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Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And we're kicking off season three with what I would call a real humdinger of a fear, the good shit that keeps me up at night shit. And it's not supernatural. It's not a mystery. It's not dark and evil. It's a potentially unavoidable part of everyday life. And that is the worst thing about it. This week, we're talking about waking up during surgery. It combines the worst parts of torture and paralysis into one incredible mega fear that affects more people on a yearly basis than I ever thought possible. But it pales in comparison to the fear people faced before there were any anesthetics at all. For centuries, surgeries were performed on men, women and children with no painkillers and nothing to put them to sleep. Generations of humans had no choice but to experience each incision with sparkling, painful clarity or die from whatever it was that was ailing them. The indescribable pain, fear and madness that resulted from these procedures probably ruined about as many lives as they saved. So we're gonna explore surgery, both pre and post anesthesia and read one of the most horrific first person experiences I could find that details what it's like to wake up paralyzed but able to feel everything while under the surgeon's blade. They say any science advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic. And in many ways, the ability to put patients under during surgery to save their lives by cutting and suturing and stapling and digging and piercing in ways that wouldn't be possible on a conscious person is almost magical until it goes wrong and you wake up in hell.

What are we scared?

When are we?

Now it is time for. Scared All The Time.

Well, well, well. If we don't meet again, listener, here we are, season three, ready to rock for another 10 episodes. And for housekeeping today, unfortunately, I have to let you know that you only get me. There's no Ed today in housekeeping. He's in the episode. But Ed is on the road, as many of you probably saw on Facebook or Instagram. Ed has been engaged in the social contract Across America Tour 2024, as he drove from California to Connecticut to do something with big rigs. I don't know, I think he's driving in a convoy. And then in about two weeks or a few weeks, maybe not two weeks, a few weeks, I will be flying to Connecticut to meet Ed once he gets off the big rigs or the monster trucks or whatever he's riding. And he and I are gonna drive from Connecticut to Monster Fest in Ohio. We've heard from some of you that you're gonna be there and we're very excited. I hope as many of you come as possible. We're ready to meet some of you guys in person and have a good time talking Bigfoot and ghosts and cryptids and generally having the spookiest weekend imaginable. So we're very excited for that. And I guess I should say right off the top, damn guys, if you liked season one and then you loved season two, you're gonna shit your pants when you hear what we have in store for season three. We have got four or five episodes in the can already. Four, four. And they rock. The topics are some of the most requested. The stories are some of the grossest and weirdest we found. And we have at least one amazing guest coming up in that first group. So this show, every time we go back and record new stuff, it really feels like it's just getting started. And speaking of just getting started, everybody who signed up for Scared All The Time Premium in our down month, let's get a big hell yeah going in the chat. That fucking rocks. You guys are awesome. We were genuinely blown away by how many people signed up. We were like, okay, if in the first week we get five, let's just, if it's five, that would be great. And I think we're up to like 70 something. I don't know, I have to check. We have quite a few buttons that have gone out. Ed probably knows the number better than I do off the top of his head, but we've got welcome buttons that have gone out. We've got a hose boys pins for those of you that are in button of the month club. And right off the bat, we're gonna say thank you to our big cigar chomping producers for the month of May. We're gonna read your names in alphabetical order by first name. And so if you guys like the show, these are some of the people you can now thank and send tribute to for making this thing happen. So we have Ambrosio L, Ariel T, Anne Marie V, Buttercup Honeycut, Cassandra O, Charlotte C, Christopher M, Claire B, David V, Gabrielle G, Jonathan B, Justin R, Katherine L, Kevin W, Kristen T, Kristen S, it's like the popular girls at the lunch table or something. You've got Kristen T and Kristen S. Lauren M, Matthew S, Melissa L, Michael S, Samantha C and Sean K. Ed's got a thing about only listing people's last initials. I guess it's kind of a privacy thing. He's probably gonna cut this when he hears the recording. But if you guys want your whole name first and last to be listed in the producer segment, we are, I am more than happy to do so. We are more than happy to do so, I think, but we just don't want anyone to be like, oh God, now my enemies can track me down as being a fan of Scared All The Time and they'll know I'm at Monster Fest. So if you haven't signed up for Scared All The Time Premium yet and you want to join to get some of these rewards, whether it's the live show, which we did a few weeks ago and it was awesome, whether it is the bonus Ask Me Anything episode, the welcome pin, button of the month club, or if you want to join the big head honchos, the producers, you could do that as well over at scared.supercast.com. You can sign up for whichever of the three levels you want and we would be happy to have you join us and have some fun with all the different premium features that we have. Oh, how could I forget frog mode. If you like the dart frogs in the background that we've had in a couple of our earlier episodes, that's now reserved for people who sign up for just the, even at the most basic level, you'll get ad free and frog mode. So jump in on one of those levels, help us keep the show going. Again, it's been amazing so far. The response has been incredible. We love you guys for hanging out with us and having a good time. So yeah, that's housekeeping basically. I really just want to get this episode started. You already know the episode is about waking up during surgery. It is shocking how much more prevalent waking up during surgery seems to be than we thought it was when we recorded this episode. We've received a couple of emails. Obviously none of you knew we were recording this episode, but we've received a couple of emails since recording the episode about people who have woken up during surgery. I think probably prompted by some of the discussion of it in the alien abduction episodes. And I've seen a couple other things about it on the news. So it's a menace. Don't let this happen to you. I don't know how to prevent it. That's why it's scary. You have no control over it. We have no control over anything in our lives. So it's best to just sit back, relax, have a couple of laughs with your buds, put on Scared All The Time and let go, because life's an adventure and none of us make it out alive. So with that in mind, here we go. Scared All The Time, season three, episode one, Waking Up During Surgery. Imagine waking up, a little hazy, maybe a little confused. You feel like you're on your back, but you aren't in bed. It's too cold to be in bed. There's a bright light shining straight into your eyes, and it feels like there's something wrong, something moving around inside you. Maybe in your chest, your stomach, your mouth, your throat, neck, arms, legs, wherever the sensation is, it starts as discomfort, then becomes pressure, then quickly becomes painful. So painful, you want to scream, but you can't. Your entire body is paralyzed, because you have just woken up during surgery, and there's nothing you can do except suffer in rigid silence and wait for it to be over. This is a real thing that actually happens. It's called sudden or accidental awareness, although for most of this episode, I think we're probably just gonna refer to it as waking up during surgery.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And it is, for my money, one of the most traumatic and horrible things a human being can experience. It's the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. It's the kind of torture a particularly nasty serial killer might inflict on their victims, except it's happening during what's supposed to be a pretty routine experience. I mean, spoiler alert right now, Ed, I don't know how you feel, but this shit is right at the top of the fear tier for me.

No, I mean, if anyone listened to our alien abduction episodes, I mean, this is kind of where this came from. The genesis of this episode being made is because I was completely like, I was so afraid of that, derailed the alien talk for a little bit, being like, all I have in my head now is waking up during surgery. We'll get to it in the end, but you know it's gonna be pretty fucking high.

Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the Barney Hill thing, because not only is that part of what sparked my interest in doing this episode, but after we talked about Barney Hill's abduction story and the idea that it could possibly have been the result of waking up during a tonsillectomy, we got emails from listeners. And two people who listened to this show have woken up during surgery. Plus my wife was like, oh yeah, that happened to me. So three people that we know have woken up during surgery.

Like if these were your chances for the lottery, play the fucking lottery.

Yeah, as far as I know, that is three more people that have experienced any of the other subjects that we've covered. That's true. So, you know, and we've covered some normal things, like bad neighbors.

I mean, people have written in about hat manning, so people have written in about it.

We've gotten a bunch of good hat man stories.

Oh, you know what it is? It's like anytime you're under paralysis, it's when, like paralysis is the Venn diagram here though, between hat man and this.

Yeah, well, the first email actually gets into that, or I'm sorry, the second email we'll read gets into that a little bit. So yes, I got permission to read these emails. I'm gonna keep them both anonymous, but these are real listener emails. So the first one says, I had to get a colonoscopy around the age of 19 cue probing jokes, and I woke up during the procedure. My first memory is opening my eyes and I was facing the screen that showed the inside of my intestines. I felt oddly peaceful and at ease while I watched. I wasn't able to feel my body beyond mild discomfort, but I slowly was able to find my voice. I was very interested in medicine at the time, so I had questions I wanted to ask. I can imagine you would no longer be interested in medicine after going through this. When I spoke, everyone jumped, and that was when I realized I wasn't dreaming. The doctor politely answered my questions and I can vividly remember that conversation to this day. They made sure I wasn't panicking and I stayed in that half-awake state till the end of the procedure. It was close to the end anyway. They later explained that this likely happened because I was so young, my body processed the anesthesia drugs more quickly. I don't feel traumatized. It's a fun story to freak people out with, but it did leave me with an uneasiness about medicine and a little is existential about the fact that we know much less as a collective that we claim to, despite all our peer reviews and verifiable research. There is no guarantee that you won't wake up while being operated on. It's important to note that they do not put you completely under for colonoscopy. I'm sure my experience is much less frightening than those who wake up while intubated or while being cut open or cauterized. I think the most terrifying experience would be abdominal surgery. I sat in on a few of those surgeries while in nursing school and the smell of cauterized flesh is something that sticks with you. You'll never smell cooking meat the same. So thank you listener for that incredibly lovely description of burning flesh. Also, I have to get a colonoscopy in the next year or so. And so hearing that you don't get put completely under and you might wake up during it sucks.

Yeah, but I don't mind it in the sense that it's he or she mentioned it at the end, but there is something about like, yeah, it's a camera up my ass. It's not like my intestines are spilling out onto the table or anything. It's just like, ah, this is the camera up my ass. There is something like very comforting in that first story being like, I woke up, it was weird. It was uncomfortable. There was no pain. Everyone was freaked out because it sounds like I shouldn't have been awake, but it's not like anything's been cut open.

Right. Really? Right.

There's no, they're only accessing things that are inconvenient, but accessible without surgery. But I also don't know the definition of surgery. I guess that is surgery still.

It's an invasive procedure. I don't know. I guess I don't know tactically the medical definition of surgery. I guess to me, surgery would be some kind of being cut and removed type operation, where there's stitching and you're fixing something as opposed to like going in and just looking.

That's what I would agree with. And also the official definition is a branch of medical practice to treat injuries, diseases and deformities by the physical removal of hair or readjustment of organs and tissues, often involving cutting into the body.

So by the physical removal of hair?

Yeah, I don't know what this is. That's why I paused there because yeah, it's weird. So injuries, deformities by the physical removal. Oh, I don't have my glasses on. So yes, hold on. My glasses are now on and it's the physical removal, comma repair, comma or readjustment of organs and tissues, often involving cutting into the body. So I saw removal of hair because I didn't have my glasses on.

