One of the most terrifying mysteries of modern medicine is why a small minority of patients given anaesthesia will wake up during surgery, forced to endure the agony of the procedure while paralyzed and unable to call for help. While anaesthesia represents a tremendous advance in medical science from the days when alcohol and opium were the only painkillers, using it properly is complicated, and there are many limits to our understanding of how it functions. This means that, in rare but nightmarish cases, people may not be given enough or the right kinds of anaesthesia to make them fully unconscious.
Key Takeaways:
- People who have gone through traumatic events with surgery and anesthesia will have attacks triggered by little things in their daily life.
- Donna woke up while the surgeon was carrying out the operation on her and it was an extremely traumatic experience.
“With her body still paralysed by the anaesthetic drugs, she was unable to signal that anything was wrong.”
