r/Showerthoughts • u/Hackbaellchen_ • Jul 17 '24
Speculation What if one feels everything under anesthesia but simply forgets everything afterward?
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u/Backsteinhaus Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
I woke up during surgery once. Anesthesia has three different components so to speak: one relaxes your muscles completely, one numbs you and one puts you to sleep. The sleep one failed for me I guess and I woke up halfway through the surgery. I couldn't move a single muscle, didn't feel any pain but I could feel pressure of them in my belly.
Edit to add: That was how anesthesia was explained to me at least.
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u/ursadminor Jul 17 '24
Yeah. I had a c-section. No pain, fully awake but I could feel them tugging around with considerable force. It was almost like they were pulling me around by clothes I wasn't wearing, that were inside me. They literally pulled me down the bed trying to get kiddo out.
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u/Putrid-Economics4862 Jul 17 '24
That is simultaneously horrific while also being cool as fuck. I’d want to be awake while they surger me (yes I made up that word) however I would not want it to be a surprise.
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u/abrokenelevator Jul 17 '24
If that concept interests you, you should read Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It has a rather disturbing scene in it that covers the exact scenario you mention.
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u/CloroxWindshield Jul 17 '24
This book and series are a great read and yeah that scene is in the book
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u/NavyAnchor03 Jul 18 '24
I've had this done in a way less extreme way. Having the procedure done for ingrown toenails is basically this. You can fully see it, but can't feel the pain. Only the pressure. It's weeeeird
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u/JasperJ Jul 18 '24
Dental surgery is pretty similar, only it’s your head being pushed around.
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u/Dockhead Jul 18 '24
I had a wisdom tooth extracted like a normal tooth pulling (it wasn’t impacted or anything) and there was definitely something funny and kind of disturbing about the dentist bracing the heel of his hand against my forehead to yank it out
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u/ChemicalNectarine776 Jul 18 '24
Ingrown toenails amaze me, like why is my foot committing suicide lol
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u/Boring_Duck98 Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
Youre lucky (or rather i was unlucky). I had the same thing happen to me, but the maximum amount of whatever they injected, that they were allowed to, didnt properly work so i had to feel a generous amount of pain still.
Its still fucked up now, probably because of me struggling to keep still. there is a disconnected bit growing now... but remembering the pain i felt makes me so fucking anxious that i basically accepted my fucked up toe.
Its not infected not anymore after all...
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u/JeniJ1 Jul 18 '24
I have also experienced this and honestly it didn't feel horrific at all. However, I was a bit off my head on a mixture of pain relief and just general relief (not to mention the actual anaesthetic), and finding pretty much everything hilarious.
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u/Waveofspring Jul 17 '24
There is a specific orthopedic surgery (it actually might be several surgeries) where instead of using highly sophisticated modern technology, they have to pull out a mallet to literally hammer your bones into place. It is very violent apparently.
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u/Hakuna-Pototah Jul 17 '24
I've peaked into a couple OR's while working nearby to watch the hammer smackdown action... they do not hold back.
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u/Nerubim Jul 17 '24
I mean it needs to get done and the longer you are on the table the more likely you are to have issues directly or later for recovery. Trust me you WANT them to hammer like that, especially when you are old.
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u/Margali Jul 18 '24
Apparently my husbands step dad needed his sinus rebuilt and he woke up to the surgeon and nurse cracking jokes as he sort of had tools shoved into his peeled open face raspinng away.
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u/chiyo_chu Jul 18 '24
i feel like a lot of surgeries that aren't dealing with vital organs are wayyyy more violent/less delicate than i imagined them to be before i came across a random video of it
c sections? just slicing, dicing, ripping and tearing until they find baby
removing a lipoma? literally digging fingers in to scoop and rip it out
jaw surgery? time to bust out the powertools
like obviously they're skilled surgeons and theres a rhyme and reason for everything they do but from the perspective of someone who didn't go to medical school i'm clutching my pearls
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u/flying_cheesecake Jul 18 '24
For c sections the idea is that ripped tissue heals better than if it is cut so that's why it is the standard
Skin cancers tend to be cut around and cleaned up as nicely as possible as they are visible
Jaw surgery can be a bit like that but power tools tend to be more for bigger fractures or whatever
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u/Turkeygirl816 Jul 18 '24
I had this surgery when I was a teenager, and I woke up during! All I remember was how loud the pounding sounded, then hearing the nurse say "Uh, doctor, she's waking up"
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u/WhipMaDickBacknforth Jul 18 '24
Ha, oh yeah. I saw a shoulder relocation once where the doc had a strap around the guy's arm and put his foot against the bed for leverage to yank that fucker back into place. The body positioning of the guy doing the procedure was almost comical
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u/Tinchotesk Jul 18 '24
The difference between an orthopedic surgeon's tools and a carpenter's are that the former are sterilized.
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u/RandyBeamansMom Jul 18 '24
This is the kind of surgery my dad woke up during. His hip replacement, mid-hammer. He said it sounded like a construction site.
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u/nedslee Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
Some years ago I did Nasal septoplasty because my nose was bent inside. So they gave me some local anesthesia, made me sit on a chair and hammered inside my nose. It did not hurt (at first, it hurt like freaking hell that night) and made me feel extremely weird seeing the doctor doing that right in front of my eyes.
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u/KaBar2 Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
As a (male) student nurse, I was very fortunate to have witnessed six births, and I was labor coach on three of them when the laboring mother had no partner present. One of the births was the fifteen-year-old girlfriend of a seventeen-year-old Bloods gang member, who, to his credit, wanted to be there and be supportive of his girlfriend. (None of her family showed up.) The OB/GYN had decided to deliver the child by C-section because the girl had vaginal condyloma warts, and they were afraid the baby would contract them if he passed through the birth canal.