Yes, okay, that makes more sense. I was like, there are hair surgeries, but I don't think of them as like the most common.

Oh man.

Okay, all right. Well, yeah, it is sort of comforting, I guess.

I mean, it's not comforting. I just mean that like if you wake up during that procedure, you're not gonna see your insides other than what's on the camera screen.

Right, exactly, true. Well, the next email is worse. It begins, this, by this the writer means accidental awareness has happened to me on multiple occasions.

Buddy, what is wrong here? You gotta tell people when you go in, like, hey, think about me as I might not be susceptible to this as other people, like really dose me up or give me a different medicine.

Well, let's see what they say here. So this has happened to me on multiple occurrences. And not only have I been told by a doctor that it was only imagined or dreamed, other people do not believe that this happens. I will share my experiences and feel free to use in the show if you want. The first time it happened, I was getting my wisdom teeth taken out. I was 19. Oh, okay, like the first listener was also 19 when they got their colonoscopy. So-

Interesting.

That young age, you process the anesthesia faster, they said maybe. But I was 19, I had to be put under because two of them, the wisdom teeth were impacted and had to be surgically removed. I became aware while the procedure was taking place. It was like I woke up from a dream, groggy, but I looked into the doctor's eyes and I remember thinking he knew I was awake, but he proceeded to extract my teeth. So he's a psycho, I guess.

Or he's booked, he's got people right after you.

That's true. I was numbed for this procedure and did not wake up to pain, but I did feel an intense pressure sensation and I then fell back into sleep and woke up in recovery. I remembered that I woke up right away. I think I told my parents, but nobody really thought much of it. The next time it happened, it was way worse. So I'll interject here to say, I also had surgery on my wisdom teeth when I was a kid for the same reason. I was probably like 13 or 14. They put me under, which I was very nervous about, and I didn't wake up during the operation, but I was so fucking scared when I woke up. They put me in this dark room, like a recovery room, and my mom was in there with me. But when I woke up-

How did they get you in there? You're in the chair and then you're in another location after?

Yeah, well, they do the surgery and then to recover, like for you to wake up, they put you in a little, or they put me at least.

Yeah, but did somebody just like put their arms under your arms and like firemen carry you into another room? Like why? I don't know. I guess it's weird. I'll get into mine after, but I did not go to another location.

Yeah, they put me in a little room.

And you never thought about how you were moved?

No.

That's the first thing I go through my head was like, who touched me and lifted me up and dragged me to another room?

Well, when I woke up, I was absolutely 100% sure that I was dead. And I kept telling my mom that if she was with me, that meant she was dead too. And she was telling me we weren't dead and I was not having it. So these anesthesia meds can really do a number on you.

Mom, you've seen Charlie bit my finger.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's like a new YouTube video every week of like person gets tooth surgery or whatever. And now it's like, they're gonna ruin their career. There's a famous Taylor Swift one. She didn't ruin her career, but I'm saying there's like a famous Taylor Swift went to the dentist or had anesthesia and was being a little silly goose after.

Wait, really?

I wanna say on like Kimmel or something a couple of years ago, he had played it when she was a guest. You know what? It's so fucking hacky. I bet it was a Fallon. But yes, her mom's, you know, we know how this stuff really works, but according to the show, Taylor Swift's mom sent them her post surgery goofballery to the show and she didn't know about it, but there's no version where that happens in real life.

Right, yeah, yeah. There's no version where Taylor Swift didn't hold a gun to her mom's head and say, take a video when I'm waking up and then send it to Kimmel.

No, I'm saying there's no version where you're about to be on national television and you're not completely agreed upon what that footage is gonna be shown.

No, I know, but I'm saying Taylor Swift, at least the impression I have of her is that she's such a control freak that like she does everything.

Yeah, I have no problem with her. She's a hero.

She's a hero now.

Look, let's just get off the subject. We don't need Swifties activated over here, okay?

I don't have a problem with her. I actually, I think Blank Space is like one of my favorite music videos.

Well, speaking of Taylor Swift music videos, I know more than a couple people who have actually worked on those. And I have one buddy in particular who had like their life like straight up turned upside down for a while after being in one of them.

Right.

And the story, it's nuts. And I would love to have them on to talk about it, but I totally get if they wouldn't want to since like a lot of that shit's finally blown over. But I'm dying right now. An episode about toxic fandom or maybe we'd call it enthusiastic fandom or motivated fandom to not, I guess, piss anybody off any further. Whether it's pop stars or something a little closer to home like Rick and Morty and all the Szechuan sauce stuff and everything. I don't know. I think that would be super interesting.

Yeah.

Because it's kind of scary.

Yeah, I think you're onto something. I think there's something there. Let's get back to the email. Thinking I was dead is a walk in the park compared to the next part of this listener's email.

You don't want to hear about my experience?

Oh, go ahead. What was your experience?

I've only had one surgery in my whole fucking life and that was it. It was getting my wisdom teeth removed around 15 years old and they put me in the chair. They put me under. I came to, the procedure was done and I threw up everywhere. And that is the whole story.

Oh, great story.

That wasn't much. It was, yeah, I puked. And then I went home and I was being a little loosey-goosey goofball, like everybody when you're done with these drugs. It was weird. I definitely thought it was weird. I'm like, what happened to me, you know? It's just so weird to lose long tracks of time. Like truly lose them. They are gone. Like whatever happened that time, someone could have hung me out the window and just like did that for a while, just put me out in the open air. I would have no idea. Like that's the level of, that's why I'm like, how do you not question who fucking moved you? That's so crazy to me because a dentist chair is not a gurney. It can't roll around. Like someone had to physically lift you.

I guess I always assumed that I must have roused enough that they shuffled me.

And you just don't remember?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think the dentist like dead lifted me over his head or something, like carried me to the-

That's what I think happens, yeah. You hit a flag pole and stuff, like just weird shit in the office is all askew because they physically threw your body. I'm just saying like, I only bring it up now to get it out of the way, which is I've only had the one surgery ever and it was wisdom teeth and it went stellar. And you know, I guess I'm one of the lucky ones according to the numbers we're getting of emails on this.

Yeah, well, you're very lucky compared to the next part of this email, which continues, I had a liposuction procedure done on my stomach when I was in my thirties. The procedure was a full anesthetic one. And when I woke up this time, I remember seeing the tube going in and out of my stomach. Like I was being stabbed over and over very quickly.

I've seen those videos that it's exactly what it looks like.

Yeah, I did feel the sensation of being ripped. Sorry to be graphic, but this is what happened and it was horrifying by all means. No, this is the place to be graphic. I felt the sensation of being ripped. I really don't know if I passed out because I realized that I was awake and the shock knocked me out or if I just fell back to sleep. But the next thing I realized, I was waking up in the recovery room. I was, okay, so no one carried this person either.

Well, no, you have real surgery, not tooth surgery. You're on like a rolling gurney or you're moved from that one stationary slab to the gurney with the like lifting it up with the blanket type of thing.

Right, right, right.

I think when you have like real surgery, not like, oh, just don't eat gummy bears for the next hour or whatever.

Right, right, right.

This person's getting stabbed with a vacuum.

Yeah, I was groggy for the next day or so and suffered from such horrible pain for several months following that procedure that I didn't think much of the fact that I woke up during it. But I do remember thinking that I can't believe I woke up during a procedure again. Yeah, I would have the same reaction.

That's pretty shocking.

When I did a follow up with that doctor, I told them and I even described who and what I saw in the room and he said there was no indication that I woke up during the procedure, but I must have dreamt it. I regret having the procedure for several reasons, but having this happen also was probably the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me. God, yeah, of course, of course it's the most, not only the experience, but not being believed makes it even scarier.

And I think shame on that doctor for adding, what didn't necessarily need to be added, the like, well, I don't fucking believe you. If you had simply said, which the doctor did say, hey, you gave no indication, I had no idea.

Well, yeah, I mean.

That's enough. That absolves you of like, you're not a monster. You're just doing your job. You had no idea. And I feel like that might be the case a lot of time.

Yeah, I mean, not to defend the doctor because it's a pretty douchey way to react, but I do wonder if there's like a, you know, like if you get in a car accident, you're never supposed to be like, my bad, that was my fault, I'm sorry. So like, I wonder if there's like a legal concern. Like if your patient comes to you and is like, I woke up during surgery and you didn't do anything about it. If you go, oh man, I'm so sorry to hear that. Like admitting fault, can they sue?

I mean, hey, if you're the doctor who's stabbing people with a vacuum, I guess you're also not the anesthesiologist. So you'd really be like, well, that was fucking Jeanette's fault. She didn't know what the fuck she was doing.

Right.

You know what I mean? Like, I really made it a point to change the gender on what most people would assume for doctors. But then I realized I attributed the lady to the fuck up and undid all my work there.

Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's the thought that counts. This listener also mentions that she's woken up during a colonoscopy. There we go with that again. And fertility treatments.

All right, so this continues. I thought the email was done.

No, well, I mean, there was a chunk about waking up during colonoscopies and fertility treatments. I'm not reading the whole thing, but the end of this email is super interesting because it ties back to the paralysis that you were mentioning earlier. They say, I don't know if this is related. It would be interesting to learn more to see if there's some sort of connection, but I have also suffered from night terrors and sleep paralysis throughout my entire life. Night terrors are not as frequent like they were in my childhood, maybe once or twice a year at this point, but sleep paralysis still happens to me currently and I am in my mid 40s. I also used to sleepwalk until I was into my teens. My son, who is 20, also suffers from sleep paralysis weekly. It used to get the most intense night terrors with sleepwalking. I think there is a genetic component to it and it makes me think it could be somehow connected to this wakefulness during the wrong times.

That's interesting, it's a really interesting theory, yeah.

Well, given the role that the sort of half awake nightmare state plays in stories of alien abductions and hat man and all that stuff, succubuses, succubi sitting on your chest in the night, the connection to sleep paralysis and night terror is super interesting. I don't really know what to make of it, but there could be something there.

The thing that most excites me about that theory or that thought is the genetic aspect, where it's like, oh, I can pass sleep walking on to somebody is really interesting. That's a cognitive issue that is hereditary. But then also, yeah, the idea that if you can just be like, yeah, the interesting thing about me is, I'm never asleep when I'm supposed to be asleep. That's kind of their thing. It's like, oh, I'm supposed to be asleep right now? Actually, I'm going to be an unmoving person looking at a demon. Oh, I'm supposed to be asleep right now? I'm going to watch you do light massage. Oh, I'm supposed to be asleep right now? But I don't know if their body is just predisposed to being a line stepper. Like it's just going to see, I don't know.

