Waking up under the surgeon’s knife.

Canadian Donna Penner was relaxed at the prospect of abdominal surgery – until she woke up just before the surgeon made his first incision. She describes how she survived the excruciating pain of being operated on while awake.In 2008, I was booked in for an exploratory laparoscopy at a hospital in my home province of Manitoba in Canada. I was 44 and I had been experiencing heavy bleeding during my periods.

I had a general anesthetic before and I knew I was supposed to have one for this procedure. I never had a problem with them, but when we got to the hospital I found myself feeling quite anxious.During a laparoscopy, the surgeon makes incisions into your abdomen through which they will push instruments so they can take a look around. You have three or four small incisions instead of one big one.

The operation started off well. They moved me on to the operating table and started to do all the normal things that they do – hooking me up to all the monitors and prepping me.
The anesthesiologist gave me something in an intravenous drip and then he put a mask on my face and said, “Take a deep breath.” So I did, and drifted off to sleep like I was supposed to.When I woke up I could still hear the sounds in the operating room. I could hear the staff banging and clanging and the machines going – the monitors and that kind of thing. I thought, “Oh good, it’s over, it’s done.

I was lying there feeling a little medicated, but at the same time I was also alert and enjoying that lazy feeling of waking up and feeling completely relaxed.
That changed a few seconds later when I heard the surgeon speak.They were moving around and doing their things and then all of a sudden I heard him say, “Scalpel please.” I just froze. I thought, “What did I just hear?

There was nothing I could do. I had been given a paralytic, which is a common thing they do when work on the abdomen because it relaxes the abdominal muscles so they don’t resist as much when you’re cutting through them.

Unfortunately the general anesthetic hadn’t worked, but the paralytic had.
I panicked. I thought this cannot be happening. So I waited for a few seconds, but then I felt him make the first incision. I don’t have words to describe the pain – it was horrific.
I could not open my eyes. The first thing that I tried to do was to sit up, but I couldn’t move. It felt like somebody was sitting on me, weighing me down.