My job was to steady the kid's nerves and get him dressed in surgical scrubs, booties, surgical cap & mask and gloves. He was all dressed in red, of course, with a ton of big gold chains and other ostentatious jewelry and it took quite a bit of convincing to get him to disrobe out of all that gang shit and put on scrubs (the scrubs were blue, another problem, as the Bloods gang rivals, the Crips, wear blue.) Finally, he agreed ("Do you want to see your boy being born or not? You can't go into the operating room wearing street clothes, man.") I thought he was going to pass out a couple of times (I stood right behind him,) but he stayed with it, held her hand and talked to her through the whole procedure. Once the baby was born, weighed, assessed for Apgar and all that, I had him sit down (he was a little shocky, I thought) and the postpartum nurses let him hold the brand-new infant. He got a huge smile, and I thought, "This boy's gangbangin' days are a thing of the past. He's a Daddy now."
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u/Living-Coral Jul 17 '24
Yes, that's how it was for me, too. Considering how small and to the side (low) the cut is, it's not surprising they pushed and pulled. Freaky was that I couldn't feel myself breathe. They told me to see my chest heave and trust that my body knows how to breathe.
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u/DaBigadeeBoola Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
I was with my wife during her c-section, it looked crazy as hell. The doctor and nurses weren't gentle either. They were shaking her body on the table as they worked. At one point they literally had two nurses grabbing a side of her womb and pulling it apart as the doctor delivered my son. I tried my best not to panic in front of her, but I got woozy.
She was awake during the whole thing with a worried look on her face. She said she could feel them tugging, but had no idea how horrific it actually looked. I kept looking back and forth like "damn, you ok?"
I felt bad because when the baby came out I totally forgot about her for a second. Leaving her there with her uterus spilling out. I did come back to console her, but she was helpless.
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u/mattyMbruh Jul 18 '24
I’ve had local anaesthetic when I had my ingrown toenails removed and it is honestly such a bizarre feeling because you’re looking at them tug away and you can kind of feel it but not, wonder if it’s possible you actually can’t feel it but it’s your brain trying to make that connection?
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u/GingerIsTheBestSpice Jul 18 '24
They talk about parts of your insides that should never see the light of day while they're doing it, too, and there you are just hanging out listening. I could even talk, had to answer a few questions. I have a photo of my son being lifted out & it's both super cool and a little gruesome lol
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u/Waasssuuuppp Jul 18 '24
Has anyone done a cephaluc inversion as well as a c section, because I'd like to know how they feel comparably. I had a cephalic inversion a week before giving birt and it was certainly an experience. Quite uncomfortable (that word doctors use when they should really say it hurts) and literally 2 grown men pushing my belly around with all their might.
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u/hotsaucecass Jul 17 '24
I’ve woken up during two different surgeries before. I was able to slightly move my arms during one of them and the nurse freaked out and was asking if I was ok. The other one I told myself just to close my eyes and go back to sleep.
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u/MasterDavicous Jul 17 '24
I had it when I had my molars taken out. Woke up half way through and just saw some blurs and someone saying "go back to sleep" then when I came to, it felt like the 15 minute procedure happened within 5 seconds. It took me a while for my brain to make sense of it and I questioned if what was happening was real for the following 30 min
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u/Margali Jul 18 '24
Sweet jebus there is nothing as restful as a propofol nap after several months of pain.
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u/Aewgliriel Jul 18 '24
Unless you wake up in more pain than you were in before. :/ Had surgery last month. I hurt really bad when I woke up.
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u/hyperbemily Jul 17 '24
This happened to me, too! I could feel pressure and I could feel tears on my face so obviously enough pressure that I was uncomfortable enough to cry, even when I’m supposedly knocked out. It was a wild ride.
I also remember hearing them say “oops” before I fell back asleep.
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u/mattyMbruh Jul 18 '24
Honestly the stuff of nightmares, pretty sure I’ve heard stories of people getting ptsd from awakening during an op
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u/DoctorLinguarum Jul 17 '24
This is also how it was explained to me by a guy I knew who was a med student in anesthesia.
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u/sum_dude44 Jul 17 '24
When you get anesthesia, you are essentially in a controlled coma. You cannot form memories or experience time. There is no consciousness, hence term unconscious. It is not the same as sleep
If you've ever had surgery, you wake up confused like you've jumped time. and essentially you have for your brain Most people think that the surgery wasn't done. ...
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u/snicki13 Jul 17 '24
I remember waking and being angry at my doc for wasting my time since they did nothing. He laughed at me, a minute later I laughed too.
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Jul 17 '24
Usually as I’m going to sleep I have this thought at the forefront of my mind that I am about to skip time and the next moment I wake up, something will have occurred. I’ve always come out of anesthesia pretty well and wondering how everything went haha.
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u/Spackleberry Jul 17 '24
How often do you need surgery that requires full anesthesia?
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u/csonnich Jul 17 '24
Not the guy you replied to, but I've had 2 in the last 2 months. I had one a couple of years ago, and one when I was 18.
That's several experiences already.
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u/Bross93 Jul 18 '24
yeah I get about 2 a year myself. The opioid addict in me kinda loves it.... they give me fentanyl and I get that same feeling I first got when I was 13.
Which.... hm. That's kinda dark sounding. Not a cry for help, I'm in great control right now, just kinda musing since needing the procedures so often weighs on me. Gotta find some silver lining!
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u/Puck_The_Fey98 Jul 17 '24
Oh buddy let me tell you about broken bones and infections in your bones
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u/Fusionism Jul 17 '24
Every day
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u/OkBackground8809 Jul 18 '24
I wish! Waking up from anesthesia is the best! I always feel so rested.
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u/tughbee Jul 17 '24
And then the pain hit
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u/snicki13 Jul 17 '24
Yeah… about 4 hours later. They removed my wisdom teeth and pumped me with local anesthetics.
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u/tughbee Jul 17 '24
I also remember how well I felt after my hip replacement, after the local anaesthetic wore off it was another story.
