Imagine going in for surgery, being given anesthetic and then hearing the doctor say “scalpel please,” but not being able to move.
That’s what Manitoba’s Donna Penner says happened to her a few years ago. She says the surgeon’s words sent a “shock through her system.”
“I had no choice but to lay there and feel all the cutting,” Penner recalls with a shudder.
Penner said she hadn’t been given enough anesthesia to make her fully unconscious.
Dr. Eric Jacobsohn, head of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Manitoba, says that incidents like what Penner describes are extremely rare.
"If you have an appropriately trained person, and you go to an appropriate facility, you can have safe surgery with good outcomes,” he said.
But if something does go wrong, patients have rights, according to the Manitoba Institute for Patient Safety. Director Laurie Thompson say patients can ask hospitals for a disclosure record to learn details of what may have occurred.
“The patient and family are allowed to and have the right to know what the facts are,” she said.
Patients can also sue for medical malpractice or complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
No matter how rare having surgery while awake may be, Penner says she will continue to tell her story.
“If I can do something to spare someone that kind of experience,” she says, “I will tell it a thousand times."
With a report from CTV Winnipeg’s Jon Hendricks
