Woman writes terrifying letter about the time she was awake during surgery

It's right out of a horror movie.

A Canadian woman has detailed her terrifying experience of waking up before the start of the surgery, only to realize the doctors were about to the make the first incision. Because of the anesthesia, she was unable to communicate to the doctors that she was awake.

She had to endure the pain as the doctors operated on her, completely unaware of the situation. These traumatic moments were detailed in a letter to BBC.

44-year-old Donna Penner, from Canada, was having abnormal menstrual pain. Her doctors decided to do a laparoscopy to figure out what was wrong.

Everything was going smoothly. Pre-op went fine and the anaesthesiologist administered her an intravenous drip. She put on a mask and drifted off to sleep -- only to wake up while on the operating table.

"When I woke up I could still hear the sounds in the operating room. I could hear the staff banging and clanging and the machines going - the monitors and that kind of thing. I thought, "Oh good, it's over, it's done, " Penner wrote.

But then she heard the surgeon ask for the scalpel. She couldn't speak or sit up because she had been given a "paralytic" to make it easier for the surgeon to cut into her abdomen. But the anaesthesia hadn't worked.

"I felt him moving my organs around as he explored. I heard him say things like, "Look at her appendix, it's really nice and pink, colon looks good, ovary looks good, " she detailed.

Since the surgery, Penner has spent years in therapy and pursued legal action against the hospital. You can read Penner's full letter here.

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