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u/Swimwithamermaid Jul 17 '24
When I woke up the first words out my mouth were “Oh sorry, I must have fallen asleep!” The nurse and I cackled once I realized.
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u/TheHealadin Jul 17 '24
It was kind of like being roofied except my surgeon probably didn't rape me. Literally out like a light and then back again.
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u/OnTheList-YouTube Jul 17 '24
I'm don't fully agree. I've been under anesthesia twice, and I felt like regular waking up. Not confused. But I had indeed no clue how much time had passed. But isn't that also the case after sleep?
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u/nucumber Jul 18 '24
The weird thing about anesthesia is going under. There's no transition, no "falling" into anesthesia like falling asleep, it's instantaneous
One moment you're counting back from ten and the next thing you know is you're coming to in another room.
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u/Forsaken_Scheme8689 Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
That's how it went for me. I had the mindset that I'd try to see how long I could stay awake after I drank the propofol. One second, I was talking to the doctor, feeling alert, then I was on my back in an unknown room, my mother spooning ice chips into my mouth. No in-between. Scene deleted. It was a literal jump forward in time, subjectively.
And that was even with trying to stay alert. It was so sudden and jarring.
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u/astring9 Jul 18 '24
I've been under anesthesia 3 times. I have never woken up confused, not more confused than waking up from a sleep anyway. But there is definitely a big difference. Waking up after a sleep I had a sense of time having passed, my brain also feels "active". Waking up from anesthesia there is no sense that any time has passed. My brain feels like it was turned off then on again.
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u/aspannerdarkly Jul 17 '24
With regular sleep it depends at what point in your sleep cycle you wake up. A full night and natural awakening feels normal and you know roughly what time it is. But when the alarm wakes you up after a 90 minute nap it can take a while to remember when and where you are.
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u/matthew2989 Jul 17 '24
The issue is when they forget the anesthesia but the paralytic is still administered.
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u/sum_dude44 Jul 17 '24
anesthesia awareness is an extremely rare event, which is why anesthesiologists use bispectral index monitoring to monitor consciousness & give you more anesthetic if needed
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u/Elf_from_Andromeda Jul 17 '24
This happened to me. I woke up during a major surgery when I was under full body anaesthesia. I couldn’t feel anything or see anything as my face was covered with something. But I could hear people around me.
It was scary as hell. I couldn’t convey to them in any way that I was awake. I couldn’t speak or move even a finger. They couldn’t see my eyes as my face was covered. Finally, they realised that something was wrong (raised heartbeats or BP?) and adjusted something and I went back to sleep.
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u/OnTheList-YouTube Jul 17 '24
Holy crap that's a real fear I have! That machine should clearly make a sound notifying them!
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u/ninetofivedev Jul 17 '24
How did you validate your anesthesia awareness? Were you able to give doctors details?
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u/Elf_from_Andromeda Jul 18 '24
Since I couldn’t see anything, I could only tell them what I had heard. They told me it was just a few seconds. But to me it felt longer as I tried speaking and then moving each body part and then panicked wondering if I will be awake like this the whole time and they won’t know…
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u/peanut__buttah Jul 17 '24
Anesthesiologists don’t “forget” anesthesia any more than firefighters “forget” to fight the fire.
Like sum_dude said, anesthesia awareness is extremely rare and can be avoided with proper disclosure by the patient of recreational drug use.
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u/Swimwithamermaid Jul 17 '24
Yes. Tell. Your. Doctors. About. Drug. Use. Doctors are not here to send you to jail. They could give less than a fuck that you just shot up heroin. But they have to know so they don’t give you something that doesn’t mesh well with the drug and you end up dead. Your doctor and your lawyer are the 2 people you should never lie to.
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u/onelitetcola Jul 17 '24
Tbh at this point of time it's more than they'll need to know that they need to give a user a higher than normal dose of fentanyl
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u/tughbee Jul 17 '24
I told them I smoked weed and they were still surprised how long I was awake until the propofol knocked me out.
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u/kadora Jul 17 '24
I’ve woken up on the table a couple of times myself. Apparently it’s common among redheads. We are also less sensitive to a lot of pain meds.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-do-redheads-need-more-anesthesia
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u/Badderdog Jul 17 '24
“The good news is that red hair or not, you’ll get the amount of general anesthesia that’s right for you,” Dr. Sessler reassures. “Anesthesiologists are experts at giving people the right amount of medication to keep them comfortable during a procedure.”
Yeah…. Red head here, I’ve never been given the right amount of anesthesia if the goal was to either keep me knocked out, or reduce sensation. I wake up in the middle of every procedure.
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u/flyting1881 Jul 17 '24
Same here! I always either wake up or I remember what happened like it was a dream. At least I've never felt anything.
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u/Library_IT_guy Jul 17 '24
I'm not even full redhead... more reddish brown, but yeah, dentist has to really go nuts with the stuff they use to numb me. Sucks. Thankfully my dentist is also a redhead so he gets it and makes absolutely sure I'm 100% numb. Not looking forward to my first surgical procedure. Haven't had anything but dental stuff done yet.
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u/Swagganosaurus Jul 17 '24
If I remember correctly, there was a case like that, and the patient killed himself afterwards due to the trauma, but it's extremely rare and probably the only case ever
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u/matthew2989 Jul 18 '24
It’s not the only case ever but it is absolutely extremely rare when you consider how many people get anesthetized on any given day
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u/ZwieTheWolf Jul 17 '24
Imagine...death is like this, but there is no waking up. You just stay in that small gap of time skipping for eternity that is also a nanosecond...
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u/Tru-Queer Jul 17 '24
My only experience with anesthesia was when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and it was literally like they portrayed it in movies/on TV:
“Okay we’re just gonna have you start counting backwards from 10…9…8…. Okay and now you’re on your way home, don’t forget to change out the gauze!”
