Patient Awake During Surgery

James Sabatini

Contributor

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Studies say that up to 40,000 surgery patients a year are left awake but paralyzed during surgery.
Two West Virginia women say that experience caused their father to commit suicide.

Sherman Sizemore, a former coal miner and Baptist minister, killed himself in February 2006, two weeks after undergoing abdominal surgery. The family has filed a lawsuit claiming medical malpractice. According to the lawsuit, Sizemore was awake for nearly 30 minutes of his surgery.
The family said this experience left their father so upset he took his own life.
Experts saiy that people who have suffered from anesthesia awareness are frequently distressed, even suffering from post-traumatic stress.