The mechanics of it, how fast it works, how out of it I am…it all intrigues me.
I’ve had some procedures recently, some minor, some major, that entailed me getting general anesthesia.
Propofol, I believe, is used for the quick outpatient procedures, such as colonoscopies or endoscopies. They put in in my IV, I have enough time to wave goodbye, then I’m out.
I’m not sure what they use for major surgeries, but that is also fast acting stuff.
I do have vague memories of dreaming while under Propofol, but not under the harder stuff.
I did find out after a surgery in 2008 that I react with nausea, but now I just tell the doctor that’s my reaction and they’re able to prevent it.
Thanks to all the anesthesiologists out there…that’s a tough job, and I’m glad of the ones who do it well.
What if general anesthesia does not prevent pain, but paralyzes us and inhibits all the usual physiological responses (so that the anesthesiologist sees no sign) and then wipes our memory? In other words, what if we subjectively experience agonizing pain when under GA, but then just forget? Would it matter?
One of the big fear novelists used** Riemann’s** concept to put together a pretty good book. The surgeon played a classical piece based on Greensleeves during operations. Though patients remembered nothing, a later hearing of that music brought it all back, causing panic.
My earliest memory is of an anesthesiologist who got 3-year-old AskNott ready for a tonsillectomy. The lying sleep-doc tricked me into inhaling the anesthetic, which tasted awful. I suppose my anger is what lodged it in my memory.
Sleep-docs are also called gas-passers by their colleagues.
I doubt that though. Because when you’ve gone through an intense, painful ordeal, your body is all tensed and exhausted and has that “just suffered a lot” feeling.
I had general anesthesia once. I woke up very relaxed and peaceful and my body felt well. It did not feel like I had just endured an hour of agonizing pain. I’m pretty sure I would have felt exhausted and stressed if I had.
Propofol is some goood stuff. “Milk of Amnesia”. I hate when they first administer it because it always burns, but then I have about 2.4 seconds to enjoy the sensation of the room starting to tilt before it’s nighty-night for me. A quick wakeup afterward (then 2 hours later I pass out - have never figured that syndrome out).
There’s actually a cocktail of medications that’s given for general anesthesia - if you’ve ever seen an itemized bill from the hospital of all your pharmacy orders, it’ll be in there. Drugs to induce relaxation, unconsciousness and amnesia, relieve pain, and gas to keep you under for a longer procedure. Others to wake you up, too, sometimes.
Yes, but it happened to my mother. The docs refused to believe her until she repeated back about 20 minutes of operating room conversation. She wasn’t aware the whole time, but sufficient to really mentally traumatize her. The next time she had to have heart surgery they made very sure she wasn’t awake, never happened again.
They’ve since found redheads are more prone to that (yep, mom was a redhead). There are ways to monitor the level of consciousness during surgery even when the patient is paralyzed and unable to communicate, and such methods are supposedly becoming more common. The frequency of such awake-during-surgery incidents has gone down, in part because it’s now acknowledged as a possibility and docs are more careful to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Wouldn’t know myself - the only time I’ve had surgery I was awake through the procedure but that was intended. Really good local anesthesia, felt absolutely no pain during it. The day after, now that was a different story…
I have pondered this before. What if they told you before surgery that you were going to feel the pain, and you could see everything excruciating that they are doing to you, but don’t worry, you won’t remember. Would that make you feel any better about going under? Maybe that’s why they tell everyone that they won’t feel anything, but it’s a lie.
They monitor your vitals, or at least they are supposed to. If you actually were experiencing pain I suspect your blood pressure and heart rate would go through the roof and the docs would notice.
There are some very rare cases where people wake up briefly and are aware of their surroundings but very few actually report feeling pain.
That’s one of my fears. I’m so sorry your mom had to endure that. I make it a point to bring it up with the anesthesiologist and make them reassure me that they’ll be keeping a close eye on me.
Well, the sedation used for many procedures (not full-on general anesthesia) does in fact work that way - amnesia as a side effect is a big part of what they are looking for it to do.
A coworker told me that when she had an emergency appendectomy, she came to afterward with very vivid, frightening dreams of a monster eating her insides. A nurse claimed that even though she was anesthetized, her body processed the pain signals somehow and turned them into the scary dreams. Dunno if that’s hokum, or residual from the pain of the appendicitis, or whatever. Certainly I’ve never come to after surgery with any awareness of having dreamed.
This is the kind of thing I torment myself with when my anxiety is really high at night. I am terrified of this happening to me and have a tendency to go through the nightmare scenario in excruciating detail. They usually have to give me anxiety meds before any procedure. Yet every surgery I’ve ever had has gone off without a hitch, even though I wake up feeling shitty.
I’m kind of glad back in October I had no idea how serious my gallbladder situation was until the thing was already out of my body. Once they got the test results it took them less than 20 minutes to get me into OR, so I didn’t have any time to stress about it, and I was in so much pain I was just anxious to get it over with anyway. And I woke up in the recovery room in less pain than I was going under… so overall, a win.
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What if general anesthesia does not prevent pain, but paralyzes us and inhibits all the usual physiological responses (so that the anesthesiologist sees no sign) and then wipes our memory? In other words, what if we subjectively experience agonizing pain when under GA, but then just forget? Would it matter?
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I think about this all the time too. What if somehow the mechanism failed and we didn’t forget? It reminds me of the theory behind teleportation (how really you die but all your memories are transported to someone else) or that Stephen King short story The Jaunt where people are made unconscious so they don’t feel the full weight of infinity as they transport, but then one kid fails to go under…
Yeah, anesthesia is pretty fascinating. Then think about how it’s only been around for a short time in the span of human history. Think about how lucky we are that it’s even a thing at all.
They can absolutely give you stuff so you won’t feel anything, or so that it won’t hurt. I think for most surgeries they do things that are redundant because of that. When I had a C-section I was conscious but had an epidural. I experienced the cut as if someone was running their finger along my skin but part of that was that I was really focused on the baby (he was fine).
I also had something–I think Versed–when I had some minor surgery done on my finger. Along with something that numbed my hand, and in fact my entire arm. They can give you more or less. At one point during the surgery I started feeling a little anxious, and the anesthesiologist said something like, “How about a little more?” and did it.
In college I had a boyfriend who did not feel pain. Apparently the pain receptors are a different thing than the rest of the sensory receptors, so he could feel a light touch, a cool breeze on his face, but if you punched him in the face he felt nothing. It sounds like a good deal, but apparently it is dangerous enough that people with this condition have shortened life expectancy. (And this was during the days of the draft–while outwardly healthy, he was not qualified to serve and was, I think it was 4F, because of it.) I don’t know what they would do to him in the case of surgery, but he always had to convince dentists he did not need the Novocaine.