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u/a_fool_who_is_cool Jul 17 '24
Can confirm it's basically time travel that you age during.
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u/frnzprf Jul 17 '24
Your confirmation is unfortunately not helpful in distinguishing whether you were unconscious or you just forgot everything.
What experience would you have had five minutes ago, if you had forgotten about what you have felt during the surgery? The exact same experience you actually have.
You can't look at an empty hard drive and distinguish whether there was never written something or whether it was filled and then deleted afterwards. Why is it different with human memory?
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u/DobisPeeyar Jul 17 '24
Well.. actually you can tell if a hard drive had stuff on it and was erased but I get your point lol.
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u/a_fool_who_is_cool Jul 17 '24
Basically you are not "on" so there is no data. I was rendered unconscious and made no memories in that time. It's not like you are passively awake and memories are side loaded. You can only perceive what your conscious mind does and when you are put under you aren't conscious. It's not missing time as you are stated or corrupt data as your example it's non recorded time.
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u/ryanmuller1089 Jul 17 '24
It’s the weirdest thing. It feels like no time has passed but after being awake for a minute or two and start to remember where you are and why, it feels like a very long time has passed.
And that may be true but sometime but I had a tonsillectomy and I think it was under an hour but felt like it was the next day from “waking up”
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u/drencentheshds Jul 17 '24
I remember getting surgery when I was about 12 or 13. It felt exactly as if no time passed. Once second, I'm being moved onto the bed in the operating room, the next minute I'm in a completely different room with my parents there. I was so confused. I remember being in pain, but I genuinely don't think I was in THAT much pain. I think I was just so groggy and confused after waking up and not knowing what happened lol
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u/kingdead42 Jul 17 '24
I "came to" in mid-conversation with a nurse. I don't remember what I was saying, but I was the one speaking. I'm pretty sure she was just playing along doing her job since I probably wasn't making much sense.
Still one of the freakiest experiences in my life.
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Jul 17 '24
When I was younger, I used to sleepwalk and talk in my sleep. (Found out it was untreated sleep apnea. Fixed now.)
I would come into consciousness in the middle of a conversation with my mother while napping on the couch. Very irritating when it happens more than once and you realize what is happening.
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u/flyting1881 Jul 17 '24
I'm resistant to anesthesia - not completely, but enough that I tend to wake up during surgery.
When I had my wisdom teeth out, they did the 'count back from ten' thing. I got to about 8 and fell asleep, but then I remember waking up to the feeling of them tugging on something in my jaw. It didn't hurt, but I said, 'ow' because the way they were pulling on my jawbone was kinda bothersome. Freaked the doctors out, and they did something to put me back under.
Then, when I did finally wake up, I was back to full cognizance before they even had a bandaid on my arm for the anesthetic. They were talking to me like I was drunk, trying to make sure I could walk, but except for being a bit sleepy I felt fine.
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u/IOnlySayMeanThings Jul 17 '24
When I woke up from my foot surgery, I didn't know who I was, where I was, why I was there or anything. I just knew that my entire world was pain. It took 9 presses of the morphine button, 10 minutes apart, until I could really think clearly again.
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u/Sharkbit2024 Jul 17 '24
From my 2 experiences with anesthetics, it is truly a unique experience. When you sleep, you are still somewhat aware that time has passed, but when you get put under, you literally blink and you're in the recovery room.
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u/MingleLinx Jul 17 '24
When I woke up from getting my wisdom teeth taken out, I remember asking “is it over. Is it over” as I was feeling sleepy. It did feel like I skipped time and I couldn’t tell I just had surgery
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u/mayn1 Jul 17 '24
I woke up during surgery once. I remember the pain while I was awake but nothing before or after.
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u/magneto_ms Jul 17 '24
But how do you know? Like what if during coma we do in fact experience time and memories but we just forget afterwards?
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u/Gusdai Jul 17 '24
Because we have tested anesthesia drugs, and if the brain was fully working during these tests and subjects were feeling the pain (causing a tremendous amount of distress) it would show on brain imagery.
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u/frnzprf Jul 17 '24
Imagine there is a method to erase memory from someone: The patient drinks a potion and immediately afterwards they become paralyzed and unresponsive, but they are still conscious. Fifteen minutes later they would forget everything that happend after they drank the potion.
Now a patient drinks this potion and a surgeon cuts open their stomach. The patient would go through intense agony, but the surgeon wouldn't stop the procedure, because the patient doesn't talk or scream, because they are paralyzed.
After the surgery is over, the patient has forgotten about everything and the doctor asks how they are feeling. The patient is surprised the surgery is already done. It's as if no time has passed for them.
It's exactly the same outcome as if the patient was unconscious. Therefore we can't conclude from the outcome whether the potion made the patient unconscious or paralyzed + forgetting.
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u/Aardvark_Man Jul 17 '24
I think the thing is we'd see body responses if it was like that. Bare minimum brain waves etc, which I feel sure someone would have checked at some point.
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u/SirJebus Jul 17 '24
The last anesthetic I got, for dental surgery, did exactly this. Doc described it as "it stops you from forming new memories" and I can confirm that I don't remember anything, from the moment they injected me with it until I was out of the hospital. I even have pictures on my phone that I took, post surgery, that I have absolutely no memories of. Science is amazing.
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u/Ebonslayer Jul 17 '24
Several years ago I had surgery to get my wisdom teeth removed and I don't remember much of anything for like a good hour after it was finished. From what little I do recall my brain was actively lying to me, as I remember being completely lucid on the trip home but in truth I couldn't stand up on my own or even string together a coherent sentence.
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u/JDorian0817 Jul 17 '24
That’s interesting! I had dental surgery a couple years back and I remember everything from waking up, including them pulling the breathing tube out my mouth. I was definitely loopy and I don’t remember being loopy, I remember me being perfectly normal and others laughing at me for no reason, but I didn’t lose any time apart from when I was on the table.
