Anesthesia Awareness Lawsuit

A lawsuit has been filed by the family of a Baptist minister in West Virginia who reportedly committed suicide after having surgery and not being given the proper amount of anesthesia. His family claims that in the two weeks before the suicide occurred, Sherman Sizemore, 73, believed that people were trying to bury him alive.

His family believes that his paranoia and traumatic stress syndrome stemmed from the fact that he was awake during a surgery without being able to move or cry out in pain. Since the incident, more attention has been drawn to anesthesia awareness, something that an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people in the United States experience each year.

What is Anesthesia Awareness?

This experience occurs when the patient feels pain, pressure or other discomfort during surgery because they were not given enough anesthesia. The causes of anesthesia awareness can be due to doctor errors, faulty equipment or medical conditions that are so severe the patient can’t be safely put under the medication.

“It’s the first time I know of anyone succeeding in taking their own lives because of this, but suicidal thoughts are not all that uncommon” among such patients, explains Carol Weihrer, the president of the Virginia-based Anesthesia Awareness Campaign, which she founded after enduring her own anesthesia awareness experience.

Lawsuit Filed by Mourning Family

Sizemore was supposedly admitted to Raleigh General Hospital for exploratory surgery in order for doctors to diagnose the cause of his constant abdominal pain. The anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist employed at Raleigh Anesthesia Associates reportedly gave Sizemore anesthesia to prevent his muscles from twitching while he was in surgery.

However, the suit states that they didn’t give him enough general anesthesia to make him unconscious until 16 minutes after the first cut into his abdomen was initiated As a result, the family says in the suit that he was forced to suffer excruciating pain.

The lawsuit also claims that Sizemore wasn’t told that he hadn’t been properly anesthetized, and he emerged from surgery with tormenting doubts about whether his memories were real.

Only two months later, Sizemore shot himself to death. And, as the lawsuit states, his family says he had no history of psychological distress before having the surgery.