C-sections.When did you realize that the story was gonna resonate so well with people?

I think whenever I'm doing any kind of story, I'm asking myself, "Is this something I would want to read? Is this something I would want to listen to?" And I knew that this story [laughs] I knew, like, season one of The Retrievals was something I would wanna listen to, and so did everybody who worked on it.

You, you know what I mean? Like, we, we all were, uh...

These patients were telling these stories that resonated with us, right? So, so the story we were telling on behalf of these patients, we assumed it was going to resonate with others.

I will say it was a, a complete surprise to me.

So season one was number one on Apple Podcasts, and that was...

I'd, I'd never thought that a podcast about women's healthcare, right, would, would be number one on, um, on that platform.

So what's the second part of the story? [gentle music]

Out of 10.

Correct.

And actually, the study's lead author, his name is James O'Carroll, he told me that the incidence of pain, that 8% number, that was sort of what he expected.

But what was surprising to him was the level of pain reported.

I saw the research presented at a medical conference, and one of the really striking pieces of it is this kind of word cloud that the researchers made.

The word cloud shows the words that women used to describe the pain they felt.

So some of those words, searing, blinding, wretched, tearing, cramping, grueling, radiating, vicious-

Mm-hmm.

Like, can we stop?

Clara's anesthesia is not working.

She is now in the middle of major abdominal surgery, and she can feel that surgery.

Clara knew this could happen.

She had seen this happen.

Intraoperative pain during cesarean? Healthcare providers know about it.

Patients don't.

[laughs] And then I got really mad.