Anesthesia Awareness & Waking During Surgery

This has to do with real experience. My husband is a retired orthopedic surgeon, Vietnam Veteran and an all around great husband, father and grandfather. He has had many surgeries himself. I can't recall the number of times he has woke up during surgeries while under General Anesthetic. That means he has sat up on the operating table, removed the tube from his throat and spoke to the surgical medical team. This has happened at least four times. In many of his recent surgeries he's given mass doses of local anesthetic like lidocaine during the procedure. He can feel the cutting and he gets those lidocaine shakes. The surgeons would rather do this than for him to wake up. He's had this happen in some of the finest hospitals in the US. This has the anesthesia people freaking out. They have no answer why? He belongs to the Anesthesia Awareness group at the University of Washington medical school and hospital. All the surgeries he's had , 34 of them have been of the orthopedic nature. Failure of tendons and other connective tissue and numerous basal cell and malignant melanoma skin cancers. He's never been a sun tan person in his life.

Here are some odd and unbelievable things he's experienced in his life. The first has medical people baffled. My husband was born with o+ blood type and remained o+ all the way to his Army Dog Tags. After Vietnam he has been through medical hell with neurological malfunctions, gastrointestinal etc. Name it and he's most like experienced it. He's never had any heart problems. After many testings by VA hospitals and the big guns in Chicago like Northwestern and University of Chicago he is now o- blood type. It's a know fact now that type A blood with some high class refining can be changed into type O blood and is now being used for donation. This opens the door as science now is thinking that if exposure to TCDD/Dioxin/Agent Orange can change the DNA in animals and science can change a blood type then environmental toxins like organophosphates and organochlorines could actually change a human DNA and change a blood type. So he is at least one person that's experienced an actual blood type change. He has a great tolerance for pain. He's had root canals, teeth fillings and incisions made and sutured up without any numbing. He tests himself to see what he can or cannot tolerate. Prior to his own surgeries he's counted down to the lower 70's to the mid 60's using the, "One thousand 99, one thousand 98 etc method" When the tiny holes in the ceiling tile begin to spin he is then aware he's going under but nothing says he will stay that way" Any of you real medical professionals here experience any thing like this in your practice or even heard of it.

My husband is a "Service Connected" meaning the Veterans Administration admits he was damaged and poisoned by TCDD/Dioxin/Agent Orange while in Vietnam and on US bases that were used for Dioxin testing. Medicine now believes he's been twisted by this exposure that will kill him a bit at a time every day of his life. I could go on but I would be here all day.

Medical Professionals what do you know or not know about Dioxin exposure? It appears modern day physicians don't understand, believe or know as much as the old timers that witnessed some of the original exposures and how Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. And my husband and many others now suffering and many dead and gone wonder why our government knowingly poisoned them and still today suffer in many terrible ways.

My husband is a fine man and rolls with the punches. He says, I was a volunteer, It was my request to go to Vietnam it was never my request to be poisoned by my country.

Gynedoll, a good friend of mine had heart trouble from exposure to agent Orange and died at age 64 from his exposure in the late 60's-early 70's.

Several types of surgery are now done under heavy sedation, rather than general anesthesia. My aortic aneurysm repair was done under heavy sedation. I could hear people talking and feel warm blood and cold sterile saline on my abdomen. If I'd jump at the cold feeling, my vascular surgeon would ask me if I was OK. I felt the Cath go in before surgery and they used adhesive tape over my ankles and knees, under the O.R. table to lock my limbs to the table. I never felt any pain during the puncture of my femoral arteries and insertion of the stents up into my aorta. I assume thy used some sort of local anesthesia inside me. My worst pain was in my spine, from laying on the table that felt like a steel rail.

Post op., my R.N.'s told me that most all the narcotic pain meds they gave patients , were for back pain. These were "Y-sited" into our I.V.'s.

Hello jimmyt44, and "Thank You": for sharing your experience. My husbands last big surgery, a rotator cuff rebuild on his right shoulder was very similar to yours. I can't share in technical language but a wire or stent was put in through his neck to block nerves so he could not feel pain. He also had a dougnut shaped bag above him that dripped anesthetic. He was totally aware of what was going on. Three tendons were re-attached to the bones. The surgery took quite a long time. He had a similar round device that he wore at home for two days after surgery that metered anesthetic into that same nerve area. He was way out there as far as being coherent goes but not in that much pain. I kept in constant contact with a doctor. Once that doughnut drip was finished I removed that stent from his neck. That was my job. The doctor assured me it would be okay. It was okay for me but for my husband it was hell for the next two weeks and the pain he went through. He had some oral pain killers but they afforded little relief. It took him a good three months to finally get his mental abilities back. It was as if all that anesthetic took a toll on his brain function?

I'm saddened about your friend! It's a shame that the military was told that they were messing with the wrong stuff. I recall the movie Brave Heart about William Wallace. The evil King commanding the archers to loose the arrows. His captain saying, "But Sire We Will Be Killing Our Men Also" the poor cavalry on foot! The King replied "But We Will Be Killing Some Of The Enemy Also" That was the same thinking during that war and the US knew it. They were warned and did it anyway. And now that lives on in the children and grandchildren of our veterans. Not only in the US but the boys from New Zealand, Australia, South Korea etc that were in Vietnam also. And the poor people of Vietnam itself.

Have a nice day jimmyt44!

Gynedoll, I know that orthopedic surgery is physically demanding. Some ortho. friends I called on let me watch their surgeries through a window into the O.R. They were like body and fender mechanics; pounding with hammer and chisels on new hip replacements and dripping with sweat. The only female ortho. I ever knew specialized in hand and wrist surgery only.

JBL did not do any favors to our service men in Nam. Micro-managing combat operations from the White House. I was a rifle platoon leader for a short time with the 1st Infantry Division and saw the damage done to our troops, from jamming new M-16's to the handcuffs placed on our senior officers in their conduct of that war. Nixon got blamed for much of it, as he tried to do his "Peace with Honor" actions. Both presidents were stupid, but our G.I.'s suffered. I pulled some strings with an ROTC classmate who got assigned to the Marksmanship Training Unit at Ft. Benning and he got me assigned to his unit there also. I was never so happy to have been an outstanding marksman and qualify for that same unit. It got me out of hell.

Could your hubby's shoulder problems have been from the pounding that ortho's take over the years?

God Bless you both.

My husband had the brachial plexus area on his right side mangled during an attack on Phouc Vinh, summer of 1970. He was in the Primary Blast Zone of an incoming 122 mm rocket. The concussion waves broke four ribs and did lung damage. He said, "I heard that high pitched whistle and I knew it had my name on it" The impact blew him through the air but he was not hit by shrapnel because he was so close to the explosion. The fragmentation had passed him. He was with two other men. These fellas were on either side of him and about fifteen feet behind him. Both of them took shrapnel. My husband tended to them without any medical supplies. He said it was strange that their wounds were not bleeding. They were sealed by embedded hot shrapnel.

Over the years median and ulnar nerve damage caught up to him. It took years to manifest damage but eventually ulnar nerve transfer and then carpal tunnel surgeries had to be done. He suffers to this day with pleural effusions in both lungs. When it got to the point to where he could no longer use his hands very well he knew his practicing days were finished. I recall after he had that big shoulder surgery the surgeon was dripping wet with sweat. He said, "That was tedious and miserable"

During the 4th of July we normally go away from the town crowds and fire works. My husband has this built in self preservation action that automatically happens. He hears a high pitched whistle and he hits the deck!

God Bless You Also jimmyt44