This has come to the attention of the general public because of the movie ‘Awake.’  30,000 people a year are mentally alert during surgery.  They are physically paralized, but feel every cut and hear everything around them.  I’ve known about it, and am choosing to blog about it, because it happened to me when my son was born.  Because of the way my spine curves, having an epidural and being awake during my c-section was not supposed to be an option.  I was supposed to be under general anestesia.

I did not wake up during the procedure.  I was never asleep.  I felt it when they were cutting.  I remember straining to open my mouth to scream, to twitch, to do something to let the doctor know that I wasn’t fully under, but I couldn’t move.  It was like being trapped in a bad dream.  Eventually, I did lose consciousness, but I don’t know if it was because the anesthesia kicked in or because I passed out from the pain.  I tried to tell the nurses about it when they woke me up, but although I was able to correctly tell them the baby’s weight and APGAR without being told, they insisted it had been a bad dream.

 http://news.aol.com/health/story/_a/for-thousands-surgery-is-awake-horror/20071204085209990001