Woke up during caesarean!
Woke up during a cesarean!
Sunday 17th August 2008
One minute, I'd nipped to the hospital toilet, the next, I'd seen blood in the loo and dropped to the floor in agony.
'Mam!' I cried, terrified. 'I'm bleeding!'
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Doctors and nurses raced in to help, and I was lifted onto a trolley. Someone shouted: 'Crash!' and my jeans and stripy, green jumper were stripped off.
As I was rushed down a corridor to theatre, my mum, Tracy Edgar, 43, and my boyfriend, Robert Cox, 32, desperately tried to keep up. The operating theatre doors slammed shut behind me and my head was spinning. Am I going to die? What about my baby?
'We don't have time to get your notes,' someone told me. 'Do you have any allergies?'
I turned to see a nurse with a large plastic tube in her hand.
'I'm sorry,' she apologised. 'Because you've been eating and drinking, I have to do this.'
I gagged as she forced the tube down my throat, while the anaesthetist struggled to find a vein in my arm.
'Pump your hand,' he ordered. 'Faster!'
As they hooked me up to a breathing machine, I'd never felt so scared. Then finally, my eyes were taped shut. I waited for the general anaesthetic to kick in and for everything to go black. Seconds ticked by. Nothing.
I could still see the bright lights of the operating theatre through my closed eyelids, still hear the surgical team talking faintly in the background, as if they were far away.
'I'm going to have to try a different incision,' someone said. 'There's no time to go through the scar tissue of her last Caesarean.'
I'm not supposed to be hearing this, I panicked. Don't they know
I'm still awake?
I went to cry out, to tell them the anaesthetic hadn't worked, but I couldn't. I was paralysed.
'Can I start?' a voice asked.
'Yes,' the anaesthetist replied.
'No!' I tried to scream.
But no matter how hard I tried to force my arms to move, my eyelids to flicker, my fingers to straighten, nothing happened. I was going to feel this operation take place. And there was nothing I could do about it…
It was 26 November 2007, and earlier that day, I'd been sitting at the computer at home, when I'd felt a twinge in my stomach. Five minutes later, I'd felt another one. I was 35 weeks pregnant, but I'd had a Caesarean section with my daughter, Mia, now 3, after developing a hernia in my groin, so I'd never had a contraction before, and didn't know if that's what the twinges were.Mum had taken me to the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven, Cumbria, where staff in the maternity ward had strapped me up to a monitor to check my heart rate, and the baby's.
At first, no one had seemed concerned, but after almost two hours, the atmosphere in the room had changed.
'There's something wrong, isn't there?' I'd asked a passing doctor.
'The baby's heart rate is raised but he's fine,' he replied. 'Don't worry.'
That's when I'd asked a nurse if I could go to the loo. Only when
I'd tried to wee, I'd felt a warmth between my legs. The toilet bowl
was full of blood. Now, here I was, lying in theatre, praying the anaesthetic would kick in before the blade sliced me open. Too late. A sharp pain spread across my whole stomach, as though someone had poured a kettle of scalding water over my tummy.
Words can't describe the pain. Or the feeling of utter panic I felt, knowing I was powerless to stop it. I tried to force out a tear, hoping someone would notice, but I couldn't even cry. So I started praying. Please God let me pass out, I thought. Anything to block out the agonising pain as the surgeon rummaged around in my abdomen. As dramatic as it sounds, the pain was so horrendous, I was convinced I was going to die. Then, a female voice kicked in.
'Her heart rate and blood pressure are sky high,' she said. 'Her heart rate's erratic, too.'
Thank God. They realise something's wrong.
'The gas isn't on!' the same voice added urgently. 'She's not asleep!'
Moments later, everything started to go blurry. I came round just after midnight in a recovery room.
'I was awake,' I blurted to the recovery nurse. 'I was awake!'
She didn't confirm or deny what I'd said. She just said: 'Mmm.'
'You have a son,' she went on. 'He weighs a healthy 6lb, but he's been taken to the special care baby unit.'
Listening to her talking about my little boy, I felt numb. I couldn't stop going over and over what had happened to me.
With Mia, I'd had an epidural, so I'd watched as she was pulled from my stomach. I'd felt an awesome rush of love the first time I'd clapped eyes on her. This time, I felt nothing when Brandon was brought in to see me. I still couldn't block out the pain I'd felt. Or get the feeling out of my head of the surgeon rummaging around inside me. Just the thought of it made me feel so weak, someone had to help me hold Brandon, and I was happy to pass him back after a few moments.
I was taken by trolley to another recovery room, where Mum, Robert and my sisters, Claire McDowell, 26, and Natasha Crewdson, 21, were waiting, along with Robert's mum, Jackie.
'I was awake during the surgery,' I told Mum. 'It was awful.'
'Don't be daft,' she replied. 'You've just imagined it, that's all.'
'I heard them talking!' I insisted. 'I heard them say that they'd have to make a new incision.'
Apparently, the doctors had come out three times to tell Mum there were complications, but they hadn't said what they were.
I was still in shock two days later, when the head anaesthetist came to see me on the ward.
'I hear you claim you were awake during your Caesarean,' he said.
I braced myself for a fight. I wasn't 'claiming' anything. I knew.
'I'm sorry to tell you you're right,' he went on.
I burst into tears. Someone believed me.
'I'm very sorry,' he said. 'I'm a dad of three myself. You shouldn't have gone through that.'
Apparently, the anaesthetist who worked on me had been on his first day. And his last.
'You've let him go?' I said.
'Yes,' he nodded.
I felt bad the man had lost his job. But then I thought about what I'd gone through. Mum cried when I told her.
'I'm sorry I doubted you,' she said.
I went home six days after surgery, but Brandon stayed in hospital, where I had to force myself to visit him. Sounds awful, doesn't it? It wasn't that I didn't want to see him, but I couldn't face going back into that building. The clinical smell brought everything back.
Three days after getting home, on 5 December, a letter arrived from the head anaesthetist who'd spoken to me on the ward that day.
He'd looked into what happened, and apparently I was right about the gas not being turned on for the first few minutes of my operation. Knowing what happened didn't help me get over it, though. I was still just going through the motions with Brandon, too.
'You feed him,' I'd tell Robert. Or I'd ask: 'Can you change him?'
Poor Robert was baffled. This wasn't how it should have been with his first child.
By March, he'd had enough, and moved out. It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. Because with Robert gone, I realised how much my son needed me. How it was my arms he looked to snuggle into for comfort. I started to fall for him at last. Eight months on, we're doing well, though I still have nightmares and I'm going to counselling. I was supposed to go back to hospital to have my hernia repaired, but I'm too frightened.
I'm taking legal action against the hospital and they've admitted liability. I know they saved my life when I haemorrhaged. Apparently my placenta had become detached so Brandon wasn't getting enough air. But I should never have had to go through what I did. I haven't given up hope of his dad and I working things out, but it'll take me time to get over what happened. And no matter how much counselling I have, I know for a fact the nightmare of being awake while the surgeon sliced me open will never, ever go away.
A spokeswoman for West Cumberland Hospital said: 'As this is an ongoing legal case, we are unable to comment.'