18-Year-Old Stephanie Kuleba Dies in Elective Breast Surgery

Stephanie Kuleba was an 18-year-old high school senior who had a reaction to anesthesia as she underwent breast surgery to correct an inverted nipple and uneven breasts. The type of fatal reaction to the anesthesia she most likely suffered from was malignant hyperthermia, a rather uncommon metabolic state that can be triggered by certain anesthesia. When that type of reaction occurs within a body, the heart rate and metabolism of the patient can rise up to 112 degrees.

In 1996 my own daughter, then 10, underwent surgery to remove her tonsils and during surgery, she was given anesthesia as well as morphine. The surgery was anything but normal procedure as Amber woke up as they were removing her tonsils, so they put her back under by using more anesthesia.

After she was knocked out, once more the surgery continued, uneventfully. However, she woke up in the recovery room and a nurse came out to get me, so that I could enter this recovery ward to calm my daughter.

I did not know exactly what to expect as I walked into that recovery room, but there lay my daughter who seemed so small, pale, and sickly. She was far from quiet or peaceful and most all of the other patients were awake as well. Those patients were awake because my own daughter was screaming I want my mommy at the top of her lungs.

I tried talking with my daughter to calm her but this did not work, so I tried something that soothed her when she was young. As I began to sing to her, she settled down on the bed, and soon drifted off. It is funny now, looking back, I was not even embarrassed to sing in front of strangers because I was doing something to soothe my daughter, the best way I could.

My daughter had a reaction to the anesthesia or perhaps it was to the morphine. Either way she had a rough time of recovery, and had to stay over in the hospital for a few nights to recover. I do know that when she was screaming in the recovery room she damaged the area where the doctors had removed her tonsils, which caused bleeding. She swallowed the blood as she slept as I sang to her, which upset her stomach, which made her vomit later that night.