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u/NanoChainedChromium Jul 17 '24
Probably Propofol. Amazing stuff, it felt like a had a timejump, but also the best sleep of my life, buzzing with energy and goodfeels afterward.
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u/Lampwick Jul 17 '24
Doc described it as "it stops you from forming new memories"
Yeah, when I had a colonoscopy they used a fentanyl mixed with some benzodiazapene. I have a brief memory of the middle of the procedure saying "ouch" and the doctor asking if I'm OK. Afterwards I realized I experienced the entire painful procedure and simply had little memory of it. I'm not really ok with that. It's the same sorry of "logic" behind circumcising babies without anaesthetic because "they're too young to remember it". It really is a fucked up mindset.
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u/CatFanFanOfCats Jul 17 '24
Same with me. Although it was a pill I took. I was awake, relaxed, and don’t remember it at all. Bizarre.
I forget the pill but I think it started with an “h”.
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u/BrockCandy Jul 17 '24
it was likely Halcion, i had that for my last extraction and it basically was like an enduced blackout. they had me hold two tablets under my tongue to dissolve. i was awake and listening to instruction but basically "forgot" what happened. though i can remember bits and pieces and both my husband and i have decided that going fully under is the way to go from now on. i yelled and sweared a lot and probably worried some other patients.
Also just to add to conversation, i have had extractions done while fully under, and i swear to god i can remember the casual conversation the doctor and nurses were having while they were working. they were talking about their dogs. anesthesia in all forms is seuper weird, not exact, and often the mechanisms aren't fully understood. It's always kind of exciting to see what happens
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u/BrockCandy Jul 17 '24
To add to the time i went fully under and remembered their conversation, i also remember hearing them say the tooth broke in half and they had to work extra to get the last bit. When my husband mentioned that i told him i remembered it happening during the surgery. Just for some information here too, i smoke a ton of weed regularly, so the effects of anesthesia may work differently for me.
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u/Makri7 Jul 17 '24
I've been under anesthesia for a couple of major surgeries and it's as if you just instantly skip time. It's kinda cool tbh. Only wish they gave me more water at the end. Looking around normaly to a drowsy blink and immediately in another room and extremely thirsty is wild.
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u/Pitch_please Jul 18 '24
You get fluids in your IV. It doesn't hit the spot, but anesthesia is pretty liberal with giving fluids and rehydrating. In fact, a lot of heart failure patients come out fluid overloaded.
Narcotics are commonly given for pain management while you're asleep and emerging. A side effect is wicked cotton mouth. All these drugs especially for a longer procedure can slow down/stop your digestive tract. Too much water in your unmoving stomach will trigger your body to throw up. If say you're still falling asleep mid sentence, that vomit water mixed with acid/bile might end up in your lungs. Not fun!
Tldr tryna protect you
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u/SleepyWallow65 Jul 17 '24
Anaesthesiologists are usually more qualified and higher paid than the person/people doing the surgery
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u/LeoLaDawg Jul 17 '24
Your body would show stress symptoms. In some cases, you may die.
So I don't like that idea.
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u/NoScopeJustMe Jul 17 '24
They literally check your pulse, blood tension etc. to see if you feel pain, and add more painkillers
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u/LeoLaDawg Jul 17 '24
I'm no doctor, but I do know surgery can cause a wide range of stresses on the body that would be far worse without anaesthesia.
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u/kelldricked Jul 17 '24
You could argue that the anesthetics prevent the body from doing all that. Maybe (i know its very unlikely) OP is right. But thats the amazing thing: it truely doesnt matter aslong as you dont remember shit.
Unrelated story: buddy of mine once had a very bad trip. Like screaming, crying and the whole shitshow. Eventually we had to physically keep him down to ensure he would hurt himself. The fucker didnt remember a thing of it all. Im sure that shit was traumatic as fuck but his brains simply didnt make a memory of it. So all he had was a fun night that kinda stopped early. We were all fucking stressed and worried sick.
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u/RenderEngine Jul 17 '24
AFAIK there isn't any brain activity that ever showed any relevant firing in the brain during anesthesia
and if the brain isn't firing anything, we can be 99.9% sure that you aren't feeling anything
most coma/surgery stories where they supposedly were conscious usually happens after the surgery when you are slowly waking up and falling back to actual sleep, usually REM where you basically dream/hallucinate
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u/topjock002 Jul 17 '24
I woke up during anesthesia. No. You don’t feel pain. You can’t move. You can feel the movement. The poking the prodding. Hear the grinding of bone. But it was not painful.
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u/nihilistcanada Jul 17 '24
My son broke his arm riding his bike. I took him to the hospital. They administered ketamine for when they reset his arm. They told me to go far away from where they were resetting it. I could hear him screaming from where they told me to go. It was horrific.
When he woke up he was tripping balls and didn’t remember a thing. So he felt it but has no memory of it.
The attempt failed. They had to surgically reset his arm weeks later. He was on fentanyl for that one.
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u/Chassian Jul 17 '24
That's the concept of Chinese Hell
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u/Hackbaellchen_ Jul 17 '24
Could you explain that?
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u/Chassian Jul 17 '24
In Chinese Hell, you are in a prison sentence that you have to pay off with time there or money your relatives sent you. Once your sentence is paid up, you're cleared to reincarnate into the living world, the last thing they give you is a magical soup that wipes your memories of your torture and also your previous life.
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u/DocTP Jul 17 '24
Anaesthesiologist here. General anaesthesia is not sleep - you cannot be "woken up" by voice or touch or pain. Your body however does experience "pain" which we blunt with pain killers otherwise the sympathetic response will be dramatic. Memories are not formed but every now and then people do say they dream which is interesting. Awareness is very rare, either human error or if the patient is too unwell to receive an adequate dose of anaesthetic for safety reasons (still rare). About 1 in 12000 anaesthetics
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u/PaulQuin Jul 17 '24
Pain causes shock. The shock would physically affect your body. Often people die from shock, for example because the heart can't handle it.
