"Conscious during emergency surgery"

Several years ago, I had ovarian cysts burst it was agony. I am autistic and sensory sensitive. The nurse kept having to get permission to give me more medication and I was treated like I wanted drugs. The pain was worse than giving birth. I had more pain weeks later and was told it was probably another cyst just take Panadol. So when the pain kept reoccurring I ignored it, I was sick of waiting in emergency sick and uncomfortable and being ignored until I was so tired and ill I gave up and went home,  so atleast I could be in bed.

Then one night I got up from studying, it had been hard to ignore the pain in bed, so I had done something to distract myself. But upon standing I screamed in agony and fell to the ground, the stabbing ripping fiery pain was unbearable unless I was pushing down on my abdomen with all my might. I took some panadine forte and lay down, I called my mum-a nurse but she was half asleep and said she’d call back. She rang back half hour later and I explained what happened. She said I should go to the hospital, but I said no the pain was bearable-sorta and I was too tired and upset to be sitting there all night ignored again. She arrived at my house 40 mins later and demanded I get up as she was taking me to emergency, she said she had heard my voice before the pain killers had kicked in and she knew that sound, I was in agony. And people sounding like that weren’t making it up, she said it needed looked at. Pushing on my stomach felt like a wave underneath a wave of lava burning me from the inside of my bloated stomach.

We got to the hospital on Friday evening. Unfortunately. Hours and hours later I got through to short stays and I recall the nurse could tell I was ill, I couldn’t move an inch or I’d scream in pain and my heart rate was dropping. They took tests and a male nurse told me congratulations you are pregnant. I thought to myself congratulations? Nothing this painful this early ends well, what a stupid way to deliver the news. I rung my partner and told him, he was not impressed we had only planned to have one. I thought hanging up don’t worry you might not even have a partner by the end of this. I have never felt such pain before. They couldn’t do anything but argue over if I was allowed more pain medication or not, as they needed to do a scan, but guess what, no specialists can be seen or scans done on weekends as they only have staff on call. And it seemed no one wanted to bother them.

So Monday morning at 10 am I had a scan then an internal scan then at 10:30am I was booked in for emergency surgery, I read the things that could go wrong and asked about them I was told by the gynocologist to  sign it or I'll die, so bawling I signed it and was wheeled into theatre wondering if I’d ever see my baby daughter again.

The operation was to be they think a d and c, which takes about 30 mins. My eyes felt so heavy and the light above me so bright. And it felt so loud in recovery, why were people being so loud and running all around me? I desperately tried to open my eyes and I did for a brief moment and nearly had a heart attack. I wondered for a minute, was I dying? Or did I die, I opened my eyes for a moment and realised I wasn’t watching me on the table high up in the room near the ceiling like a spirit or something, I was still in my body, on the table and I could see a dr in front of me one nurse to their left and one to their right and felt someone behind me, and the dr was asking for items .. and I realised- oh my God they are operating on me still. Oh fk oh fk what has gone wrong what if they don’t realise and I start to feel it, and I started to panic and my eyes seemed glued shut so heavy, and I could hear others in the room running around and the dr snapping at the nurse on their left to pay attention, they had asked the nurse for something and the nurse hadn’t responded. The nurse apologised and said they thought they had seen my eyes open.

And I though yes the nurse is my chance, I must let them know I’m here before it wears off more and I feel everything, but my eyes were frozen and the Dr told the nurse off for being ridiculous and they apologised and I heard the Dr saying we need more blood, how many left?, and down 2, another 2 left and asking my my heart was. I also heard the Dr saying we got it started again, then asking about my kidneys because they keep failing.

That got my eyes open then I recall the nurse squealed and the others  gasped as I opened my eyes one last time with all my might and then relaxed exhausted knowing they had seen, the Dr apologised to the nurse soothing them saying ” yes I saw it too” then yelled at the anaesthetist “fix it!” And then I slowly drifted off back to sleep.

I awoke in their version of intensive care, tubes everywhere- alone. I told my mum- she didn’t believe me. So she asked a nurse what happened who said they'd never seen anything, like it I had a partial miscarriage causing major haemorrhage and a burst cyst so went into septic shock as I’d been left so long. My mum told the nurse what I said and I understand the nurse gasped “she heard everything we said ?”  No one talked to me, records vanished. I’m terrified of surgery now. Still no justice.