Article by Joshua Rothman in the New Yorker: Awake Under Anesthesia. Start of the article:
Quote:One day in the nineteen-eighties, a woman went to the hospital for cancer surgery. The procedure was a success, and all of the cancer was removed. In the weeks afterward, though, she felt that something was wrong. She went back to her surgeon, who reassured her that the cancer was gone; she consulted a psychiatrist, who gave her pills for depression. Nothing helped—she grew certain that she was going to die. She met her surgeon a second time. When he told her, once again, that everything was fine, she suddenly blurted out, “The black stuff—you didn’t get the black stuff!” The surgeon’s eyes widened. He remembered that, during the operation, he had idly complained to a colleague about the black mold in his bathroom, which he could not remove no matter what he did. The cancer had been in the woman’s abdomen, and during the operation she had been under general anesthesia; even so, it seemed that the surgeon’s words had lodged in her mind. As soon as she discovered what had happened, her anxiety dissipated.Henry Bennett, an American psychologist, tells this story to Kate Cole-Adams, an Australian journalist, in her book “Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness.”
Cole-Adams hears many similar stories from other anesthesiologists and psychologists: apparently, people can hear things while under anesthesia, and can be affected by what they hear even if they can’t remember it. One woman suffers from terrible insomnia after her hysterectomy; later, while hypnotized, she recalls her anesthesiologist joking that she would “sleep the sleep of death.” Another patient becomes suicidal after a minor procedure; later, she remembers that, while she was on the table, her surgeon exclaimed, “She is fat, isn’t she?” In the nineteen-nineties, German scientists put headphones on thirty people undergoing heart surgery, then, during the operation, played them an abridged version of “Robinson Crusoe.” None of the patients recalled this happening, but afterward, when asked what came to mind when they heard the word “Friday,” many mentioned the story. In 1985, Bennett himself asked patients receiving gallbladder or spinal surgeries to wear headphones. A control group heard the sounds of the operating theatre; the others heard Bennett saying, “When I come to talk with you, you will pull on your ear.” When they met with him, those who’d heard the message touched their ears three times more often than those who hadn’t. (...)
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