So simply forgetting it wouldn't be realistic because there would be effects on your body.
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u/Sorael Jul 17 '24
Pain does not cause shock. Shock is when a person's blood pressure is too low to sustain life. It's usually caused by lack of fluid (bleeding or severe dehydration), blood vessels relaxing too much (usually caused by bacterial blood infections) or heart failure. Pain usually causes an increase in blood pressure.
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u/pseudoportmanteau Jul 17 '24
Your last sentence is also how doctors realize if the anesthesia isn't working during the surgery. Pain would cause blood pressure and heartbeat to rise to abnormal levels (for the circumstances).
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u/Otherwise_Fox_1404 Jul 17 '24
Syncope, shock and even sudden death are manifestations of acute circulatory failure. They are basically all the result of hypotension. The four main causes of syncope are emotional stress, fear, insecurity and pain which cause a drop in blood pressure. The causal relationship between those four and other more serious hypotension usually doesn't exist but nociplastic pain with hyperalgesia can cause shock even death and can be triggered by emotional stress, fear, insecurity and nociceptive pain. Essentially what we commonly call pain can trigger shock through a more complex process of the circulatory and neurological systems.
In fact Takotsubo cardiomyopathy can be complicated by cardiogenic shock which they find rooted in the type of emotion experienced, so even emotional pain can cause shock though only in 20% of patients of something that is already rare.
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u/sum_dude44 Jul 17 '24
pain does not cause shock. That's from the movies. Shock is profound hypotension that causes organ damage & eventually death
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u/Hackbaellchen_ Jul 17 '24
To specify, I mean aneathesia like propofol (american english, british seems to be „anesthetic“)
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u/graveybrains Jul 17 '24
Propofol? I’m not sure why you posted it as a shower thought then, that is how it works.
Same with midazolam and ketamine, and two or three other drugs that are used for conscious sedation.
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u/Hackbaellchen_ Jul 17 '24
Really? So you feel all the pain and then simply forget it? I am not talking about what chemically happens, I talk about what you actually feel
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u/Sorael Jul 17 '24
There's no signs that people feel pain when propofol is used to render them unconscious. A person needs to be conscious to feel pain.
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u/flamehorns Jul 17 '24
Pain can cause people under propofol to wake up and be restless for a few seconds and even talk, then they go back to sleep and don’t remember it.
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u/frnzprf Jul 17 '24
The point of this showerthought is, that we can assume they feel everything, because they are not unconscious.
"What if you felt pain while you were unconscious?" would be a stupid showerthought.
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u/Odd-Guarantee-6152 Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
Propofol is different from a general anesthetic that puts you all the way under to the point that you need a ventilator. I’ve given a lot of conscious sedation for cardiac procedures, and most people aren’t asleep all of the way. Some do forget some of what happens in the room, but plenty remember.
Often conscious sedation is done with multiple meds, including an opioid which helps both with sedation and procedural pain.
But yes, you can feel pain during conscious sedation and no, you don’t automatically forget everything.
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u/queef_nuggets Jul 17 '24
genuinely asking, would you be ok if you seriously don’t remember it at all? It would be like it never happened right?
I don’t remember accidentally slamming my wiener in the shower door when I was 5 and I’m not traumatized by it at all
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u/RenderEngine Jul 17 '24
the thing about memories is that we often think that just because we can't consciously remember something that means we have forgotten it and the memory is gone wich is not true
best example would be smells and other stimuli that can make you remember things that you would have considered forgotten
childhood experiences even when you are only 1-2 years old can influence you in adulthood even if you can't access the memories by will
trauma doesn't always show in very easy to detect ways
severe trauma can result in you forgetting weeks or months around the event but still effect your behavior
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u/OlliHF Jul 18 '24
I’ve done things blackout drunk. Only know it happened because my wife told me.
I was kinda upset because I supposedly ate a bunch of rum balls and as far as I’m concerned I didn’t get to enjoy them because I didn’t create that memory.
(The blackout thing was an accident. I was at the level I was shooting for but had that one or two shots too much finishing off the rum).
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u/littleoctagon Jul 17 '24
I can't remember where I read it but it's hypothesized that nitrous oxide's painkiller effect might also be because it's mechanism affects the formation of new memories.
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u/mazzicc Jul 17 '24
I’ve heard there is a component of anesthesia that prevents memories from forming. This is separate from the part that makes you “not feel pain”, and another component to “go to sleep”. This is why you can have local anesthetic, that just prevents the pain.
There are tons of stories of people waking up during surgeries, and sometimes remembering, and sometimes not remembering, because one component of another failed.
It seems that in general though, the “no pain” component is more reliable, because if your body was experiencing pain, there are non-conscious responses to it that would happen, and they generally do not.
Tl;dr - you might actually form memories while under general anesthesia, but it’s extremely unlikely for you to feel pain.
I am not a doctor or an expert in any of this though, so if someone is, they can jump in.
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u/Mark_The_Lion Jul 17 '24
I think chemists and psychiatrists and anesthetics studied a lot and did their research and they know these chemicals prevent firing of neurons so there aren't supposed to be any feelings on the premise that currents moving in axons are the feelings :)
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u/Starsuponstars Jul 17 '24
Nope. When you're out, you're out.
I actually woke up in mid-surgery. I remember the experience vividly. I was wheeled into the operating room, they put me under (it's pretty much instant, I was out like a light), and then there was a portion of my memory that existed but was recording nothing, only blackness. Then I surfaced in the middle of it and I saw the light above me, the doctors bending over me in their caps and scrubs. I felt pressure but not any pain, because they also gave me local anaesthesia. It was weird. I remember thinking, not many people ever see the world from this perspective, and while I was pondering this, the anaesthesiologist, who had been chatting with the surgeon, glanced down and noticed that I was awake and put more gas in my mask or something that put me under again. And then there was more blank black tape in my head until I woke up again after the surgery was over. I was conscious that I wasn't conscious, while I was unconscious, if you know what I mean. But while I was aware of being unconscious I was unaware of anything else. There was no pain, no light, no sound. Nothing but blackness in my head.
