16 MINUTES

                            

Note: This story is based on Author's fiction. It doesn't apply to any historical references or real-life incidents. Actually, while researching this incident that happened in West Virginia, I felt really uncomfortable.  

2006

KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI

73-year-old Rajendran was a very brave man. Everyone around him knows this. Why because, from a young age, he was working as a coal miner in an underground mine. It is one of the most dangerous works in the world. So while he was in that job, he went in the wrong direction many times.

And he has even escaped from deadly danger like landslides and gas leakage inside the mines. After his children became adults, he retired from that job and became a temple priest. After that, he became a quiet gentleman. When he was like that, an incident that occurred in January 2006, has turned his life upside down.

JANUARY 19, 2006

On January 19^th afternoon, both Raghavan and his wife Brinda were sitting on the sofa in their house. Brinda was doing her work. Suddenly, Raghavan, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, started to scream terribly by looking at a place in front of him. How it looked like is…it was like something standing in front of him and scaring him. Hearing this, Brinda was scared and looked at her husband.

And she also started screaming after seeing her husband screaming. Then it looked like her husband was seeing something in front of him. Brinda also looked at the same place where her husband was looking. But there was nothing.

Immediately Brinda asked her husband, "Why are you shouting?" But there was no response from Raghavan. But now he stopped shouting. But he couldn't turn from the place where he was staring. It was like, something was holding him. His mouth remained open. His eyes were very wide and his whole body started to sweat terribly. Immediately, Brinda went to her husband and patted his shoulder, and asked him to look at her.

Then Raghavan finally returned to Brinda and said: "Don't leave me. If you leave they'll kill me."

Brinda doesn't know what is going on. She has never seen this kind of behavior from her husband. Now he was behaving completely like someone else. So, Brinda started to pray to keep her husband calm. But that didn't work out. Raghavan was behaving in the same way once in a while throughout the day.

Now Brinda is wondering if she could call 108 or go to the hospital. But her husband is very brave. So she thought he will definitely come back from that. And she thought that everything will be fine if he sleep well and woke up tomorrow. Similarly, when Raghavan behaved like that she stayed and reassured him and made him sleep at night.

But the next day, when Brinda saw him, he was lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. Raghavan didn't sleep all night. In fact, it became a lot more than before, but not less. So, Brinda told her family members about that. And when they came to Raghavan's house to calm him down, he didn't allow anyone in there.

Because Raghavan was afraid that they will bury him alive. Now the only person he trusts is his wife Brinda. Raghavan's whole family can't even understand what is happening to him. But they may not have known that there was a specific reason for his behavior.

A FEW MONTHS AGO

KSC HOSPITALS, CHENNAI

Exactly a few months ago, that is on January 19, a few months before he behaved like this, Raghavan had severe pain in his abdomen. So Raghavan, his wife Brinda, and their daughter, all three of them went to the hospital to find out the reason. The doctor also checked Raghavan and took some tests.

Now, what the doctor said is, "I think that your gall bladder was the reason for your pain. But can't say it accurately. You have two options: Wait for a few days and see what happens next and let us confirm it. The second is to operate and tear your stomach and take the gall bladder out and see if there is any problem in it and cure it before itself."

So what did Raghavan and his family decided is…the pain is already too high. So they decided it was better to operate and cure rather than wait. The date of operation is January 19^th. That is when Raghavan started to behave strangely. They went to the hospital the day before and prepared for the operation. Now he was put on a stretcher for the operation on January 19^th. Saying bye to his family, he bravely went to the operating theatre.

As soon as he entered the operating room, he saw a very bright light above his head. And also saw the preparation going on for the operation. After a while, an IV was injected into his arm. And a nurse puts an oxygen mask on Raghavan's face. Only then the anesthesiologist will give two doses of drugs for him to become unconscious for the surgery.

They had planned to give Raghavan general anesthesia for this operation. According to that, Raghavan will become unconscious and will not know what is happening to him. He will be unconscious only after the operation and will he start recovering after that. So now after the mask has been put on, the anesthesiologist is injecting drugs to induce unconsciousness.

But in general anesthesia, out of the two doses that should be injected, only one dose was injected. That is, the first dose was the paralyzing dose, that was injected. But the second dose actual dose of anesthesia was not injected.

It is this second dose that causes sedation. Most importantly, this second dose only prevents patients from pain. Now Raghavan who was on the stretcher, knows that he is going to get anesthesia. So the nurse next to him said, "Sir. Count reverse from 10 to zero." Raghavan knew that it was a normal thing.

Counting from 10, 9, 8, 7 and so on, Raghavan will be unconscious when he reaches zero. Similarly, when Raghavan was counting, like 7, 6, 5…and so on, he came to know that something was happening in his body. As soon as he said zero, he thought that he would get unconscious, but he didn't.

He thought why he didn't get fainted after reaching zero. He was being able to think about everything well and understand what is happening around him. And he can feel his body very well. But he couldn't move his body. He was completely paralyzed, he tried to make a sound but he couldn't. Because his vocal cord was also paralyzed.

Now in his whole body, the only part he could move is only his eyes. He can move his eyes left and right. But Raghavan's eyes were taped and closed. So Raghavan can't see anything. Raghavan thought that the drug is working slowly. He thought that in a few seconds the drug will make him unconscious and it was just his memory.

But he hears all the nurses and doctors in the operation room were preparing to operate. So Raghavan started to get scared and started to move his eyes left and right very fast. As he did that, the tape over his eyes loosened slightly and a small gap was seen. Now Raghavan can see what is happening in that room through that gap.