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't really get into this in the episode, but it popped up a few times in the research that redheads apparently have a harder time staying under.

My beloved redheads?

Apparently.

My beloved gingers, they can't stay under?

My wife's a redhead, so she woke up. I don't know if these other two listeners are redheads or not, but.

Shit, dude.

And I didn't go down that rabbit hole to see why what they think in the genes of redheads is so broken and wrong. Just kidding.

Well, I mean, they are such a small part of the population that I guess, so you're hitting the genetic lottery by being a redhead, then you're hitting the wake up and surgery lottery. I guess you should all play the fucking lottery. Good luck, bad luck.

Yeah, truly, the numbers are good.

Yeah, enough bad luck coming your way. Why don't you try converting that to good luck?

True, everybody listen to Ed's life advice. He knows what he's talking about.

The last thing I'll say about that is, and I had it until you started talking about redheads and my eyes just turned to heart shaped pupils, but oh, that's what it was. That's what I was gonna say. What I find interesting too is like how it affects your life moving forward in the sense that as a person who has bad ears, I have really bad inner ear issues. And so flying is such a crap shoot for me. Even when I feel like I'm flying with no congestion whatsoever, I can still get hit with the most intense ear pain on the descent. You can even imagine like feels like a drill is being put in the side of my head. I am chewing gum, nothing's helping. And I thought I was good. You understand like, if I have like a cold, I'm not flying, I'll walk to my location because it really hurts that bad. So for me, the idea that that might happen will dictate when and how I travel. So the idea that if you wake up more than once in a surgical procedure, that will dictate like, how bad is this problem for me? Like everyone says I should get surgery, but I keep waking up, I'm gonna put it off. I'm gonna put it off. I'm gonna go ahead and avoid the surgery. Or if you're saying this is a preventative surgery, well, let's just hope it's not necessary because I'd be scared to ever put down in the books that I have a surgery coming up. If I'm a person who feels like I'm susceptible to waking up. And so that kind of messes up your quality of life a little bit to have a fear of what's supposed to be a helpful thing.

Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I wanted to explore. After we got these emails, I got nervous about how common waking up during surgery is because it had gone from something that I never thought about to something that seems like happens to every other person I've met.

Yeah, it's a coin flip now, yeah.

Yeah, and so I was like, well, maybe I'll go back and look at the history of accidental awareness. How often does it really happen? And how long have doctors been improving ways for us to stay under more consistently? You know, I always go back to the history on this show, but in this case, the history is not much help because what we're looking at isn't so much the history of waking up during surgery as it is the history of pain, basically. Jesus. Because until surgeons started using ether to put their patients under in 1846, which was not even 200 years ago, mind you, every surgery was performed without any way of dulling the pain from minor surgeries to full on multi-limb amputations. You were pretty much just fucked.

Is that why barbers were also usually the dentists? It's like, hey, well, you know, who else is gonna use? Fuck it, you're already here. No one's gonna make this better than I can do.

Well, dentists, we'll get to this in a little bit, but a dentist is the first one who started using ether.

Well, you know why? I bet you it's because, and I'm sure you'll say it, but my first initial theory is, if my fingers are in someone's mouth and then they get pissed or feel pain and then they bite down as hard as they can, I'm gonna lose a finger. You know what I mean?

True.

Like, we gotta find a way to keep somebody calm enough where I'm not gonna lose a finger here.

Right.

That's my first thought.

It was more of preventative care for the dentist.

Yeah, exactly.

According to a paper I found that I'm gonna quote from a lot here because it's a super interesting paper, but the paper is called The Astonishingly Slow Progress Towards Surgical Anesthesia. It was published December 2021 by Adam Boosler, MD. According to this paper, Adam says, or Dr. Boosler says, there are descriptions and drawings of patients with tumors nearly as heavy as they were, cystic masses that had to be carried along in carts and facial deformities that caused persistent misery, all because of the fear of being conscious of the pain during surgery. People endured infections until they had to choose between surgery or certain death. Countless people must have died rather than feel the pain of the surgeon's cruel blade. Damn.

Okay, I'm just gonna back up here. You said people had things in their bodies so large, they had to have like a wheelbarrow with them to carry it around?

According to this, tumors nearly as heavy as they were, cystic masses that had to be carried along in carts.

That is, and you have like a tumor the size of a prize-winning pumpkin.

I'm imagining a guy driving one of those motorcycles with a little cart next to it. Yeah, and he's just got a tumor with googly eyes sitting in the sidecar.

And also wearing a helmet.

Yeah. One of the other horrifically painful things that Dr. Boosler mentions in this paper that I guess some people had done was they would have their bladder stones removed through an incision in the perineum.

Which is?

The taint.

Yep, that's not great. That's not a place you want.

Not a place you want anything removed through.

No, I will say this though. I think I'm probably ready for like a taint cutting if I had like kidney stones or bladder stones.

Excuse me?

It's one of the most painful fucking things. My buddy was staying with me a couple years ago and I was awoken in the middle of the night, like the witching hour by my friend who was staying with us and he's like, I need to go to the hospital right now. And I'm like, excuse me? I'm in a dead, dead asleep.

Yeah.

And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, I gotta go to the, I don't know what's wrong, but I go to the hospital right now. And so like I drove into the hospital, he was just experiencing such excruciating pain. We get to the ER, it's Los Angeles. So even in the middle of the night, it's like 30 gunshot wounds.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a line, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And they're like, what's the problem here? And he's like this, and they're like, we'll take you right fucking now. They literally just, that moment, put him in a wheelchair and took him away. And I guess what he was dealing with was like a way too large to pass through kidney stone or bladder stone. And the pain was so excruciating that he was like, fuck the embarrassment of being on vacation at someone else's home. I need to ride to the fucking hospital right this second. And then when they got there, they superseded his position with people who literally had a slash across their face bleeding everywhere. And they're just like, no, this guy, we know what this is and you gotta deal with it.

He got lucky. I...

No, the real luck, before you say your story, the real luck he had was they gave him a little sieve to piss in every time to collect the stone when it did pass. Because they had to give him a bunch of, I don't know, ultrasound or something to break it down, which they did not have in the 1800s.

Right. Oh, good, so they didn't have to suck it out of his taint.

Didn't have to suck it out of his taint. Didn't have to wake up through that procedure. But he did have to be fully awake as it passed. So he was drinking so much water, everything, because he did not want to have to pass it on the plane home.

All right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They also said the altitude might affect the pain and everything. So he passed it into his weird little sieve when they were boarding his flight, in the airport bathroom. So that's the real luck came in.

That is lucky. I'm surprised they let him leave the hospital with it still in there.

No, because they broke it down with ultrasound or whatever things they use. They broke it down and broke it down and looked at it however you see inside a body, I don't know. But they looked at it and they're like, okay, yeah, this is gonna be incredibly uncomfortable for you, but you can piss this out now. It's small enough to piss out. Because the thing that was happening is it couldn't, I think, enter the bladder or whatever. It was like that wherever it was to where it needed to be to be pissed out, it was too large to even get to that location. So it was just blocking up everything and fucking up everything. So they broke it down so they could at least pass that. And if it could pass that, then it could pass through your dick. But they're like, it's gonna really suck.

Well, people were so afraid of surgery.

No, you had a story to tell.

Oh, I was just gonna say, when I went to the ER for a gallstone, I thought that was the most pain I could experience. And they didn't fucking, they made me wait eight hours. And I was full on, I don't like to make a scene over anything. I even, if I'm in public and I feel like I'm gonna puke, I'll just like sit quietly and like clench and just not puke because I don't wanna like have anybody worry or anything. I hurt so bad when I had my gallstone that I was full on like moaning in a chair in the ER, just going, uh.

Well, what did you tell them?

Well, I didn't know it was a gallstone. I guess that's also part of, I was like, I have the worst pain I've ever felt. It's been going on. It would already been going on for four or five hours at this point, which is why I went to the ER. And I was like, this is, it's terrible pain. I've never felt anything like it. And I asked them if they could give me like a drug to knock me out. You know, I pointed to the 10 on the pain face thing. And they were like, no, we can't give you anything until the doctor can see you. But this was mid COVID. So people kept coming in, hacking a lung up. One guy came in, coughing and wheezing, and they put him in a wheelchair. And then he just stopped moving after a while. And a doctor came out from the doors. The wheelchair was kind of in front of the doors. And the doctor was just like, can we get this guy out of here? Because he was like, in the way?

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, yeah, get him back to where you can save his life. Because I think he's dying in the waiting room.

Well, I see. OK, so you had extra circumstances. It was during COVID. It was sounds like it was during the day.

No, it was the middle of the night.

Oh, it was just like this, three in the morning?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, because I'd been up since, you know, the pain started at like nine or 10 at night.

Did they ask you how long the pain's been going on?

Yeah.

So that's the problem. You were like, oh, it's been going on for four hours. I'm like, oh, what's another four hours, then, idiot? This guy was like, no, it started and I came right here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I don't remember every part of that night, but I remember we did not wait.

Yeah. Well, people were so afraid of surgery before anesthesia that they were often dragged literally kicking and screaming to the operating theater. Boozler's paper opens with kind of a fictional account of what this might have been like. He says, imagine. It's 1842, London, and you are subtly awakened from a fevered and distressed state by several men summoned by your family to take you to one of London's public operating room theaters. You suffered a fracture one day ago, and part of your lower femur is jutting through the skin above your knee. Amputation is the only way of saving you from a horrible death. However afraid you are of that kind of death, you are equally, if not more, fearful of what you know is to come. You arrive to find yourself in the center of an amphitheater surrounded by as many as 200 spectators.

That shouldn't be public. That shouldn't be public.

No.

I guess at this time they're like, public executions were probably still happening. And it was like, listen, nine out of 10 of these are gonna be executions. So come on by.

Yeah. I mean, I can only imagine how popular this would be on TikTok if there was still public operating procedures. But they were surrounded by as many as 200 spectators there to see another of the night's amputations done by the renowned surgeon, Dr. Robert Liston. There is no anesthesia offered to avoid your inevitable suffering. As Liston enters the theater dressed in his apron, stiffened by other patients' blood.

You mean his executioner's robe?

Yeah, yeah, the audience of medical students and the public remains hushed. While students have come to learn from the renowned fastest surgeon of his time, others come to see the gore as entertainment. Think of the unimaginable horror you would experience when observing the bloodstained surgical instruments laid out, the audience there to be regaled in your torment and the men there to hold you down.

I'm gonna pause you here. I have a couple questions. Yeah.

Right away.

Okay, let's just work on these questions backwards from when they were told. So bloodstained equipment, so just reusing equipment, it sounds like?

Yes.

That's not great.

No.

