'I died for two minutes, 47 seconds...' Michael Douglas experienced death after an epidural went wrong
Celebrity hairdresser Michael Douglas - who is in a relationship with TV presenter Davina McCall - died for "two minutes, 47 seconds" after an anaesthetist wrongly injected an epidural into his spinal cord, following an operation to fix his collapsing lung condition.
Celebrity hairdresser Michael Douglas "died" on an operating table.
The 51-year-old star had to be "brought back to life" after an anaesthetist wrongly injected morphine into his "spinal cord" and caused his brain to "numb" after he had an operation to fix his collapsing lung condition.
Michael's lungs "spontaneously" fell "12 times in total" when he was aged "18, 19", and he was hospitalised "for a couple of weeks" to get them "re-inflated", as the air he breathed in "threw a tear somewhere" and would "puncture" one of his lungs.
His condition was "life-threatening" because if both of the organs collapsed, or if the left one fell "hard" and went on to crush Michael's heart, he would die.
When the star was aged 20, he underwent an "extremely painful" and "quite a difficult operation" to "glue" his lungs "up inside" his body.
The anaesthetist gave Michael his first epidural to numb his chest because tubes had to be "pulled in and out on a daily basis" to give him room for the lung to "come back up".
However, the anaesthetist wrongly injected the second epidural into Michael's "spinal cord" - resulting in him dying for "two minutes, 47 seconds", because the "morphine" had "numbed" the hairdresser's brain and caused Michael's heart to stop and all his organs to fail.
Michael - who is in a relationship with TV presenter Davina McCall, 57 - recalled on the latest episode of the How to Cut It in the Hairdressing Industry podcast: "[Aged] 20 I had these operations. And I'd been in hospital for about 18 months, pretty much on and off at this point. And then they did the right side, and that worked.
"It's an extremely painful operation. And they gave you an epidural, which is what they give to pregnant women, and with the epidural, they can numb different parts of your body.
"So they said, 'We're going to numb your chest with this epidural because these tubes have got to be pulled in and out on a daily basis to give you room for the lung to come back up.'
"Anyway, the second epidural I had went wrong, and then I died on the operating table.
"Then I was resuscitated, and brought back to life.
"I died for two minutes, 47 seconds, they said.
"So when I woke up eventually, I was in intensive care. I was vomiting all these tubes out of my mouth and stuff like that, but I was paralysed essentially.
"I couldn't move my body because my brain had been filled with morphine, because that's what happened.
"The epidural needle went into my spinal cord. All the morphine went straight up to my brain. All my organs failed, and my heart stopped because the brain essentially just got numbed, but it stopped doing anything.
"So it stopped keeping me alive essentially."
After "all this morphine" drained from Michael's system and he "came back to life" , the team operating on the star feared he would never be the same again.
Michael added: "So anyway, I had to wait for all this morphine to drain from my system, just about a week or so, and then slowly my body came back to life.
"I started to move my arms and legs again and stuff like that, but they didn't really know whether I'd ever walk again or anything.
"And when I woke up, this nurse came to see me. She said, 'Do you know where you are?' I was like, 'Not really.'
"She went, 'I'm going to get someone to come and talk to you. And the anaesthetist came over and he said, 'Do you have any idea what happened to you?
"And I was like, 'No.'
"And he said, 'OK, I'm going to tell you. I made a mistake and put the needle in the wrong place, and we killed you, and then we brought you back to life."