Now what he saw made him tremble. The surgeon came to Raghavan's side and put on his gloves. After putting it, he asked for a scalpel. The nurse there took a chrome metallic blade and gave it to the surgeon. Now the surgeon started to cut the middle part of Raghavan's stomach and Raghavan felt all of that that is, including the pain, he felt everything. He felt the real pain, which is felt when the stomach was torn in a normal condition.

But Raghavan couldn't do anything now, and couldn't move his body. All he could do was quickly turn his eyes left and right. At least one person in the room looked into his eyes and he longed that anyone will find out that he was conscious. But no one saw Raghavan's face. So no one knows that his eyes were moving.

So the surgeon tears Raghavan's stomach to a particular length and gave his scalpel to the nurse and now asked for clamps. Now the nurse took the clamps which looked like a torture device and gave them to the surgeon's hand. Now the surgeon holds the skin tightly with the clamps. Now he is expanding the hole in the stomach a little bit better.

Every moment it sent a feeling of pain to Raghavan's brain like lightning. He was experiencing everything when he was conscious. But he was unable to do anything, so he turned his eyes left and right. Now the surgeon asked for scope. Immediately the nurse handed over a camera to him.

The surgeon put that camera into Raghavan's stomach and twisted it continuously. Now he asked for suction. Immediately, the nurse took a vacuum-like tube and took the all body fluids out of him.

The pain that Raghavan is experiencing is a pain that cannot even be imagined. Every second seemed to move like an era. Now the surgeon asked for the Forceps, and the nurse gave him a big metal-like wire.

Now the surgeon put that, into the hole in Raghavan's stomach and took the gall bladder out. At this moment, he felt like dying instead of enduring this pain. He stopped turning his eyes to left and right and longed that someone will see him. Finally, the nurse saw his face accidentally.

And he was terribly staring at the nurse. Immediately the nurse stopped them and shouted that he was awake. Immediately, the surgeon's mind collapsed. They called the anesthesiologist who was standing there and asked him to see what it is. He immediately ran there and started to inject painkiller drugs into Raghavan's mask.

When he was injecting that, he realized that he didn't give him, a second dose. Now when the painkillers started to work, in a few seconds…Raghavan's eyes started to close and go into an unconscious state. Now he knows no pain. But the anesthesiologist and the medical team know that "This is going to be a huge problem."

"This patient has been experiencing surgical pain for 16 minutes. If he comes to consciousness, he will remember everything that happened. So he will file a huge lawsuit against us and the hospital. A big bad name will come to the hospital and have to pay a huge amount for that." The surgeon said to the medical doctors. So they made an idea.

The idea is…after giving painkillers to Raghavan, they started to give Midazolam drugs along with that. It is an amnesia drug. Just like the name, to whom it was given, they will forget what happened before that. If it was given to Raghavan, he will not remember what happened.

So they gave that drug to him so that he will not file a case against them. After that, the medical team completes the surgery. Then Raghavan is sent to the recovery room for recovery. Similarly, Raghavan wakes up from unconsciousness. As they thought, when he woke up he doesn't remember what happened.

So the medical team thought that they all had escaped. But those cruel 16 minutes remained in his subconscious mind.

He had a feeling that something terrible has happened to his body. The amnesia drug made him only forget how it happened to him. But he remember everything that happened in those 16 minutes. As soon as he came to the recovery room, he felt in his subconscious that something wrong had happened to him.

No matter what, he was afraid of everything and everyone he saw. But he doesn't have any memory to connect with his feeling. Raghavan didn't show this to anyone. He was like he is fine. They left for home on January 19.

When he was sitting on the sofa, he suddenly screamed. It was terrible. Actually, that memory only made him behave strangely like that.

PRESENT

NEXT FEW DAYS

In the next few days, he was able to access those 16 minutes in his mind. Though he pictured that someone had cut and pulls out the organs from him, he doesn't know whether this has happened to him or not.

But instead, he thought it was a bad dream that is coming again and again. At the same time his family, made many doctors and psychologists check on Raghavan. But before finding out what was wrong with him, it started to get worse and Raghavan started to behave very strangely.

TWO WEEKS LATER

FEBRUARY 2, 2006

After the surgery, 2 weeks later…On February 2^nd, Raghavan took his own life. Raghavan's family was heartbroken beyond words. They were thinking that everything that happened was true or not. Brinda started to dig into everything that had happened to her husband.

Finally, she found the medical report of the gall bladder operation on January 19^th. She gave that to another doctor. Finally, that doctor only found the whole truth. Raghavan experienced 16 minutes of anesthesia awareness.

"What is meant by Anesthesia awareness doctor?" asked Brinda to which the doctor said: "Anesthesia awareness means, you'll be awake during the operation, or you'll be able to feel your operation." Raghavan's family filed a case against the hospital in the High court under the Consumer Protection act, 1986 and Section 337, IPC (Indian Penal Code- Causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others). 

In 2008, an undisclosed amount was settled to the family.

EPILOGUE

Shockingly, it is said that in this world every year these kinds of incidents are happening to 20,000 people. So my beloved readers, after reading this story, hereafter, in our life if we go for an operation, without any shame, in the operation theater itself you should ask it. Sir, did you put the anesthesia dosage? Or only injected paralyzing dosage? Don't forget to anesthesia dose, sir. Like this, you have to ask it. Just think, what we'll do if this happen to us. I can't even think about it.

So, Readers, what do you think about this case? Comment your opinions kindly.