It was an anesthesiologist in his mid-30s when he met a patient named Linda Kenny.

Basically a very healthy young woman, a mother of three.

Really her only medical problem being her feet.

The woman was born with club feet,

each foot twisted out of shape,

and this would be surgery number 20. It was a straightforward ankle replacement and Rick wanted to use a local anesthetic,

a nerve block injected behind the knee, his specialty.

But the woman said she'd had bad experiences with local

anesthetics before.

She was initially very resistant and I said,

you know, this is something we do all the time.

So the 37 year old patient agreed and Rick found the nerve and in his mind. the squirming in the bed kind of moving irregularly and talking nonsensably.

There were just words coming out and sounds coming out that were incoherent. And within probably seconds of that, her whole body

started to convuls. The anesthetic Rick injected had gotten into the bloodstream, which was

potentially fatal. It happened so fast, you know all of a sudden she was just

motionless in the bed.

Her heart just stopped.

By then a team surrounded the bed.

She was getting shocked, she was being ventilated,

she was getting medications, and her heart rate wasn't coming

back. We're doing everything we can and we're not getting her back and this is really bad.

She could die. What did I just do?

...