When I got a colonoscopy they stuck a needle into the back of my hand and said it would make me groggy but not put me out, but then I would not recall anything after the shot until the time I was picked up by my ride in the waiting room.
All this was true.
I don’t like the idea of drugs messing with my memory. I can see the future headline now “Amnesia drug withdrawn for causing ___”
But I wonder why they did that. Aren’t there drugs that will simply stop pain without making you forget “wakeful” procedures?
Was the amnesia a side effect or an intended effect? To what end?
It’s a colonoscopy. I can understand not liking the loss of memory, but who would want to remember that :dubious:
These aren’t some sort of magic memory loss drugs. You are probably given a sedative and a pain killer separately. There are general sedatives that cause what, IIRC, is called “conscious sedation” in right doses, I would imagine it’s fairly difficult to perform a colonoscopy (but I’m not a doctor) on an alert and lucid individual as well as a comatose unresponsive body.
There is this thing called The Ramsey Scale that is used to gauge various aspects of sedation (there are other scales, but I don’t know anything about them), and different degrees will be required for different procedures based on specifics of the procedure.
Now, memory loss is a common side effect of many psychoactive chemicals. A night of heavy drinking should teach you that. Whether it’s the sedative or the pain killer that causes memory loss, my money would be on the sedative. Being groggy in general makes you terrible at forming memories… or, since i can’t provide a cite for that, being groggy in general makes me terrible at forming new memories.
For a colonoscopy, I would guess they gave you some kind of benzodiazepine – Valium- and Xanax-type sedatives. That’s what they usually give people before uncomfortable procedures like that (or before surgery to keep them calm); Xanax kept my dad from remembering anything after his colonoscopy, even though he was moaning a lot during the procedure. And my wife didn’t remember anything when they gave her some Xanax before her operation for endometriosis (because she was freaking out).
Sounds like you might have gotten Versed - My very most favourite hospital drug. In light doses it’s a happy drug. It makes you all warm a fuzzy inside and the world is a happy rainbow filled with lollipops and gumdrops. A bit more Versed and the world is still as happy but you remember only bits and pieces of it. A little more and you come out of it hours later going “what happened to my rainbows?”
I’ve had a few procedures done in the hospital and I have an IV phobia (give me shots all day and I’m fine. Stick something in my vein and I’ll climb the walls, hang from the ceiling shouting nasty things at you). I let the doctors know this and they take the edge off with Versed.
One prodedure they gave me a nice dose in the waiting room. I was in la-la land. Wheee. As I was being wheeled to the OR, I was given another dose. I can only remember bits and pieces of being in the OR before they put me under. I was fighting to stay alert because I have never seen the inside of an OR.
The next procedure was very much the same but I wasn’t trying to stay alert. I was given a good dose in the waiting room and another right before we left. I was alert and talking when they wheeled me out but I don’t remember any of it. I remember a very brief moment of talking to the doctor in the OR (him asking me how I was and telling me the procedure will take and hour or so) but I have no visual memory of it.
yes, it was most likely versed, one of the benzodiazepines, in the same family as valiam and ativan. Commonly used for short term conscious sedation, works great, wears off quickly, the amnesia is one of the things we like it for, and most of our patients do too. I know it’s been in wide spread use in all age groups for some time, and I’ve never heard of any problems other than standard medication risks.
Sounds like anterograde amnesia the failure of the brain to transfer events from short term to long term memory. Or in this case, the drug blocks the tansfer
That’s also what happened to me when I got an endoscopic exam. The thing that bothered me is that I might have been in terrible pain when they did it, and I just don’t remember. They told me that one of the drugs was Demerol.
Thats kinda part of the idea for some procedures. You don’t remember anything but you can respond in a limited sort of way so they know if they are hurting you and can adjust accordingly. My wife Cyn recently was given Versed during a multiple tooth extraction. She asked me 3 times what happened to her and when they were going to pull her teeth on the way home.
In an interesting side note my FIL had an endoscopic procedure and was actually upset because he thought they were charging him for something they did not do because he did not remember going for the procedure.
demerol should take care of your pain. you can be pretty sure that your pain control is a priority with the staff, they don’t wan tyou to move or flinch on the table
I had a colonoscopy back in the late 80’s, and never had any anesthesia. It wasn’t bad and I got to watch it all on a monitor. Very interesting too. I would do it again without anesthesia.
You wouldn’t move or flinch on the table if you had also been given a paralytic - standard procedure for scalpel ops. So do people - some unlucky people given a certain combination of drugs - feel terrible pain on the operating table (while paralysed) but don’t complain afterward because they don’t remember it?
It wasn’t that long ago that surgeons would do major operations on babies without anesthesia, on the premise that they wouldn’t remember the pain anyhow.
When it comes to doctors and hospitals I don’t trust anyone. Sorry Q the M but medical personnel just don’t seem to be overly bothered by other peoples pain and discomfort.
It wasn’t that long ago, that I had some microscopic blood in my urine and the inspection procedure was to shove a probe up my donger. The Urologist was taken aback when I requested sedation. I wanted to say, “well that’s great Doc why don’t we just shove a garden hose up your wanker.”
When I was in Russia my ENT wanted to take my tonsils and adenoids out and the standard procedure for that (circa 1994) was under local, something like lidocaine, and done with a scalpel (no fancy lasers, ultrasounds, etc.) When I said that I won’t do it (I was a stubborn kid) unless it was some sort of general, the doctor laughed at me and said that nobody in their right mind would use sedation of any kind for such a simple procedure as a tonsillectomy. When I persisted he offered me a valium in addition to the local My mother tried convincing me that this was perfectly normal, she had her tonsils out under local, that anesthesia is bad anyway and that it’s insane to sedate somebody for minor surgery. When we came to the states it was a major surprise to my mother and kind of those ‘duh’ things for me that most ENT surgeries done with a scalpel are under not just sedation but full general anaesthesia.
Now that I’m an adult and still have my tonsils (that need to come out), I am sure I made the right choice then, but it sure would’ve been better to have them out then than now.
As ex medical personnel, you could not be more wrong. I have met hundreds of medical workers from doctors to uncertified nurses aides, I can’t think of one who would be unconcerned by patient discomfort. You may be called upon to do things a patient will find uncomfortable or even painful, but only because you are trading that short term discomfort for longer term relief.
Yes, that name rings a bell. I think they had Versed on the consent for and I puzzled over it because it sounded like it should be pronounced “versed” instead of “Ver-said”. Thanks. Now I can do more technical searches in the literature.
There’s a philosophic question for you: Pain is an inherently personal and mostly subjective phenomena. If you can’t remember being in pain, is it different from never being in pain at all?
My mother tried convincing me that this was perfectly normal, she had her tonsils out under local, that anesthesia is bad anyway and that it’s insane to sedate somebody for minor surgery. When we came to the states it was a major surprise to my mother and kind of those ‘duh’ things for me that most ENT surgeries done with a scalpel are under not just sedation but full general anaesthesia.