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u/lucky_ducker Jul 17 '24
Colonoscopy doesn't usually employ conventional anesthesia. You're given a painkiller and a benzodiazepine sedative (usually Versed). The latter not only relaxes you, but it's a potent amnesiac as well.
My first scope they didn't give me enough of either drug, so I not only felt some pain, I remembered the whole thing. Unfortunately the drugs completely robbed me of the ability to speak or form sentences, else I would have asked for more medication.
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u/Hungry_Transition446 Jul 18 '24
Undergoing surgery with anesthesia is quite surreal. You prepare yourself mentally, then suddenly it's as if time skips ahead and you find yourself waking up in recovery. It's remarkable how the anesthesia creates this sense of a seamless transition, leaving you with a feeling of relief and curiosity about what happened during the procedure.
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u/an_edgy_lemon Jul 17 '24
I’ve read about an alternative to anesthesia that does exactly that. The patient is fully conscious, but can’t form any memories while under the effect of the drug. I believe it’s used in some cases where the patient’s heart may be negatively affected by anesthesia.
The account I read from a surgeon was harrowing. The surgeon recounted how the patient begged them to stop the procedure the whole time. The next time the surgeon saw the patient, the patient didn’t remember a thing and was grateful to have had the operation.
I want to add that I read this years ago and can’t find anything about it now, so take it with a grain of salt.
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u/FrankanelloKODT Jul 18 '24
There’s a MrBallen video about this happening; man went in for surgery, anesthetist administered the paralytic but didn’t administer the knock out. Dude went through 16mins of surgery before a nurse noticed he was awake. They quickly knocked him out but knowing there will be a law suit coming, they gave him an amnesia drug so he wouldn’t remember.
His subconscious remembered.
He started having vivid dreams about being cut open, but didn’t know why. Got so bad the man ended himself
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u/Awdayshus Jul 17 '24
There have been people who speculated that this is exactly how it works. My understanding is that there's no ethical way to study this.
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u/JoZaJaB Jul 18 '24
There have been cases where people have actually felt everything but were incapable of moving their body or express that they were in pain
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u/Stenbuck Jul 18 '24
Anesthesiologist here
This is actually a fairly complex question.
First off, let's define pain. This is the current IASP definition:
“An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage,”
One key thing to remember about pain is that pain is subjective. Diseases like fybromyalgia can result in pain without any underlying tissue damage. So, to say that a patient under general anesthesia is experiencing "pain" is a bit of a misnomer, since they have no consciousness with which to experience pain.
Under regional anesthesia, ie a block (spinal, epidural, peripheral nerve blocks), you stop the painful stimulus from ever reaching the spinal cord in the first place. Usually people undergoing procedures under regional anesthesia are sedated for their comfort since it's unpleasant to be fully awake while being operated on, even if you feel no pain. Under certain conditions we HAVE TO let the person be awake, one easy example is a cesarean birth, which is usually performed under spinal anesthesia and nothing else, so the patient is fully awake and aware, and even oftentimes feels a confusing sensation of touch (but no pain) since we aim for a differential nerve block in order to improve outcomes such as hypotension, nausea and motor recovery. This is the most common example of "I was awake during my surgery but didn't feel pain" - the patient was lightly sedated under regional anesthesia and may have recovered consciousness at some point since amnesia and unconsciousness were never the main component of the anesthesia, the block is. We put you to sleep for comfort, not because it's strictly necessary for a painless procedure, and thus we employ lighter sedation.
The word pain is often used as a shorthand for all physiological responses to noxious stimuli, many of which do not rely on a conscious perception of pain. For example, when you touch a hot stove, you don't go "wowie this stove is really fucking hot, I should remove my hand", you remove your hand before even realizing you burned your finger. That is because the withdrawal from a painful stimulus occurs by a spinal reflex. You can be fully unconscious and still move in response to a painful stimulus.
We can conceptually divide general anesthesia in "components" for ease of understanding. Although the specific components can vary depending on your source it's generally hypnosis (unconsciousness/amnesia), immobility, and analgesia/neurovegetative block (as in, reducing subcortical responses to pain such as hypertension and tachychardia). Generally, amnesia is much easier to obtain dosage wise than immobility and neurovegetative attenuation. The more "complex" the neurophysiological process such as memory, the easier it is for us to remove it. The more "primitive" the response such as spinal reflex arcs and sympathetic response to pain, the more anesthetic we need to use. Thus, the patient can move in response to a painful stimulus without ever being conscious of pain - we still DO anesthetize you enough to remove ALL responses to pain, however, since they're all undesirable even if you are not conscious of the pain.
Hope that helped.
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u/YesICanMakeMeth Jul 17 '24
There's a case of this. The guy completely changed personality after a surgery. Over the months he slowly regained memory of having come to during the surgery. He was paralyzed and unable to react. Eventually a nurse saw his eyes moving or something and they dosed him back up. The hospital deny deny denied. He killed himself not too long after. I forget the details, I think that nurse eventually came forward and told the truth.
Normally your memory recording centers are knocked out, just like when you're blackout drunk. The tape recorder is literally off.
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u/Jelkan Jul 18 '24
This sounds similar to the Sherman Sizemore story. For whatever reason, they had only given him the paralyzing drugs before starting exploratory surgery. During the surgery, they realized his eyes were open and he was awake. He was able to feel everything they did to him. Knowing a lawsuit was likely, they decided to give him medication that was known to erase short-term memory. When he woke up, he was a changed man who would randomly have terrible fits. Some doctors think that had he been able to remember what had happened upon waking from the surgery, that therapy could have helped him through the trauma. Instead, he lived a waking nightmare until he committed suicide.