A guy covered in blood, not a great first sight, and then going back even further than that, the fastest surgeon in the West or whatever? What the fuck was that moniker he had?

The renowned fastest surgeon of his time, because as we will see, fast surgery was considered one of the keys to successful surgery.

Well, 200 people, was there like a, I don't know, like the way magicians used to have artwork outside? Was there like a poster for come see the fastest surgery in the West? Because 200 people, that's kind of crazy.

I think it was probably like word of mouth. It was the way you want people to find out about your podcast.

You'll never see someone die faster than when this guy works on them.

Yeah. I mean, I assume a lot of those people were medical students. I mean, you know what one of these surgical theaters looks like, right?

Yeah, I definitely know it. And my mind immediately goes to Seinfeld where he drops the junior mint in the body accidentally from the surgical theater. Well, Kramer or somebody like drops a mint down there.

I'm sure many horrible things were dropped in the mid 1800s into surgical patients. There's a great story about how fast Liston was that I'll get to in a second here, but where was I?

How terrifying it would be to get surgery in a public auditorium.

Oh yeah. Think of the unimaginable horror you experienced when observing the bloodstained surgical instruments laid out. And Ed, I agree. Why are they bloody? Why didn't we clean these?

Yeah, I've seen like, you should start charging admission for this public theater and then maybe you can buy some new equipment.

Yeah, the business theory here is terrible. The audience there to be regaled in your torment and the men there to hold you down. The terror you feel causes you to fight Liston's assistants, but to no avail. Liston's men overpower you and the surgery commences as you experience the most unfathomable pain as he speedily makes deep incisions to fashion large flaps of tissue to cover the stump below your knee. Liston stops the bleeding with forceps and ligature and rapidly saws through the bone proximal to the compound fracture. He finishes by skillfully sewing up the stump left behind with no hint of antiseptic concern throughout the entire operation.

Okay, I have a question.

Yes.

And it's not even a medical question. Do you think they paid these guys, these glutes, these goons, who it's their job just to hold you down?

I don't know.

Like that's weirdest job. What do you do? Babe, you know, I've been working all day holding dudes down as they get surgery against their will. Is it too much to ask? Is there some food on the table when I get home? Like whatever the 1800s, you know, man who works in a surgery would talk like.

Yeah, maybe that was their version of like volunteering. Maybe there was some real freaks out there who.

Yeah, there's definitely.

All four of these guys are hard as hell.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really weird too, because it's like, you know, you don't gotta do a job like that. You can come work with us in the garbage crew. Like that seems less disgusting. And he's like, no, no, no, no, it's the only job around for a mile. And I'm like, no, I'm telling you, we work in the garbage crew. We got spots open. Nobody wants to take dead bodies in garbage. And these guys are like, oh, dead bodies. I'm interested. And he comes.

Why didn't you say so?

Well, you should have led with that, dude. You're burying the lead before you bury the lead.

Hey.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good. Dr. Robert Liston was a real guy. And the paper later notes that he was so fast that he once, I love this. He once cut off an assistant's fingers while amputating a patient's leg.

Oh shit.

So he moved so quickly that he doesn't say how he did it.

I'll tell you how he did it. Four guys, four limbs. It's definitely one of the hold you down galoots.

That's true.

His finger would have been holding down the leg, probably close to where he's trying to keep it still from jumping and going crazy. And so he was just cut his finger off accidentally.

But here's the kicker. Both the assistant and the patient died of sepsis following the surgery.

Oh my God, that's a galoot down, dude.

Galoot down. Galoot down, galoot down. Dr. Liston's rivals in London's medical community were delighted to advertise that he had killed two people with one surgery, a 200% mortality rate.

Wow, dude, that's a dick like crazy.

It's a dick move, yeah.

Yeah, they're taking out spots in the paper and shit about it. Oh, you wanna go to Dr. Liston? It'll be the doctor last thing you do.

Yeah, we'll get to this in a little bit, but part of the reason, and this may have had something to do with why this suggests that maybe the instruments were still bloody, is that we actually, or by we, I mean humans, doctors, came to anesthesia before germ theory was like a fully settled debate. So we knew how to do surgeries and put people under even before people agreed on whether or not infections were caused by germs or bacteria. They weren't entirely sure what caused them, or there wasn't an agreement about what was causing these deaths.

So you know, it's probably like some guy in the germ theory side was like, germs can kill you. And it was like, yeah, but you know, his brother works for the medical equipment company. So they're just saying that we have to buy more knives.

Yeah.

I got these bloody knives that work perfectly fine, man. I mean, they're dull and everyone keeps complaining they're dull and it hurts more. But like, I'm not gonna buy a second set of scalpels from Larry's brother-in-law.

Yeah.

Yeah, germ theory, come on pal. This germ theory thing's putting line in your pockets, pal.

Dr. Boosler notes that humanity really whiffed on painkillers for like 2000 years.

Not until they found out a way to get you addicted to them and then ruin your life and make money from it.

That's what it was all moving towards. In a paper published in 2010, three scholars from the University of Crete examined the Hippocratic collection in its original Greek.

The University of Crete, like the island in Greece?

Yeah, yeah.

Was like, you're a professor, a minotaur?

No, it's where they keep the Hippocratic collection, I guess. And they found evidence that the first physician to use the words anesthesia and analgesia in medical writing was Hippocrates himself, the guy who invented the do no harm Hippocratic oath that all doctors take. Hippocrates not only defined pain's characteristics and identified opium and other hypnotic substances to relieve pain, but he was also the first to assert the idea that the unconscious patient is insensitive to pain, which I think is kind of interesting. The people before that, I guess, maybe thought that even if you were unconscious, you would feel pain, and he was the first one to be like, no, this is a good way to keep him not moving.

And this is during like ancient times, right?

Yeah.

So in order to get that knowledge, you have to have people unconscious. So even if you're just punching them in the face or giving them all that, like eating alive schnapps from Germany, why isn't the fastest gun in the West trying any of this? Why is he just hired for galoots?

Well, we're gonna get to that.

How about these galoots, like give you the fucking go to sleep choke hold or something?

We're gonna get to that in a little bit, because there are some reasons. There are sort of dumb reasons, but there were real reasons. Dr. Boosler says that humanity then essentially ignored these learnings about analgesia and anesthesia for over two millennia, postponing the triumph over surgical pain. And I don't know that we can really say Hippocrates was ignored on this, because lots of cultures made attempts at various kinds of anesthetics. I think they just didn't work very well or consistently. You know, obviously there's Boos, which is like the oldest known, you know, relaxant, depressant, whatever. And there's evidence that ancient Mesopotamians knew about the power of the poppy to create opium as far back as 3500 BC. The ancient Egyptians also had some surgical instruments, as well as crude anesthetics and sedatives, including possibly an extract prepared from the mandrake fruit.

Oh shit, what's up, mandrake?

What's up, mandrake? We haven't seen you in a minute. When they weren't being used to create homunculi, I guess they could knock you out for surgery. Or maybe you could create homunculus to hold you down if you didn't have glutes.

That's a Gulliver's Travel situation. You can't, you need so many homunculi.

What's a more effective setup for surgery? 500 homunculi or four glutes?

I think if you're paying, if it's Hollywood, they'll do the like 500 homunculi is the price of one glute. So six of one, half a dozen the other. But if you're paying the homunculi by the way you should be, then yeah, you gotta go for glutes. You're gonna go bankrupt.

Yeah, most interesting to me is the work of a Chinese surgeon named Hua Tu, H-U-A space T-U-O, Hua Tu, who lived from 145 to 220 AD.

Oh my God, I don't know, in my brain, I was like, this guy only lived for a couple hours, that's what you're gonna be like from 145.

To 220 in the afternoon.

Yeah, until 220.

He rose from poverty and began his career working at a local herbal pharmacy where he carefully observed the practice of medicine. He sympathized with the common people whose lives were suppressed by the government during this period and dedicated his entire life to helping them. He was so dedicated to helping the common man that he refused to accept offers of the position as the supreme physician in the Imperial Palace, which I think is what we should call, instead of the surgeon general, I really, I prefer supreme physician, sounds super cool.

I don't know, take your ass to North Korea or something, man, I don't know, I don't love anything supreme unless it's an offering at Taco Bell.

And then the shits that you'll take after.

Those will also be supreme, yeah.

Be supreme, bro.

Don't go in there, man, it's supremely fucked up that bathroom, dude.

Hua's practice was so popular that he could never care for everyone who sought his help and he started to wonder why people were always sick and what would make them better. So Hua, one of the reasons I'm fascinated by him is he concluded that chronic illnesses were due in part to a lack of physical activity and proposed regular exercise as a remedy, basically inventing preventative care. He called his system, and I'm gonna fuck this up, Wu-Kin-Xi, five animal frolics, which is an exercise that imitates the physical movements of tigers, deer, monkeys, bears, and birds. Yeah, which sounds like a good way to get square.

I'm about to say, he's like, oh, maybe you guys are sick all the time because you're not ripped. So go out there and climb all these stairs. And yeah, I love it. I love it. He's basically just like throw a little martial arts in your life and you will feel the benefits by preventative care that is just working out a little bit. So getting some movements in. And if you gotta make believe you're a bear to do it, then make believe you're a bear. It never gets away.

A little imagination during a workout, it's fine. This is where Hua crosses paths with the history of anesthetics. He believed that for diseases that could not be treated with acupuncture and herbs and I guess, frolicking, the only solution was surgical. So he frequently performed surgery on various parts of the body by using an herbal formula he developed called mafeisan, a numbing and boiling powder, which is what that roughly translates to, for systemic anesthesia. So why didn't everyone just use this shit? Because to this day, no one knows exactly what was in it. Because Hua Tuo was right about the rich and powerful. They ruined it for everybody. Basically, Hua was called upon to help with the emperor's migraines. And at first, he solved them with acupuncture. But when they wouldn't go away, he told the emperor that the only solution would be to induce anesthesia and surgically open his head to remove the cause of the headache. Which you can imagine the paranoid emperor in what must have been one of the great misunderstandings of all time, thought that this meant that Hua was making an attempt to assassinate him.

I was about to say, that's treason. Like offering that diagnosis is treason.

Yeah, and sentenced him to death. So Hua went to prison, and while he was waiting to die in prison, he wrote down all of his records and knowledge and tried to give them to a prison guard so that his knowledge would survive after his death. But the guard was so scared of the emperor that he refused to take the papers out of the prison and gave them back to Hua, who got so frustrated that he basically said fuck it and burned all the papers.

Wow, and that's why you gotta not have one guy in charge.

Yeah, although I will say, this story sounds a little bit like the story they'd tell at, the prison guard was so afraid of the emperor that he gave all the papers back. I don't know, it feels like maybe it was shaped by time a little bit.

