A patient describes his horrifying experience of being awake during his surgery.
Imagine enduring major surgery while fully conscious and unable to tell anyone. That nightmare became reality for Matthew Caswell.
In 2020, Caswell underwent hernia repair and lipoma removal at Progress West Hospital in O’Fallon, Missouri. But as he was supposed to be going under, he realised something was wrong.
According to the news report, a towel covered Caswell’s face and he ‘couldn’t speak because he’d already received an initial paralysing agent before surgery.’
“He was paralysed, couldn’t move, couldn’t move his eyes, couldn’t speak,” Caswell’s attorney, Kenneth Vuylsteke explained. “Awake but unable to move.”
Caswell was supposed to receive anaesthesia through a mask over his face, but ‘that gas was not turned on by the anaesthesiologist,’ Vuylsteke confirmed.
The patient felt the initial incision into his abdomen for the hernia surgery.
“I knew I was in trouble when I felt the cold iodine hit my belly and they were scrubbing me off,” he recalled. “At any second I was waiting to go out. All the sudden I got stabbed in my stomach […] it was like rusted razor blades. It was so bad. It was like torture.”
Caswell is now suing the anaesthesiologist, the certified registered nurse anaesthetist and their employer, Washington University.
The lawsuit states Caswell could ‘feel pain and hear everything said in the operating room for at least thirteen minutes.’ Meanwhile, Caswell’s attorney argued that his elevated heart rate should have alerted medical staff that he was conscious.
“His heart rate went through the roof, his blood pressure went to what’s called hypertensive crisis 3, which is what happens to you right before a heart attack,” Vuylsteke explained. “And it continued at that rate for 13 minutes without anyone in the operating room noticing.”
Caswell told KCTV he ‘would have rather died on that table.’
A video post-Caswell’s surgery, filed by his mother, shows him repeatedly saying ‘I want to get out of here.’ Dr. Dan Forest, who was retained as an expert witness by Caswell’s lawyer, said such cases are ‘not very common, but it does occur.’
Dr. Forest explained that what Caswell experienced was called ‘intraoperative awareness’ and noted that most cases result from equipment failure rather than staff forgetting to activate equipment.
“I think what’s important is that patients speak with the anaesthesiologist prior to surgery to better understand what to expect,” said Dr. Forest.
Man who ‘died for several minutes’ explains what he saw that ‘changed everything’
He is one of just a few people who have managed to come back to life
While death is the end for most people, there are some lucky individuals that have managed to come back to life after their heart has stopped, and one man has shared how it changed his life forever.
Some people have spent years and an extortionate amount of money in an attempt to cheat death through some rather unconventional methods, yet for a select few it came naturally — although they did actually have to die to realize that.
One man managed to somehow survive death after being struck by lightning, and another woman wrote a heartbreaking message when she miraculously woke up after having her heart stop for a period of time.
That exact same thing happened to survival evasion resistance and escape instructor Chase Skylar DeMayo, who briefly passed away on April 1, 2008 before coming back to life with a changed outlook.
As reported by the Metro, Chase’s fellow soldiers at Langley Air Force Base noticed that he hadn’t made it to work in the morning, and were shocked to find him unconscious in the dorm room.
Chase briefly died for several minutes, and has revealed what he saw after his heart stopped (Facebook/Chase Skylar DeMayo)
He was quickly rushed to hospital where tests and x-rays were immediately administered, yet his vision suddenly became blurry and an air embolism entering his IV drip caused him to have a cardiac arrest.
“The last thing I heard was alarms going off, a calming voice told me that it would be OK, and I felt no fear at all — only peace,” he explained, recalling the situation just before he ‘died’ in an interview with Coming Home on YouTube.
He then recalls floating into the air immediately after his heart stopped, at which point he was greeted by Jesus Christ himself, and found himself in a “vibrant garden with colors brighter than anything here on Earth.”
He was also playing with a child that appeared to be a younger version of himself, adding that “we connected without words. He told me to go back and spread love, laughter, light, and joy, and reminded me of my true purpose on Earth beyond everyday struggles. No matter my past, I had light to chase and stare.”
It was clear that it wasn’t his time to die, and he recalled having an understanding that his time ‘wasn’t done’ back on Earth, waking up shortly after in a different hospital in Hampton, Virginia.
“I was discharged quickly, with tests showing no damage,” Chase recalled following the miracle, and despite technically dying it was almost like nothing had happened.
His life changed dramatically after he briefly ‘died’, and it spurred him on to go for a doctorate in holistic counselling (Facebook/Chase Skylar DeMayo)
While his body seemingly saw no changes, his mind underwent significant ones as it spurred him onto a completely new career path and purpose in life, retiring from the army and completing a doctorate in holistic counselling.
“It’s changed everything for me, I chase forgotten joys and I live with a reminder each day to live with purpose, chasing light in the dark times,” Chase illustrated, adding that he feels “grateful and transformed.”
Featured Image Credit: Sean Anthony Eddy / Getty
Neuroscientist reveals chilling things he saw while in a coma as he explains what it really feels like
A neuroscientist has recalled his experience of being in a coma, detailing the disturbing things he saw.
The world is full of mysterious experiences that even science struggles to explain.
Some people claim they’ve been abducted by aliens and communicated with higher powers, while others report profound spiritual experiences whether it be through psychedelics or religious practices.
Many individuals describe completely changing their outlook on life after transformative events like near-death experiences or comas.
YouTuber Smosh Alike decided to ask a neurosurgeon what being in a coma actually feels like from a medical expert’s perspective.
“I had spent 54 years of my life before coma honing a very conventional, modern scientific view,” Dr. Eben Alexander explained. He described his background working as a neurosurgeon and teaching at Harvard Medical School for over 15 years.
“I thought I had some idea of how brain, mind and consciousness works,” the scientist admitted.
‘I was just a speck of awareness.’ (Smosh Alike/YouTube)
Once holding strong views on physicalism, which is the belief that only the physical world exists, Dr. Alexander recalled his experience in a coma.
“What seemed to be a journey of months or years, even though it all had to fit within seven days,” he explained. “Never during any part of the seven-day journey did I have any kind of body sense at all, period. I was just a speck of awareness.”
His first experience he described as an ‘earthworm’s eye view’ – which he considered a very basic, primitive perception of his surroundings: “It was like being in dirty jello.”
Then, a ‘slowly spinning light’ appeared with fine ‘silvery and golden tendrils’ extending from it.
“As it came towards me, I realised it had a perfect musical melody,” Dr. Alexander said, adding that it led him into an ‘ultra-real gateway valley.’
In the next stage, the neuroscientist said he became ‘a speck of awareness on a butterfly among millions of other butterflies.’
“They were all flying and spiralling colours absolutely beyond the rainbow,” he expressed.
According to the neurosurgeon, this realm resembled Earth moreover, it was ‘a world of perfection.’
“There was no sign of any death or decay,” he recalled. “To me, what it appeared like was all of these interwoven threads [..] where the lives of individual souls were coming in and out of incarnations.”
“The core realm was absolutely the furthest from any kind of human experience.”
The interviewer remarked that Dr. Alexander’s experience sounded similar to how science fiction movies depict alternate realities and transcending the boundaries of consciousness.
Featured Image Credit: Halfpoint Images via Getty
