A patient describes his horrifying experience of being awake during his surgery.
Imagine enduring major surgery while fully conscious and unable to tell anyone. That nightmare became reality for Matthew Caswell.
In 2020, Caswell underwent hernia repair and lipoma removal at Progress West Hospital in O'Fallon, Missouri. But as he was supposed to be going under, he realised something was wrong.
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According to the news report, a towel covered Caswell's face and he 'couldn't speak because he'd already received an initial paralysing agent before surgery.'
"He was paralysed, couldn't move, couldn't move his eyes, couldn't speak," Caswell's attorney, Kenneth Vuylsteke explained. "Awake but unable to move."
Caswell was supposed to receive anaesthesia through a mask over his face, but 'that gas was not turned on by the anaesthesiologist,' Vuylsteke confirmed.
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The patient felt the initial incision into his abdomen for the hernia surgery.
"I knew I was in trouble when I felt the cold iodine hit my belly and they were scrubbing me off," he recalled. "At any second I was waiting to go out. All the sudden I got stabbed in my stomach [...] it was like rusted razor blades. It was so bad. It was like torture."
Caswell is now suing the anaesthesiologist, the certified registered nurse anaesthetist and their employer, Washington University.
The lawsuit states Caswell could 'feel pain and hear everything said in the operating room for at least thirteen minutes.' Meanwhile, Caswell's attorney argued that his elevated heart rate should have alerted medical staff that he was conscious.
"His heart rate went through the roof, his blood pressure went to what's called hypertensive crisis 3, which is what happens to you right before a heart attack," Vuylsteke explained. "And it continued at that rate for 13 minutes without anyone in the operating room noticing."
Caswell told KCTV he 'would have rather died on that table.'
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A video post-Caswell's surgery, filed by his mother, shows him repeatedly saying 'I want to get out of here.' Dr. Dan Forest, who was retained as an expert witness by Caswell's lawyer, said such cases are 'not very common, but it does occur.'
Dr. Forest explained that what Caswell experienced was called 'intraoperative awareness' and noted that most cases result from equipment failure rather than staff forgetting to activate equipment.
"I think what's important is that patients speak with the anaesthesiologist prior to surgery to better understand what to expect," said Dr. Forest.