Yeah, because he was probably like fuck you, you piece of shit traitor. And like, I don't want your papers, you John Wilkes Booth piece of shit. But now they make him into this guy who was like, oh yeah, it wasn't just a piece of shit I had. I was afraid, afraid for my own life.

Exactly.

But also, who the fuck does a prison guard know? What's the next logical place those papers are going? Like to the trash can anyway.

Well, and I also don't think, I mean, I guess back in ancient times, you really could get killed for every little thing, but it seems like the emperor would have some mercy for being like, yeah, maybe I don't really trust this guy, but he did seem to help like half of my kingdom.

It's been not my experience when the word emperor is thrown around, regardless of where in the world it is. Unless you're like Marcus Aurelius or something, I don't think you're known for your smart behavior. The guy threw the dude in prison and gave him a death sentence. I don't think he's gonna be like, yeah, I should probably hand out these paperwork. It's like one time he was a tight guy. He would not kill him if he thought one time he was a tight guy.

True, true. Well, I got really curious to dig a little deeper on-

Did you start Googling how to become an emperor?

Yeah, it sounds so intriguing to me.

Sounds like you can do whatever you want, dude.

Complete and absolute power? Google, how to-

I didn't like my dentist two weeks ago. How can I throw him in prison? Bing, how do I become an emperor? Tell me now.

No, I got curious about what was in this ma-fei-san powder. And I found a website that defines ma-fei-san as a combination of three words. Ma, meaning cannabis, hemp, numbed or tingling.

There's no way.

Fe, meaning boiling or bubbling. And san, meaning to break up or scatter or medicine in powder form. So therefore the word ma-fei-san probably means something like cannabis boil powder, which sounds like something we should take before recording sometime.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they're just making some sort of like weed tea.

Yeah, basically. The exact formula does still remain unclear and modern medicine is still stumped as to what exactly he cooked up. There seems to be some evidence that it works fairly consistently. It put people under for a very long time. Like one of the things I read was saying that you would drink this shit and then you'd wake up like a month later.

What are you, Rip Van Winkle? What the fuck, dude?

Well, yeah, like you would go out, he would do the surgery and then there was this long recovery period.

Well then, yeah, and then you would die from when the wolves ate you because you've just been a guy asleep for fucking months in the woods.

You fell asleep in a field. So.

It's like, oh, the operation was a success. Great to hear. Then why are you burying them? The wolves, just again, the wolves.

Maybe one of our premium rewards should be you and I can try to create mafe-san powder.

No.

And send it out to our listeners.

No, that's, even before we got to that last part, which was actually the worst part of the idea.

Which is the most illegal part?

Yeah, don't do that. Let's not do that.

Humans bumbled forward and throughout 1200 to 1500 AD in England, a potion called Duale was used as an anesthetic. It was an alcohol-based mixture that contained bile, opium, lettuce, briany, henbain.

The first one was bile?

The first ingredient is bile.

Right away, I'm no thank you.

Well, it's an alcohol-based mixture. So I guess the first ingredient would be alcohol. But then bile, opium, lettuce, briany, henbain, hemlock and vinegar.

Oh my God, that sounds like some shit my grandma would make from the old country, but then they added bile.

I feel like there's a cocktail bar in LA that probably sells this. I feel like some, there's probably, it's a $40 cocktail.

It's at Erawan.

Yeah, it's the worst shit you've ever tasted. I mean, this basically, if you've ever had one of those Erawan wellness shots, I think this is one of those.

Sure.

They're disgusting. And like I said, there was always booze. It's the oldest known sedative, but unless you were drinking enough of it to lapse into a coma, which I'm sure some people probably did, I can't imagine it really helping that much. I mean, you and I have had our share of drinks. And I feel like even when I'm very drunk, if I was getting surgery performed on me, I don't think I'd be like, well, this is fine.

Well, this is the position I took in eating alive where I'm like, not enough schnapps in the fucking world to cut my dung off and feed it to somebody or whatever.

Surgeons also didn't really like using booze because they thought that anything that intoxicated a patient increased blood loss, which was the leading cause of death during surgery.

That's true. That's not inaccurate. I'm saying that you'll bleed out with all the alcohol. The alcohol will thin your blood.

Thins your blood, yeah. This thought also initially caused some issues with using anesthetics, but more on that in a minute. Another shocking fact from Boosler's paper is that there's very little written record of surgery's psychological impact on patients without anesthesia. Especially when you think about how many surgeries there must have been throughout history. I mean, untold tens of thousands, if not millions of surgeries occurred, but no one ever wrote down much about it. There's even fewer descriptions of how surgeons were affected.

Well, that's because the things you've described to me in the public theater, everything you've described to me is a situation where I can imagine people being like, yeah, let's never talk about that again, huh? So that's how I feel about it. Let's just make believe that this blackout that day in the journal.

Yeah, basically.

Oh, what did you do today? I had four galoots hold a guy down as he screamed and screamed and screamed, and then he died anyway. So anyway, let's bury that as far as we can inside and never talk about it again.

I mean, yes, partially there's not a lot of writing because surgery was so gruesome that surgeons didn't like thinking about it any more than the patients did. There are stories of, or not even stories, but references to surgeons who felt like they were, before they were operating on someone, it felt like they were going to a hanging, they said. Sometimes surgeons would cry and vomit after they finished their surgeries. So the nightmarish experiences of patients who survived surgery and the surgeons who operated on them, I think like you just said, really precluded any desire to record the event for posterity. Boosler highlights the experience of Frances Burney, a 19th century novelist, playwright and diarist who wrote a letter to her sister describing the quote, profound evil of her four hour mastectomy for a tumor in 1811. Just so people know, even though this was written in the 19th century, the next minute or minute and a half is pretty graphic. So if you don't like descriptions of surgery, hit that fast forward button.

You have been warned. Graphic story incoming in three, two, one.

Burney had put off the surgery for years until her condition left her no choice. And this is a piece of her writing about her four hour, no pain killer mastectomy. She says, when the wound was made and the instrument withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp and forked pointards, which I guess were a form of small dagger that were tearing the edges of the wound. But when again, I felt the instrument describing a curve cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose and tire the hand of the operator.

I'm not responding because I'm in shock of what I'm hearing.

Yet when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast, cutting through veins, arteries, flesh, nerves, I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unremittingly during the whole time of the incision. And I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still. So excruciating was the agony.

So it took like a professional writer to have a surgery before we got kind of someone able to communicate what just happened.

Yeah. I mean, you know, other people may have written about their surgeries, but this one is pretty graphic and pretty horrible. So good on Francis for being able to put into words something that I don't know that I would be able to put into words. So Boosler says that after the operation, Bernie could not think or speak of the incident for nearly nine months. She felt so utterly sick in what had happened to her that she battled incessant headaches. And again, she calls this profoundly evil and this was something done to save her life. And that's one of the things that's gotta be so mind numbingly difficult to process about a surgery like this that you experienced that much pain. It's gotta feel evil. It's gotta feel completely wrong, but it does save your life.

Yeah, it's kind of a thing where it's like, I curse the God that would put this tumor in me, but then also am I also supposed to thank the God that created a person who can take it out?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's so fucking crazy.

It's so, I mean, you and I were talking about this last week. We were walking somewhere when I was researching this. And I just, I never thought much about the idea that, like how much we take for granted basic painkillers, that it's really only been around for like 200 years, but like so much basic tooth pain, basic colonoscopy, basic any kind of invasive or difficult procedures, you know, not even just amputations, but like all of that stuff was life-changingly painful until 200 years ago.

And yet I couldn't tell you anyone's name who invented it. I mean, I know Salk, I guess, for like penicillin.

Yeah.

Case in point, Ed's thinking of the polio vaccine. Jonas Salk had nothing to do with penicillin. That was a guy named Alexander Fleming who discovered it by accident when returning from holiday. If potentially changing the world for the better by taking time off work isn't reason enough to give everyone more vacation time in these here United States, I don't know what is.

But I don't know, anybody who invented the first Advil or whatever, unless their name was Harrison Advil, and I always knew.

I have an answer for you right now.

Oh shit.

Well, not about Advil.

And yet whatever name you're gonna tell me, they don't have a day name after them, but we do have like National Hot Dog Day, so whatever. Where's the justice in that?

The relentless surgical horror continued, unabated, until October 16th, 1846, when a Boston dentist, William TG. Morton, used sulfuric ether to anesthetize a man who needed surgery to remove a vascular tumor from his neck.

Okay, he used it, but there's nothing on old Billy Morton coming up with this procedure? Because there has to be a couple people being like, don't go over Billy's house, he'll give you something that will fuck you up. And he quote unquote says, I'm trying to figure out the ratio.

William TG. Cosby.

Oh, old Billy Cosby.

Called his creation Letheon, named after the Leth River of Greek mythology, noted for its waters that helped erase painful memories.

I love that. I love an educated populace. I fucking love a person who was able to come up with that because they're well read enough to even make that connection. I love that shit.

Yeah.

I couldn't, if I came up with it today, I'd be like, this is Ed Voccola's Go To Sleep Gas. Like I would have no interesting thing about like, well, it's based on the Greek God of sleeping sometimes, but not all night. Like I don't have that book smart knowledge.

Really, it's that kind of knowledge is only good for naming stuff like this. Cause there's no other.

That's true. I'm sure everyone else in the room was like, go to sleep gas, Billy. It's of course called go to sleep gas. He's like, well, I don't like the connotation in like a hundred years of what that could be.

You asked about Billy Morton coming up with this stuff. And I, so the history of it that I found, it felt a little bit backwards to me, but at least the way that I read it, it seems like he used this and then started experimenting with it to get better at using it. But maybe he started experimenting with it first. Either way, it says that this article that I read said that Morton started buying ether from a local chemist and quote, began exposing himself and a menagerie of pets to ether fumes. Satisfied with its safety and reliability, he began using ether on his dental patients.

Okay, three things I love about that sentence.

Exposing himself.

Well, that's, let me get my numbers out. One, he bought it from a local chemist, which is very booby-trapped Halloween candy where it's just like, there was a time when you can buy anything you want. Two, that he used it on himself. I like that. He like green gobbled himself before he used it on other people. And then three, what was the last thing in that sentence you said?

He began exposing himself and a menagerie of pets to ether.

Oh, that's it, okay, yes. And three, the correct use of menagerie. A lot of times people fucked that word up, which is just a collection of animals, not a collection of anything, just specifically animals. So I like that those are my three things that I loved about what you just said.

Excellent.

Okay, I can't, I'm part of this show, I can stop this show, I'm the co-emperor of this show. If I wanna stop and just say I loved something, I can do that. No one can stop me.

