When Anesthesia Fails and the Patient Is Cut Open
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm David Marchese. And I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. And we're the hosts of The Interview from The New York Times. David and I have spent our careers interviewing some of the most interesting and influential people in the world. Which means we know when to ask tough questions and when to just sit back and listen. And now we've teamed up to have these conversations every week. We'll try to reveal something about the people shaping our world. And we'll get some great stories from them, too. It's The Interview from The New York Times. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.
C-sections are the most common surgery in the United States. But it turns out, in a shocking number of them, the anesthesia is failing. And that's leaving women to feel a major surgery as it is being performed. Writer Susan Burton made a series about this phenomenon for our colleagues at Serial Productions. And today, she tells us about some of the women she spoke to and the new research on how common their experiences are.
C-sections
It's Friday, February 6th.
Susan, thank you so much for being here.
Of course. Thank you for having me.
You have done so much tremendous reporting on something really horrific, which is all of these women who have gotten C-sections and could actually feel them, which sounds like something literally out of a nightmare, out of a horror movie. And recently, there was a study that came out that actually backed up some of these anecdotes that you had been collecting. So how did you even get started talking to these women in the first place?
So in the summer of 2023, I did a story published as a podcast series that on the surface had kind of this true crimey plot. A nurse had stolen fentanyl from a fertility clinic run by Yale University and replaced that fentanyl with saline. And essentially what this meant was that a lot of patients at this clinic who had surgical procedures experienced excruciating pain during those procedures. So that was the underlying theme of the podcast, you know, the kind of routine dismissal of women's pain in medicine that resonated with a lot of listeners. And hundreds of them, mostly women, began to send me stories about their own experiences of inadequately treated or ignored pain. So lots of stories about things like IUD insertions or experiences with endometriosis.
And these emails were, you know, they were moving. They were upsetting. They were raw. And then one afternoon, I opened an email that was unlike any of the others I'd received so far. The writer said that she had felt everything during her C-section. She had felt the doctor cutting into her. She had felt, she said, her organs being moved around. Oh, my God.
Because we should remind people this is a major abdominal surgery.
Yes. I'm really glad you pointed that out because a lot of times people think like, oh, a C-section, that's not a real surgery. It is a very real surgery and it's a major abdominal surgery. A third of women who give birth in the United States will have a C-section. So it's also a surgery that a lot of people have. So, you know, I get this email and it was so disturbing.
What alarming issue is highlighted about anesthesia during C-sections?
I thought, was this maybe a one-off? I wrote back to the listener. And then within 24 or maybe 48 hours, I had opened two more emails describing something really similar. And that was the point where I was like, okay, is this a thing? So I started talking to people about it, and I came to recognize that there were patterns in these experiences.
I was rushed into the C-section. My husband was there, and I could feel them starting the operation. I could feel the incision.
So, for example, feeling the surgery in a way that was just totally shocking.
It was burning. It was like someone took a hot piece of metal and put it against my stomach. There was this nurse on my right side. I just remember holding her hand and telling her over and over again that I can feel everything, that I still feel it, I still feel it.
Speaking up and after you've spoken up, being told that what you're feeling is just pressure.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:35
2
What alarming issue is highlighted about anesthesia during C-sections?
3:35–6:15
3
How did Susan Burton start her investigation into women's pain during C-sections?
6:15–9:31
4
What disturbing experiences did women report during their C-sections?
9:31–20:30
5
What role does communication play in addressing pain during surgery?
20:30–32:09
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from The Daily
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