Awake during surgery: rare, but frightening

MSNBC ^ | 05.18.04

[Coleus]

	Carol Weihrer talks to a group at the Trinity Methodist Church, in April in Virginia. Weihrer is speaking out about anesthesia awareness after her experience of feeling her surgery under general anethesia during an eye operation.
Linda Spillers / AP file

MCLEAN, Va. - The pain in Carol Weihrer’s eye was so severe she decided to have it surgically removed, believing it was the only way to get on with life.

Instead, the surgery was the beginning of an unending nightmare. Her anesthesia failed, leaving her awake but paralyzed for a five-hour surgery in which doctors cut and gouged to remove her right eye.

“You feel really grueling pulling on your eye, but you can’t move to relieve the pressure,” Weihrer said recently.

‘You’re sure you’ll die if you can’t let them know you’re awake...And then you think, ‘Maybe you did die ... and maybe you’re in hell’.’

— Carol Weihrer

[Cheesel]

Happened to me when I was 17. I was being operated on for peritonitis. I felt the cold air hit my intestinal tract. I was pretty out of it, still...I tried to get off the operating table. A large male nurse held me down. I remember waking up and seeing the OR lights and thinking ‘This can’t be happening...’ I had nightmares for months after that.