I do think it's really funny.

No one's gonna give a one-star review for enthusiasm, would they?

It is very funny to imagine him green goblining himself and all his pets and showing up just more and more strung out on ether every time he shows up at the dentist's office.

Who did this to you, Billy? I did, okay, I did. I did, and it's fine. Now, no one wake my pets up for a while. Or if you go to my house, please tell the cleaner they are just sleeping. Do not sweep my dogs away.

So get this, Dr. Howard Markle writes on pbs.org, soon mobs of tooth-aching, dollar-waving Bostonians made their way to Morton's office. Word of this, what's that?

I just love that imagery of these people cartoonishly waving dollars, like I need.

With the ice pack like wrapped around their head, like old timey.

It actually costs a dollar to get the ice. The surgery is free, so they pay for the ice pack.

Yeah, surgeons talking about their work the way that writers do, like, well, I, you know, I just do this for free, honestly. But word of this new form of painless surgery spread quickly to the medical world according to an article written by Kristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, a plastic surgeon named Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter was the first to embrace this new drug. He performed Philadelphia's first ether anesthesia surgery just one month after Morton performed his in Boston. But in a crazy twist, surgeons didn't embrace Morton and Mütter's progress. Within weeks of Mütter's successful ether surgery, the drug was actually banned in several Philadelphia hospitals for years, which sounds completely insane. But a few things contributed to this decision. According to Aptowicz, speaking with and attaining permission from the patients on which they were operating had been part of the surgical process since the beginning of practicing surgery. To remove that interaction by using anesthesia seemed completely foreign to them. And one surgeon compared it to, it would be like removing one of his senses.

Oh my gosh, just people who are, it's kind of like in writers' rooms, where comedy writers' rooms at least, where it's like, sometimes you work really late, two, three in the morning. And you start to sometimes get this idea in your head that like you'll have one or two times at like 1 a.m., you have this great idea and you like break something in the room. And you start to get it in your head that like, if you're having a hard time breaking something or making good material at like 8 p.m. or 6 p.m., you're like, well, when 1 a.m. comes, that's when the great ideas come. It's like, it's completely not true, but for some reason you've like psychologically put that in your head. And it's always diminishing returns at that late. It's never really that great. But I do like the idea that this guy, this doctor's like, I can't even do this job if I don't have a person calling me the devil, screaming in my face, saying, get these glutes hands off of me.

He's calling me the personification of evil.

Yeah, like if I don't have that chorus of hatred that I can't focus in, I can't dial in. And it was like, actually, no, it's better without all the yelling. It's better not at one in the morning.

I'd also like to ask which sense is it like removing? Because something tells me that blindfolding a surgeon, the results would have a faster downturn than just having an unconscious patient, but sure.

And is the idea that by virtue of the patient being awake, they're saying, no, not there, it's the other leg. What is the thing they're helping with that the guy needs?

Well, so this is the next thing I wrote down here. Dr. Boosler elaborates that there was, well, this sort of addresses your question. I think the specific interaction question, I don't really fully get. The specific interaction other than possibly asking for the patient's consent at the beginning, I don't really know how much useful feedback the patient is providing once you start cutting. But Dr. Boosler elaborates that there was an erroneous view for hundreds of years that the awake patient's stress and anguish during surgery is primarily what kept them alive. Surgeons felt more secure operating on conscious patients because their screams were a positive sign that they were still living.

Yeah, you don't wanna go through a four hour procedure and find out that for three hours and 48 minutes of it, that person's been dead.

Yeah, exactly. That's one of the most nightmarish things in this episode is the idea that there were surgeons who felt like your screams kept you alive.

Here's what I do. If I had an 1800s medical consulting firm, I would say, listen, I'm gonna save you some money here. Get rid of three of these glutes, get one glute with a mirror and have them hold it under the patient's nose. If it stops fogging, then they've died. But save yourself some money and save us all a headache of screaming people in here.

Well, there was also the religious aspect to all of this because according to Boosler, religion was responsible for the false belief that surgical patients must be awake during their procedure because suffering was an Old Testament virtue. The religious doctrine of the time taught that if God meant us to suffer when injured or operated on, we must not interfere with his plan, even if this led to excruciating and needless agony.

I don't love that. I mean, it tracks, but I don't love it.

Yeah, I don't love that either. It's a very Catholic take on surgery.

Yeah, but you never once in a while, you get a new Pope though, a new Pope comes up with new ideas and they'll be like, you know what? Turns out this is fine, everybody. And everyone will just agree.

Yeah, I wonder who the first, I wonder where that split was of the last Pope to have to receive a surgery without anesthetics and the first Pope to receive surgery with anesthetics. And they're just comparing notes one night and the guy who had it with anesthetics is like, I think this is the direction we're moving maybe.

No, this is the same guy. Do you understand? It's whoever had it without anesthetics being like, well, that was a nightmare. How about we go ahead and rewrite this part and then whatever smoke comes out, I guess this will only win a new pope.

The next day he's like, I talked to God and you're not gonna believe what he said about ether.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly, dude. He kicks that little doorway open to talk to the Basilico, whatever the hell's out there. And he's just like, hey, listen, ether's in, baby. It's in, God's in on it. And then Cosby's like, really? And it's like, not you though. Not you though, you piece of shit.

On top of all of that, anesthesia, I mentioned this briefly before, but anesthesia was discovered before germ theory became understood as scientific fact. So physicians and surgeons during the 1840s and 50s were still debating about whether the thorough washing of hands and tools prior to surgery was even necessary. And since infections were so common, the mortality rates for ether surgeries where people were under during the surgery weren't really all that terribly different from the surgeries where the patient was thrashing around on the table the whole time. So they kind of figured, well, if you have just about as good of a chance of surviving when you're awake as when you're out and there's benefits to the surgeon, to you being awake, I guess they figured we'll just keep you awake. Prestigious doctors and dentists would publish damning op-eds referring to ether as, quote, a satanic influence and decrying those doctors who supported its use by saying they had been, quote, seduced from the high professional path of duty into the quagmire of quackery by this will-o'-the-wisp.

Oh my God. I love every part of that sentence. It's incredible and something you wouldn't see today. But I also-

No, that's great writing.

The thing you would see today, though, is the like, let's reach out to a very vocal religious section of this community and they'll speak well beyond, you know, this article.

Yeah.

If I can just throw God's name in it.

Yeah.

And fuck, dude. How much money do you need, doctors? Like you're already prominent doctors, it says. Why do you gotta take a, if you can afford an ad, then you're doing fine.

Wait, why, what does the ad have to do with anesthesia?

Because it's like, you're already prominent. Like if you're anti-anesthesia, you think you're gonna lose all your business to people who are using anesthesia. Then just go fucking use anesthesia. Get out with the times, pal. Like, why do you have to pay all this money to take out an ad to be like, you don't want to go over there, come over to my pain factory instead. The third act story of that guy's life is like, his wife and daughter go into the other dentist and it was like, why won't you learn, Harold? Nobody wants your pain dentistry. And he's like, it's the only way.

It's better.

It's the way I was raised.

Yeah. All that to say, waking up during surgery is almost a blessing compared to how things used to be. But that doesn't mean it's any less of a nightmare when it happens. So in trying to find out more about how common accidental awareness or waking up during surgery is, I found a pretty, I would say, understated quote that opens a study of accidental awareness published December 26th, 2017 by Dr. Rob Clemens. Dr. Clemens says, quote, I'll do my best doctor voice. Unintentional or accidental return of consciousness during intended general anesthesia represents a failure to achieve the primary aim of anesthesia and is thus a serious complication of general anesthesia that is feared by patients and anesthetists alike. So yeah, no shit. Waking up during surgery, it represents a failure to achieve the primary aim of being unconscious during surgery.

Yep, it's very, it's an objective failure.

So finally we get to some numbers though. This study, and again, this is just one study. There's probably others, but this is the one that I was using. I could understand more of it than some of the papers I was reading. This study reports the incidence of accidental awareness is get this, one in 19,600 people. So not entirely uncommon, but not as many as the numbers that we ran into would suggest.

Yeah, but I mean still one in 19,000 wake up.

Well, okay, so.

There's like what, there's eight million people in New York.

Yeah, well, so this is where the paper starts to break down a couple different things here. And the paper is pretty dense, obviously. We'll link to it in the show notes like we always do. So if you're a doctor or in medical school, maybe you'll have a better read on this than I do. But I don't think this one in 19,600 number represents people who wake up during surgery and feel pain. I think it's specifically just about reported incidents of people who became aware for any period of time, even if the patient wasn't aware of it after the fact. So this number, this one in 19,000 or one in almost 20,000 is just like the people who kind of come to and the doctor goes, oh shit, he's coming to, boop boop, put him back under. The study goes on to say that several other studies have sought to detect awareness in real time. And some of these have shown surprisingly high incidences of intraoperative responses to command up to 40%. So up to 40% of patients in these studies do respond to stimulation.

Oh, when you say intraoperative, it means like somebody like winced or something, like when you cut at something?

Well, they didn't specify in each of these studies what the stimulation was, but yes, up to 40% of patients responded in some way to some kind of stimulation during surgery.

Yeah, the surgical aspect, not the just, yeah.

Yeah, so thankfully in these studies, almost none of the responsive patients had any post-operative recall of intraoperative events.

God, how do you get that information? They have to be like, hey, question for you. You notice anything weird during that? And they're like, no, why? No reason, no reason at all. Just normal questions we ask everybody.

We just, the doctor is watching a video of them waking up and screaming and ripping the things down. And the guy's like, no, I don't remember anything. So the reason that even people who were responsive during surgery tend to not have any recall of it is, as many people who have gone under during surgery know, most anesthetic agents are potent amnesiacs, even when present in small doses. The study says that it is also possible that responsiveness represents an intermediate state termed dysanesthesia, D-Y-S anesthesia. To date, no studies have indicated any strong evidence that awareness without recall has important psychological or other consequences. So no evidence that if you roused during surgery, but don't remember it, that it'll impact your life in any way, unless you're Barney Hill and you go to a hypnotherapist who makes you think you're abducted by aliens. So it is clear, however, this study says that, oh, here's a fact, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to understand. Awareness with recall is associated with adverse consequences, such as post-operative dissatisfaction.

Oh yeah, that's a one-star review for me if I wake up during surgery, I'll be pretty dissatisfied.

Yeah, so I'm glad we've had doctors and scientists and academics fully come to the scientific conclusion that if you remember waking up during surgery, there will be adverse consequences.

Yeah, but I do think we do need to start having doctors believe people though. I don't like that story in the beginning where it was like, nah, you didn't wake up, you big idiot. Like that should not be the response. The response should be, and look, and I get it, there's insurances, there's bosses, whatever. I think you can still be like, oh, we didn't notice, but not necessarily, you know, so there's a way to like probably thoughtfully and correctly responding to that without gaslighting people.

