The Big Red One

The most cynical surgeons like to say that anesthesiology is ninety-nine percent boredom, and one percent sheer terror. Strange Daze is about the one percent... Episode 3 is a case that involved a man under my care scheduled for coronary artery bypass surgery. That morning, I was prepared for just about anything that could go wrong…except the complication that threatened my patient’s life and forever made him part of the one percent. It’s never the shark you see that bites you; it’s the one you don’t see. How can a case go so wrong? In about a million and half different ways. The Big Red One is just one of them.

Om Podcasten

Strange Daze is a bi-weekly podcast from the creators of Straight Talk MD, hosted by anesthesiologist Frank Sweeny. Each episode fuses narrative storytelling with science as our host examines a real case of a surgery or a procedure that went terribly wrong and dissects out why. Even the best doctors practicing at the best medical institutions make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes have serious consequences. And sometimes, even when you do everything right, things can still go terribly wrong. The most cynical surgeons depict anesthesiology as 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. Strange Daze is about the 1%.