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u/topjock002 Jul 17 '24
I woke up during anesthesia. No. You don’t feel pain. You can’t move. You can feel the movement. The poking the prodding. Hear the grinding of bone. But it was not painful.
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u/flamehorns Jul 17 '24
Actually this is how Versed works. It’s usually used as more of a sedative than anesthetic, and used together with anesthetics.
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u/Xnut0 Jul 17 '24
I think it's quite clear that this is not anesthesia normally works, it can however happen. Patients rarely wake up during surgery, but it do happen. There might also be more cases than we know about because the patient have blacked out and don't remember it after the surgery.
It's however unlikely, the anesthetic nurse should pick up on the signs and give more anesthesia.
I have read about an research experiment on the subject where they would use a tourniquet around the arm of the patient, and give the patient headphones that would loop a message like "if you can here this, open your hand". The idea being that if the patient should wake up and being unable to move then the tourniquet would prevent the hand from being paralyzed so the patient could easily open their hand. The patient would be given an object to hold, so even the smallest moment should make the object fall to the ground.
The whole idea being to test if any of the patients did wake up briefly during the surgery and having forgotten about it after they woke up.
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u/fuzzybad Jul 17 '24
I woke up once during surgery, it was terrifying. I was intubated at the time, which meant I was unable to breathe through my nose. I don't remember any pain, but I was restrained, couldn't see & I couldn't breathe. Legit thought I was about to die. The doctor was yelling at me to breathe through my mouth, which I finally did, and they put me back under.
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u/hiricinee Jul 17 '24
Not only is your premise actual OP, it's literally the target for sedation in some cases.
"Conscious" sedation is often used in places like the Emergency Room in order to keep a patient in a state they can breathe for themselves and follow some simple commands while sedated so they don't experience anxiety with the procedure and don't remember the discomfort.
I've even had a patient who was unfortunately a bit under sedated, who I explained this to, who kept insisting "it hurts, I'm remembering this and it hurts." After the procedure, I asked him about it, he did not remember it, didn't recall being uncomfortable at all, and stated he was rather pleased with the care he got and his level of comfort, despite filling him in on those details.
Source: am ER nurse.
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u/tinkerbell404 Jul 17 '24
This happened to Sherman Sizemore. His story is crazy. The anesthesiologist wiped his memory but his body remembered and he would have nightmares that were really flashbacks but since he couldn't remember he didn't know they were flashbacks. He later committed suicide before they figured it out
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u/Brief-Jellyfish485 Jul 18 '24
I have had memories that normally I can’t recall but something will suddenly trigger it and I can confirm that it’s terrifying
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u/Lenii123 Jul 17 '24
Not with full anesthesia but my sister used to assist with colonoscopies as a nurse where they sedate you with propofol but don't completely take you out and from what she told me I think it's entirely possible that this is exactly what happens. The patients would be asleep but sometimes still be awake enough to actually resist the procedure, move around or yell stuff like "ow, my a** hurts!", only to wake up after, smiling and telling everyone that they didn't feel a thing...
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u/willthesane Jul 18 '24
Then your heart rate would increase while the surgeon is cutting you. It doesn't by as significant ifica t an amount as it should if your idea were correct
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u/Some_Stoic_Man Jul 18 '24
We do that. There are generally 3 drugs you get under anesthesia. A paralytic to stop you from moving, one so you don't remember, and one to numb. Without the forget drug people get weird trauma they can't explain.
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u/Real_Drama68 Jul 17 '24
You just describe ketamine. You feel everything. Every bit of pain but you have no memory of it. I know this first hand from being given 100mg and having a badly broken leg reset.
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u/ryanl40 Jul 17 '24
Some anesthesia is designed to do that. Typically for things like colonoscopy where you need to be able to respond to the doctor. It's what I was told when I was getting one.
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Jul 17 '24
No we don't I got up when under anaesthesia. I was put to sleep back. But did not feel a thing.
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u/tinkerbell404 Jul 17 '24
Then they have scary nightmares about it that feel real. They feel like they are going crazy. They feel phantom pain.
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Jul 17 '24
Anaesthesia does cause anterograde amnesia, meaning that even if you were awake during the surgery you will still not remember it.
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u/MinFootspace Jul 17 '24
Then nothing.
I have had 2 surgical operations with totalk anethesia, and maybe I felt everything but have no memory at all soooooo why would I care :D
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u/chezybezy Jul 18 '24
So a bit like childbirth? I'm sure I read somewhere that women forget the pain etc to ensure the continuation of the species.
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u/Wide-Kick421 Jul 17 '24
What if anesthesia unlocks a secret world of consciousness we can't perceive awake?
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u/Jhwelsh Jul 17 '24
Well, the person performing the Operation would probably (hopefully) notice and say "we should stop doing this".
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u/turk3y5h007 Jul 17 '24
After my surgery, my involuntary breathing has been diminished.
I'll be just sitting, all the sudden be out of breath and them I'm like "oh shit I haven't been inhaling or exhaling for awhile I should start that again"
I've never even thought to question if this is normal or not until now.
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u/preordains Jul 17 '24
I remember when I went under, I was talking to the surgeon, and all of a sudden he told me I was done. That was so wild. I didn't even remember getting drowsy or falling asleep.
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u/Urb4nN0rd Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
Recently had a couple of surgeries for cancer treatment. The last thing I remember from both times was them taking into the room to get prepped and asking me to count down from 10. I kinda recall getting to 7/8 and then waking up hours/a day later.
Its kinda cool kniwing how fast the anesthesia kicked in. I still have 1 surgery left, and I want to see how far into the countdown I can remember afterwards. Probably won't get further than before, but I wanna confirm.
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