Yes, and the more that we've studied this, I mean, I do think for a lot of those early years, you know, once doctors became enthusiastic about using anesthesia and putting people under, there was a long process of figuring out the best way to do it. And I think there was a belief that, you know, once you were out, you were out. And then, you know, the more we've collected, the more facts we've collected, and the more science we've done around anesthesia and putting people under for surgery, the more we find out like, oh, there's different phases of this, or like the paper that suggested there's maybe this intermediate state, disanesthesia, where you're responsive, but you're not really awake. Like those gray areas become a little clearer and we're moving towards doctors believing people more, for sure.

I only know one anesthesiologist who definitely would not come on this show because I think you're not allowed to talk about this type of shit for their jobs.

No.

But I do know that there is equations, if you will, and stuff that goes into like, there's a lot of factors, which maybe weren't factors then, which is like the factor of like your body weight, your whatever, your susceptibility to this, how much drug and alcohol you might use as a person recreationally that they have to take into account when they're figuring out the doses and for how long a person needs to be out. If it's a 12-hour surgery, if it's a one-hour surgery, like you're not gonna give someone a 12-hour surgery worth of like Rip Van Winkle sauce if it's a 20-minute procedure or something. So I do like, I think all of that, the like honing of that material and taking into account that not everyone's created equally in the medical field probably wasn't around in the early days of spraying with a can of ether or whatever from the mechanic shop.

Well, yeah, we were two steps removed from, well, we can hit them over the head with a rock or give them this ether, the pet gas.

Although none of it seems to come close to that. Chinese dudes put you to sleep for a month stuff though.

Yeah, he had it figured out.

Shouldn't have tried to split open the emperor's head, I guess. Speaking of heads, and you mentioned this earlier that the burning smell of cauterized skin or whatever. Yeah, like one of the listeners mentioned earlier about the cauterized skin, but I met a girl once who I talked to for a while. Let me finish this. I talked to her for a while. She was a medical student and she described, she had a bunch of, I'm not gonna get into her whole backstory, but she was in the medical field. It wasn't just a person who was like a hobbyist, where she describes the smell of a skull. If you drill into a skull, like if you're cutting into a skull, like either for surgery, for like brain surgery, or probably realistically like post-mortem stuff, that she describes it as smelling like Cool Ranch Doritos. And that's kind of messed up Cool Ranch Doritos for her, but she also finds it weirdly pleasant. And I was like, did you notice that everyone else at this party is walking further and further away from us having this conversation? I'm in it, so I have to stay, but like this is getting so crazy. I was working on a project at the time that I needed to know a little bit more about stuff like that.

As you leave, the host is just glaring at you and throwing out giant bags of Cool Ranch Doritos.

Oh my God, I bought all these Doritos and now no one will eat them because of this. You two idiots talking about you're disgusting that they're skull dust.

Yeah.

Skull dusted Doritos. I just found that interesting because, you know, if we're talking about the smells of the medical community, that's one that she says is the case.

People from the medical community who listen to this show, hit us up and let us know the craziest things you've ever smelled in the operating room.

And the more pleasant the better. I want to find out more Cool Ranch Doritos and less bile type of things.

Yeah, yeah.

More pleasant surprises in the operating room.

Please, that would be a nice name for a hospital, right? Pleasant surprises, general.

Take out surprises and I might show up.

All right, so I wanted to wrap up this episode by talking about some, let's call it, reports of post-operative dissatisfaction that I found out there on the internet. The first and worst comes from our great neighbors to the north, Canada. We've done some Canada slander on this show. We've discussed their trash islands. We've discussed their very bad therapists. I don't wanna talk too much shit on their healthcare system because it is for sure better than what we have. That said, one Mrs. Donna Penner had a real bad time at the hospital in 2008 and she wrote about it in her own words for the BBC. So I'm gonna read, this is kind of long, but it's worth reading outside of Francis Bacon, not Francis Bacon, Francis.

Francis Bacon, interesting. The woman who wrote about her experiences in the operating table.

Yes.

It's funny because the whole time she said it, I don't know why, but now that you bring up Francis, I'm realizing right at this moment that I read or I listened to that entire piece you read about her as in a Civil War style outdoor triage tent. I don't think that was the case now that I'm thinking about it, but that whole time, I just saw her under a triage tent from Glory, but I don't think that was the case.

No, I probably wasn't. It probably wasn't super comfortable wherever she was, but it is interesting. I also, when I read about pre-anesthetic surgeries, I think about the Civil War, even though if ether was invented in 1846 or if it started to be used in 1846.

In Boston. So maybe the Union Army had some for their medical staff.

Yeah, it would have been around, but yeah, I feel like generally Civil War surgeries are kind of the go-to for-

Yeah, they're always depicted as like, bite on on this thing and drink a bunch of whiskey.

Actually, I'm surprised they didn't stumble across this, but bite the bullet, it's probably when you say someone has to bite the bullet, that's probably from the Civil War surgery era, right?

Yeah, something where it's like bite down on this. It would suck too if you bit the bullet and then you got through the surgery, Civil War surgery, bit the bullet, this bullet helped, but it's a metal bullet, it broke my tooth. Then you have to go get your tooth fixed at the dentist who uses ether and you're like, where the fuck was this? A couple days ago, I had my leg taken off and I felt all of it, I'm just having my tooth fixed here and this is a fucking vacation for me.

Then you kill the dentist and steal the ether.

No, I would give a five star review to the dentist and I'd go back and I'd use that bullet to kill the guy who operated on my leg.

Yeah.

Okay, before we get into the next story, just a quick heads up that again, this is going to be pretty stomach churning even for hardened people like Ed and I. So I would just recommend that you don't let a kid listen to this and if you are at all put off by the idea of waking up during surgery, just skip a couple of minutes.

Yeah, please definitely do.

You have been warned. Graphic story incoming in three, two, one.

All right, so this is Mrs. Penner's trip to the hospital. In 2008, I was booked for an exploratory laparoscopy at a hospital in my home province of Manitoba in Canada. Now, I know I just started, but I just wanna pause real quick and say, this is the shit that's so scary to me. It's not like she was going in for a 10-hour brain surgery. She was going in for like a pretty basic procedure. A laparoscopy is, I'm pretty sure that's outpatient. So she says, I was 44 and I had been experiencing heavy bleeding during my periods. I'd had a general anesthetic before and I knew I was supposed to have one for this procedure. I'd never had a problem with them, but when we first got to the hospital, I found myself feeling quite anxious. During a laparoscopy, the surgeon makes incisions into your abdomen through which they will push instruments so they can take a look around. Sounds quaint. You have three or four small incisions instead of one big one. The operation started off well. They moved me onto the operating table and started to do all the normal things that they do, hooking me up to all the monitors and prepping me. The anesthesiologist gave me something in an intravenous drip, and then he put a mask on my face and said, take a deep breath. So I did and drifted off to sleep like I was supposed to. When I woke up, I could still hear the sounds in the operating room. I could hear the staff banging and clanging.

All right, going to the gym.

Working out. And the machines going, the monitors and that kind of thing. I thought, oh good, it's over, it's done. I was lying there feeling a little medicated, but at the same time, I was so alert and enjoying that lazy feeling of waking up and feeling completely relaxed. That changed a few seconds later when I heard the surgeon speak. They were moving around and doing their things, and then all of a sudden I heard him say, scalpel please.

Oh my God.

I just froze. I thought, what did I just hear? There was nothing I could do. I had been given a paralytic, which is a common thing they do when working on the abdomen because it relaxes the abdominal muscles so they don't resist as much when you're cutting through them. Unfortunately, the general anesthetic hadn't worked, but the paralytic had. I panicked. I thought, this cannot be happening. So I waited for a few seconds, but then I felt him make the first incision. I don't have words to describe the pain. It was horrific. I could not open my eyes. The first thing I tried to do was sit up, but I couldn't move. It felt like someone was sitting on me, weighing me down. I wanted to say something. I wanted to move, but I couldn't. I was so paralyzed, I couldn't even make the tears to cry. At that point, I could hear my heart rate on the monitor. It kept going up higher and higher. I was in a state of sheer terror. I could hear them working on me. I could hear them talking. I felt the surge and make those incisions and push those instruments through my abdomen. I felt him moving my organs around as he explored. I heard him say things like, look at her appendix. It's really nice and pink. Colon looks good. Ovary looks good. I managed to twitch my foot three times to show I was awake, but each time someone put their hand on it to still it without verbally acknowledging I had moved. The operation lasted for about an hour and a half. To top it all off, because I was paralyzed, they had intubated me, put me on a breathing machine and set the ventilator to breathe seven times a minute. Even though my heart rate was up at 148 beats per minute, that's all I got, seven breaths a minute. I was suffocating. It felt as though my lungs were on fire. There was a point when I thought they had finished operating and they were starting to do their final thing. That's when I noticed I was able to move my tongue. I realized that the paralytic was wearing off. I thought, I'm gonna play with the breathing tube that's still in my throat. So I started wiggling it with my tongue to get their attention. And it worked. I did catch the attention of the anesthesiologist, but I guess he must have thought I was coming out of the paralytic more than I was because he took the tube and pulled it out of my throat, meaning she now can't breathe. I lay there thinking, now I'm really in trouble. I'd already said mental goodbyes to my family because I didn't think I was gonna pull through and now I couldn't breathe. I could hear the nurse yelling at me. She was on one side saying, breathe, Donna, breathe, but there was nothing I could do. As she was continuously telling me to breathe, the most amazing thing happened. I had an out of body experience and left my body. So not to cut Donna off, but near death experiences are a different episode and hers also isn't very good. So I'm just gonna jump ahead a little here. As quickly as I went there, I was back. In the time it takes to snap your fingers, I was back in my body in the operating room again. I could still hear them working on me and the nurses yelling, breathe Donna. All of a sudden the anesthesiologist said, bag her. They put a mask on my face and used a manual resuscitator to force air into my lungs. As soon as they did, the burning sensation I had in my lungs left. It was a huge relief. I started to breathe again. At that point, the anesthesiologist gave me something to counteract the paralytic and it didn't take long before I was able to start talking.

Oh, I'm disgusted and horrified. Like I genuinely hated every minute of that story. It's getting me on the most like visceral level.

Yeah. Later, she says, as I recovered from the ordeal, the surgeon came into my room, grabbed my hand with both of his and said, I understand there were some problems, Mrs. Penner. To which she probably said, yes, I have some post-operation dissatisfaction.

Well, what's interesting is in America, she's like, yeah, I'm gonna own this fucking hospital. But up there, it's probably like, nah, no big deal, I don't know.

