Woman Gets $150,000 After Anesthetic Lapses in Surgery
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A woman who woke up during surgery but was unable to complain about her horrible pain has won $150,000 in a malpractice lawsuit against her anesthesiologist.
Jeannie Smith, 48, said she woke up in the operating room on Dec. 18, 1995, but had a breathing tube down her throat and was under the influence of a drug to immobilize her, so she couldn’t speak or move.
What she could do, she said, was feel every cut and stitch of a 45-minute operation to remove her ovaries.
Anesthesiologist David Carney’s lawyer, Gerald Walsh, said the doctor acknowledged that Isoforane, an anesthetic commonly used to keep patients asleep, apparently ran out without his knowledge. “He was very distressed,†Walsh said.
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