Awake And Paralyzed During Surgery
By www.menhealthonline.biz
The Trauma of Awakening
Awareness under anesthesia ranks second only to death as a dreaded complication of surgery. It is reported to affect 40,00-140,000 patients per year in the US but there is reason to believe that many more have awakened during surgery. Because modern anesthesia consists of three agents – a light dose of painkiller, a paralyzing drug, and an amnesic agent that blocks memory of the experience – most patients do not remember awakening and so do not report it to their doctors. The paralyzing drug prevents any struggle or gesture as sign of distress so the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and nurse cannot see that the patient is awake. Some experimental studies estimate the rate of awareness may be as high as 44%.
Not remembering does not diminish the pain, fear, and utter helplessness of awakening under the knife and being unable to let anyone know. Nor does it diminish the traumatic effect of that experience. Survivors who finally recall the awakening usually describe an experience in which their center of awareness coalesces outside their helpless body and they watch the scene from above. Their frozen state and accompanying depersonalization seems to go on and on without a clear point of resolution. The return to the body may happen in the recovery room or even later in the hospital room and, rarely, only after days, weeks, or years.
Posttraumatic Consequences
The experience of awakening in a panic during surgery and finding oneself unable to move or cry out creates a dramatic crescendo of survival instincts. The drug-induced paralysis thwarts any impulse to escape and deepens the instinctual freeze response. Awareness during surgery carries the exact conditions known to induce post-traumatic symptoms. The horrors of the experience become embedded in the nonverbal mind with a potential to intrude into consciousness whenever triggered. The suffering