So there was more in the article here that it was already a long read, so I won't do all of it. But she had a good heart to heart with the doctor. He did believe her. She did pursue legal action against the hospital. And all the article says is that it was settled out of court.

Of course it was, yeah.

Yeah, I assume she did get some money for it.

But I'm not saying money makes things better by any means. I'm just saying that the reason why maybe maybe a Canadian doctor might go, let's talk about this. It sounds like something horrible happened versus an American doctor who's so afraid of our obsession with litigation. I can see an American doctor be like, no, you were actually the doctor that day. Fuck off. And in Canada, you might actually get a little further of a conversation without tremendous knee jerk reaction fear of like, I'm gonna lose my medical license.

Well, not only lose your medical license, but I feel like the way that medical lawsuits go sometimes, our system is so shaky. I feel like one big lawsuit, like half the hospitals in the country will end up going under.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's plenty every year, but.

Anyway, Ed and I now are both just like, like I feel gross.

I don't love it. I don't love it.

I feel gross having read that story, but that's the full nightmare version of the way that this stuff happens. Now, one of the things that was reassuring about that study that I read is that, you know, this sort of ordeal, I mean, it should never happen, but it does seem that when it does, it is very rare. And in this case, even more rare because usually the paralytical wear off, but the anesthesia is still working. This was a really horrific thing where the paralytic is working and the anesthesia isn't, which is just-

No, it's the worst possible scenario.

Yeah.

It's the thing that I talked about during alien abduction where I'm like, this is my, I don't want this.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So, to wrap up, I did find a couple other stories on Reddit. It seems like every couple years, there's a post, usually on like r slash ask Reddit, asking if anyone has ever woken up during surgery. Like this one thread I found titled, in all caps, serious people who have woken up during surgery, what was it like? Most of these stories aren't as harrowing as Donna's, but it is unsettling how many of them there seem to be. So I just wanted to share a few here from Kaboose88 says, I woke up while they were putting a metal plate in my arm. They used a block which basically made my entire arm from shoulder to hand numb. When I woke up, I could remember hearing a drill and a slight pressure in the arm they were working on. I just said, this is awesome, followed shortly by someone saying oops, and I quickly went back to sleep. So that's more, that's the aperitif here, that this is more, this is a palate cleanser.

Well, I don't know if I believe the oops part.

True.

Because it's not like someone said oops, then they hit a button that puts you immediately back to sleep. I think that was maybe like, they were writing that for the lulls or something.

Maybe. But isn't that kind of how it works if they sense that you're waking up, that they hit you a little harder with the juice?

I have no idea. I have no idea if it's a button, if it's a, you know what I mean? Like, did he say he like locked eyes with somebody?

No, no, no, nothing.

Yeah, so I don't trust this oops talk. But, and that's a question. So basically though, they felt no pain. They were just like, oh shit, I'm awake and.

Yeah, which is most of these Reddit stories that I found.

Which is what you want.

Yes, I'm pivoting to these because we're getting near the end of the episode and I just can't bring myself to end on that story because it's so awful.

Yeah, no, that story, I hate it. I hate it so much. That poor woman, I fucking hate it.

This one's kind of hilarious. I woke up partway through having all four wisdom teeth removed. The assistant had wrapped her arms around my forehead. The dentist had his knee on my sternum. What? And was yanking two handed on the largest pliers I've ever seen that somehow fit into my mouth. He stopped, nodded to the anesthesiologist, and then thankfully I didn't remember anything else.

Oh my God.

But what a, the dentist's knee on your sternum is so fucking hardcore.

This is some WC field shit. Like why, this is what I'm talking about, man. Like somebody moved you that day. It's like, that's how out you are. Like you're so out. People are using you as a fucking trampoline. You'd have no idea.

Yeah, they're like, you wake up and four doctors are jumping on your chest to try to break through your sternum.

Yeah, I don't know why they would need to break through your, I guess it's the doctors this time, not dentists.

Yeah. And then this last one from user Allison underscore wonderland starts off kind of funny. She says, I woke up during foot surgery. I had conscious sedation and local anesthesia in my foot. I remember feeling super chilled out. I felt like me, the surgeon and all the other people in there were buddies. They were sawing off a part of a bone and I remember thinking it felt kind of good, like a foot massage. I asked the surgeons if I could see what they were doing and they said something like, no, go back to sleep. I think I asked this question more than once during the surgery. I remember waking up right after the surgery as they were preparing to transfer me to the recovery room. The surgeon said something like, haul your ass onto this stretcher. Not gonna lie, it was pretty awesome. But then she follows up with this that people didn't comment as much on. The anesthesiologist also kissed me on the forehead as I was leaving the operating room.

That's not definitely not in the rule books, right?

I told my parents in the car ride home about it and about how it was cool that he was so friendly. They were like, that's a little weird. And I thought about it and was like, hmm, that actually is pretty weird. I guess I didn't register it while I was drugged up.

Yeah, I mean, that's bananas. No, that's definitely not okay. And or like every operation ends, he's always just leans in, just kisses people, like goodbye, sweet angel. Thank you for being such a little treat during this. Like what?

Yeah, I can't think of an age where that would be appropriate. Like I was almost gonna say like, well, I guess if you were like a scared little kid, but no, that's so weird.

That's 100% still, if anything, that's worse. It's like we have like lollipops and stuff to do that for you.

Yeah, you don't need to kiss the forehead of your patient.

Unless the patient is your child.

True. Or I mean, it's just so bad. It wasn't even like a nurse. It's the person responsible for putting you under.

Yeah, that's this very telling. Don't love that. Cause it's not like the doctor. Yeah, cause it's like a guy or lady off to the side who just, it's just somebody who's responsible for being like, how's it going over there? Johnson is like, oh, good, it's going great. Like they're definitely not gonna remember me kissing them. That's how good I am at my job. They won't remember me kissing them. I don't love it. That person's in charge of it.

Yeah, report this guy. Jesus. That'll be another episode, just creepy doctors.

I don't think we need to do that episode. That's a loaded episode. Let's not maybe, maybe in season five.

Yeah. Well, that brings us to the end of this particularly egregious nightmare. Ed, where do you put waking up during surgery on the fear tier?

Number one, number fucking one.

Nice.

I have been blessed in this world with very few things. I have been blessed in this world with the body slash put it off till later worrying attitude on most things medical. So I've been rewarded for bad behavior of putting off pretty much anything medical because I've been blessed with not really having that many issues.

Same.

And so I've never had to go under surgery other than wisdom teeth, but I likely will. And so by virtue of it's definitely down the road and I know doctors, not necessarily anesthesiologists, but like they're idiots just like us who just studied a lot at one thing. And so I never make a doctor's appointment at seven in the morning. Because if they're anything like me, they're not awake, they're not gonna do their best work. They were hung over from the night before. So since they're human, I'm human, right there is a recipe for disaster. Yeah, it's just, gosh, it's just so, a lot of times with the fear tier, it's like, ah, I'm not afraid of it, because I'll avoid it. But it kind of like, surgery might be unavoidable for your whole life. Yeah, so the fact that we're landing with these crazy small numbers, like 13,900 people, like, holy shit, man. Yeah, that's, and the thing is, it's weird, because I'm not afraid of waking up in surgery if it's like, oh, did you hear that drill? That's funny and cool. I'm afraid of specifically the like, still paralyzed, feel everything one.

Yeah, well, it's, I think it's so, I also would put this at number one on the fear tier for me. So let's play a little sound effect here, or a little cheer fireworks or something. In a way, it's kind of like airline disasters where you really can't avoid, most people can't avoid having to get on a plane for something at some point in their life. Same with surgery, most people, I would say, are probably gonna have to get put under for something. But once that happens, you have absolutely no control over whether or not the bad part happens. And that's the thing that drives me crazy about it, is that loss of control to something so horrible, and there's nothing you can do to prepare for it better. You can't train for it. You can't study your way out of it. You either wake up during surgery or you don't. And most people luckily don't. But if you do, you just suffer. You just fuck.

Well, the thing is, it's either uncomfortable and unusual, which is the like, I felt a little stiffness, no different than getting dental work when you're not. When you're localized, feeling all the pressure of it, but you're not really feeling pain. If I felt pressure and no pain, I can live with waking up in that alien abduction basically. But the feeling, the pain mixed with, fuck it, the feeling, the pain aspect's bad enough. But then you throw in the like, I can't move thing. And that's why I actually had a question earlier that I know you don't have the answer to, but I'll ask it now, which is in the woman's story that we both recoiled and hated because of just we're not piece of shit people. And so we did feel empathy towards that person. Her heart rate rose, which on my mind, I'm like, okay, that should be a red flag in the operating room, which makes me wonder, does the heart react the way the heart's gonna react to trauma all the time? Is that actually not an unusual sight for a doctor to see? Which is like the heart would be elevator because we're cutting into the body and all these like alarms are going off in a body. And then secondly, her foot moved and then a nurse or a doctor or an assistant just kind of move, you know, put their hand on it.

Yeah.

And I also wonder, is that a thing that's common in an operating room where you would have a limb move or a thing twitch because you touched a nerve or whatever. So neither one of those might have truly been a sign until the tube in her mouth starts moving because it's like, yeah, your jaw wouldn't be moving right now. Your tongue wouldn't be moving right now.

Yeah, I don't have the specific answer to that question. I do think that study that basically was saying, you know, up to 40% of people do have reactions in surgery, but they don't remember it. I would imagine that some of the reason they're doing that study is to try to determine specifically what things might indicate a person is conscious versus just having a physical reaction. I mean, yeah, to me, heart rate seems like it would be pretty indicative of like something's wrong, but maybe not. I mean, I'll just say this, I'm no doctor.

Nobody would have questioned that you were. You don't present yourself as a doctor. It's weird that you wear a lab coat and stethoscope every day. So I guess in that way, you present yourself, but then people start talking to you for like one minute and you're like, oh, this is the guy who thinks it's Halloween.

I call myself the fear doctor.

Oh my gosh, the doctor of fear.

Doctor of fear. All right, well.

We have a new highest fear tier. We've definitely, it's the fucking worst, man. I don't know how we even take that away unless we talk specifically about a serial killer who only kills people named Ed and Chris. I don't know how we top this, man. It's just the worst.

It's just the fucking worst. So we're starting off season three with a high bar. A new bar has been set.

Only downhill from here, people.

Yeah. There's nothing left to cover. No, there is gonna be a multitude of bizarre, funny, scary, wild fears this season. So stay tuned until we see you again. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this is Scared All The Time. We'll see you next time, bye.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Fifle.

Our theme song is the track, Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is A*****.

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Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. We are in this together. Together. Together.

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