I had a lithotomy 20 years ago and while they were moving me from the operating table to a gurney, I woke up. It hurt tremendously.
The people there were talking with each other, and one said “Hey, he’s waking up!” and another said “Hey, go back to sleep. You don’t want to be awake.” I remember thinking it was funny that everybody began with “Hey…”. They got me settled on the gurney and I passed out again, and woke up later in a recovery area.
How common is it to wake up at this point? Just curious…
I once woke up during surgery. They were using monitored anesthesia, which is purposefully kept right on the edge of consciousness. The surgeon and his colleague were discussing the instrument to use to remove the lacrimal sac, and I jumped in with “I downloaded an article from Ocular Surgery News and they recommended a number three scalpel”. I was told that they were using a number seven, I heard him tell the anesthesiologist to “Take him down a little more”, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery. When the surgeon told my wife about it he was pretty amused.
I woke up in surgery on my neck. It was a 9.5 hour procedure, and when I woke up I recalled pretty clearly that I was aware of where I was at the time, was lying face-down, but couldn’t move or make a sound. I also felt no pain. I tried and tried to move something, and eventually I think I was able to move my feet, at which point I heard a comment, and the next thing I knew I was waking in the recovery room.
I had wrist surgery a week and a half ago. I was kept just on edge.
I remember one small part of the surgery. I was asleep for quite a bit of it. I definitely was awake from the end until the recovery, but those memories not only went faint within two days, they disappeared altogether. That’s what really creeps me out. I KNOW that I was remembering that because I remember sitting right where I am recounting them to myself. But they’ve vanished.
Today I got my stitches out and the surgeon commented that I was a lot of fun during surgery…
I spend a lot of time in surgical suites providing the X-rays for various procedures. If they are relatively minor, it’s pretty common that the patient is at least partially awake afterwards and (groggily) answering some questions before they’re rolled out. Those procedures include things like fixing/pinning broken arms, ankle fusion, pacemaker placements, knee replacements, and a number of other things. They usually wake up a little more in the PAR (Post Anesthesia Recovery) Room.
After major procedures like abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, coronary artery bypass, spinal fusions, lobectomy and other things where you’re basically opened way up, then the patient is usually kept pretty sedated and moved to the SICU (Surgical Intensive Care Unit). They’re still in la-la land during the time that we take a post-op X-ray to check lung status.
My [now] deceased father-in-law [i guess that is what to call him, he married my mom-in-law after she divorced mrAru’s father] woke up during an operation on his sinuses. He was in a halo brace, and he popped awake to find the surgeon perched on his chest rasping away at his sinus to reshape part of the sinus cavity. [This was back in the mid 70s ] and Frank said the doc had the strangest expression on his face when Frank opened his eyes. He had mentioned that he had odd reactions to anaesthetics … they didnt believe him.
Surgical anesthesia can be general (totally unconscious and paralyzed), regional (spinal block/epidural/limb block) or local (direct injection of anesthetic at the area of the incision). They can be used in combination as well. Regional and local also typically involve the use of sedation, which can mean anything from a Valium beforehand to monitored iv sedation to keep the person asleep but still breathing and protecting their own airway.
For most operations that require general anesthesia, the ideal is that at the end of the surgery the person emerges from anesthesia smoothly while still on the table. They are normally groggy and disoriented, but can breathe on their own. People often ‘wake up’ a bit during the transfer off the table to the gurney, but then drift off to sleep on the way to the recovery unit. Of course there is a lot of variation in this; individuals react somewhat differently to anesthetics so some folks come roaring off the table, swinging at the OR staff and some have to stay on the ventilator in the recovery unit for a while. At one hospital, for the anesthesiologist to be bagging the patient on the way to recovery was called ‘the walk of shame’ because it complicated their care a great deal.
Of course, there are numerous reasons to keep a person totally unconscious for some time after surgery, in which case they are usually transferred directly from the OR to an ICU for care.
Balancing iv sedation can be quite tricky, and people often hover right at the edge of awareness. If they can remain awake and calm, that’s usually OK, but if they are chatty or loopy the surgeon generally wants them taken deeper. As an aside, people under sedation can say wildly inappropriate things.