgery. The movie is fiction, but the phenomenon isn't.
It's called anesthesia awareness and Angela Delessio says it happened to her during an emergency cesarean section. "It really felt like a form of torture. You want to communicate and you can't," Delessio said. Angela says she wanted to communicate that she felt everything and remembers everything from the operation. "I felt that I was on fire and then of course feeling the pain of surgery. The incision, being pulled apart, you feel your insides being operated on," she said.
Angela is not alone. Of the 21 million surgeries performed under general anesthesia in the U.S. each year, one study says as many as one in 14,000 patients is aware.
Dr. Donald Mathews said, "There is a spectrum of experience that ranges from people who just remember little bits of conversation all the way to people who have these prolonged and horrific experiences."
That was the case for Carol Weirer when she had surgery to remove her eye. "The next thing I heard was my surgeon telling the resident to cut deeper and pull harder. I was screaming inside myself but I knew nothing was coming out," Weihrer said.
That was ten years ago and Carol says still suffers. Carol started a support group for other victims of anesthesia awareness and a campaign to raise awareness among anesthesiologists. Weihrer said, "Many victims of awareness are told they're nuts. That they were asleep, that they had a dream, which in my opinion is an unspeakably, unforgivable word to say to a victim of awareness. It is not a dream."
Doctors aren't sure exactly why this happens. Anesthesia involves a combination of medications that provide pain relief, block the memory, induce unconsciousness, relax the muscles and inhibit the body's normal reflexes. "This is an imperfect science that we have, and a lot of what we're doing is interpreting information that's coming into us from a variety of sources to try to make the best decisions about our patients," said Mathews.
Doctors say there isn't much you can do to prevent anesthesia awareness.
But they do stress that you have to be completely honest with your anesthesiologist about past drug and alcohol abuse. If you have concerns raise them before the surgery.
