Wimp!
When I had a cystoscopy done in the Navy, not only did he do it while I was wide awake, but he invited a room full of female corpsman students to watch the procedure.
I had gone there some time before lunch, and they made me go right back to work immediately after lunch.
But I was pissing like a fire hose! I’d belly up to the urinal with a full bladder and be finished in 3 seconds flat.
Alive aAT Both Ends - Have no fear - I’ve had general anesthesia twice, and didn’t wake up during wither operations and had no sickness afterward. It worked wonderfully.
StG
I was glad that I had had my first surgery under general at age 10, so I never found out about this horrifying thing until after I already knew I responded well to general.
I remember them putting the mask on me. It smelled like bubble gum. I think I took like three breaths of it and I was out. And those hours were just…gone.
Yeah? Well big deal pal. I told the doc to forget the Versed and to go ahead and use a garden hose for all I cared. He demurred, and I finally gave in at the thought of all the nurses breaking into gales of laughter when they viewed my wanger. I guess they had their giggles anyway and I just don’t remember it.
Actually I think there must be different types of this outrage perpetrated because I bled like pig for about two days. I also yelled a lot every time I took a whiz.
Well, it matters to me quite a lot.
Thanks to StGermain, **Puzzler **and **Ring **for their information and support.
I was knocked out so well for my brain surgery, that when I woke up in the recovery room, I thought I was still in pre-op, and that I’d just shut my eyes for a moment. Took them a while to convince me it was really over, true and for reals.
I’m sure they’ll put you out real good, AliveABE.
Also see my previous post about being under general more than a dozen times. The only problems I’ve ever experienced were post-op vomiting from the anesthetic (this has happened twice; now, I tell the recovery room nurses I’m nauseated even if I’m really not, so they’ll give me Zofran and head it off at the pass), and sore throat from the breathing tube (ice chips help). Never a sign of becoming conscious during the procedures/surgeries themselves.
Chances are excellent that you’ll be fine, but it’s quite normal to be apprehensive. If the nervousness gets too bad, do talk to your doc about a short-term 'scrip for Xanax or some such. Also, as soon as you’re in a gown and have IV before surgery, tell them you’re nervous, and ask for something. They use Versed (which was described to me as “Valium on steroids”). It doesn’t do anything for me, but for everyone else I know, it’s lovely.
Posting just to let Alive At Both Ends see another Doper who was doped just fine - once with a general and once with a spinal. No problems either time. Please remember that the stats on a thread like this are totally skewed - the very few people who were Awake during surgery are much more likely to first click on and second respond to a thread with that title than the vast, vast majority of us who weren’t.
It was only local anesthesia, but when I had… uhm, I think the English term is a “root canal”, the doctor injected me and got to work. I yelled fit to wake the dead. He injected again and checked if it had “taken”. It hadn’t. After a couple more tries he said “oh shit, let me try something else” and injected a different spot.
This time it finally worked. He later told me that it’s something Dad also has, apparently our nerves are “inverted” with respect to other people; the anesthesia cleared out after about one hour, but I spent several days with that side of my face paralyzed. Good thing it had been just before the Easter vacation, by the time I had to go back to class I was back to normal.
When I had my tonsils out, I did feel the machine they were using to keep my mouth open, feel the cuts and hear the conversations. The pain was too much to be remembering conversations, though (I’d just turned 11).
I’m sensing a pattern here. We’ve had posters who had multiple surgeries with no problems, and we’ve had posters with multiple surgeries who woke up on every occasion.
We seem to have very few people who had multiple surgeries and woke up only sometimes. And those who did, it was with a different kind of anesthesia.
My conclusion is that some people are naturally more resistant to types of anesthesia. If someone has never had general anesthesia, they’d be right to worry about waking up. But if you’ve had a general once in the past (or even better, twice) and don’t remember anything about it, then I’m guessing that your odds for next time are excellent.
Good point. I’ve had general 6 times for eye surgeries and have never had any problems except during recovery - I get very sick to my stomach and never fail to heave (pleasant, no?). Last time I told the nurse ahead of time, “I’m gonig to be sick from this so please either give me something to settle my stomach OR make sure someone is close by with a bedpan.” Of course, I can’t eat anything before surgery, but the heaves are bad when you’re still gorked out.
I think you are right about different degrees. Apparently my public humiliation was insufficient to the task, so I found myself getting the stronger version of the procedure done two years later.
They gave me a spinal and lots of good happy drugs for that one. (I still remember the anesthesiologist saying “This one is six strawberry margaritas” as he pushed the plunger. His second batch was accompanied by “This is two vodka martinis - shaken, not stirred. James Bond’s drink.” 
)
They did the job right that time, and it’s still going strong 20 years later.
Yep. I expressed fear of waking during kidney stone removal to my urologist once. He pointed out that I’d had it done a half-dozen times before and never had a problem. “If you had a problem with the anesthesia”, he said, “we’d already know about it”.
I haven’t worried about it since then.
Mr. Bunny was terrified of this when he went in for surgery, and he asked the anesthesiologist about it, who replied that he would be monitoring him the whole time including his heart rate, etc., and that they would immediately know if something was wrong and act accordingly. It calmed him to hear that, and he ended up not having a single problem and being dead to the world for the duration of his surgery.
I think they’re pretty aware of this type of thing these days, and do their best to avoid it.