As a compliment to the thread about near death experiences I’d really like hearing people’s experiences of losing consciousness under general anesthesia and what’s it like coming back.
Also interested of things anesthetists may have noticed about this during their career.
To me it felt like THE BEST dreamless nap.
They dose me with propofol when I get scoped…you know, I try to see how long I can make my memories take before the anesthesia kicks in and I never made it very long after they wheeled me in. Then you come out of it and your brain’s full of spiderwebs for a little bit. (Don’t drive the day you’ve been sedated—it’ll only end badly.) There’s a lingering sense of drowsiness to some degree for the rest of the day.
Instantaneous time warp. One moment, I’m relaxing on the table before the procedure. Next moment, I’m being told the procedure’s done.
It’s like a human
SIGSTOP, for all you programmers out there.Yeah they put the tube in and I woke up 6 hours later. I was literally turned off and on.
Had a kidney taken out. Once in the OR they gave me the stuff and I was out like a light. Woke up in post-OP feeling like I got hit by a bus, just groggy and sore from having a Mr. Handy digging around in my belly for a bean. But I healed up and am doing well.
I had general anesthesia, some kind of pretty strong opioid. “10… 9… 8…”, then the room felt like it was spinning very briefly before everything went black. Only thing I remember about coming out of it was a sore throat due to intubation.
It was almost scarily smooth for me. I laid down on the operating table, they started prepping me up and I was out before I realized it. When I woke up minutes after the end of my short surgery I had clear memories of the moments before. There was no period of time where I felt confused or realized I was passing out or waking up. I went from being conscious, to unconscious, to wide awake pretty darn fast. The only numbness I had came from the painkillers. Or at least it’s how it felt to me. Modern anesthetics are amazing.
Yep - it’s both a science and an art.
Can you imagine doing it for a job?
I remember thinking it’s taking surprisingly long for the gas over my mouth and nose to do anything. A pretty surgical assistant was staring at my eyes and talking to me calmly, saying I was doing great. And I was doing great. Then the next moment I was suddenly startled awake again as completely different people were shouting and holding my arms, trying to bring me back to consciousness as I was flailing around in confusion. Apparently the surgery went well.
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As my steezy took pains to point out, general anesthesia is not sedation. General means you cannot breathe on your own. Sedation (like with propofol) means you can still breathe, but you have no working memory of what happens.
I’ve had sedation administered a few times in the past few years, two colonoscopies and a bone spur shave on my big toe.
Colonoscopies are fairly quick, maybe 30-45 minutes for the full procedure. There was a burn in my vein in as the injection was administered via IV, followed shortly by a dizziness that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in recovery. The dizziness lasted for about 7-10 minutes. Felt about 90% good for the rest of the day, 100% the next.
For the bone spur, I was out for about 2 hours. Experience was similar, except it took quite a bit longer for the propofol dizziness to wear off, maybe 4-5 hours. Not that I was going to drive anywhere with a recently operated toe, but there’s no way I would have tried. After a good night’s sleep, I felt 100% next day.
Yes, when my wisdom teeth were pulled. They said, “count backwards from 10.” I said, “10, 9, 8, 7,” and then they were transferring me from a wheelchair to my mom’s car. It was like no time passed between those two moments.
Twice, for my wisdom teeth and my colonoscopy. The first time I didn’t feel anything and I was out as soon as he put the drug in the IV. I blinked and woke up in the waiting room afterwards. I was groggy and my cheeks were packed with gauze, but I was fine after that
For the colonoscopy I felt the slight chill in my veins, and it felt like I was giving into a very deep sleep that I really wanted. However I was exhausted from shitting my brains out the night before so I definitely did want to sleep lmao.
When I woke up I felt a little high and super well rested, it was great, like I had just smoked a small bowl. One thing they don’t tell you about colonoscopies until the day of is that they put air up there as the camera goes up so they can see inside more clearly, and you “expel” all that air when you wake up.
The nurse told me the procedure was finished as I came to and as I lay there high and half asleep, I RIP HUGE ASS. I’m holding in laughter like a little kid because fart jokes are still funny especially when I’m high lmao.
I get into the car and my gf has a sandwich waiting for me. I hadn’t eaten solid food in about 24 hours and I was still kind of high. Best fucking sandwich of my life.
Here they offer you CO2 instead of air. Gets mostly absorbed and much less farting.
Yes, several times. Surprisingly: my shortest surgery (10 min to remove a device) resulted in about 10 days of serious depression. A shrink says this happens about 10 percent of the time. I wish I’d known this in advance, I’d have opted out. I will be more cautious in the future.
It varies depending on the drugs used, I’ve been under multiple times now, the big one being for an open heart bypass.
That one I saw nothing, felt nothing, but coming out of it I remember them pulling out the breathing tube and putting me on a bi-pap machine. I had to beg to be taken off of it because it was stopping me from exhaling. I could breathe in fine, but the back pressure wouldn’t let me breathe out.
Then the drugs, it was a combination of a bunch of things, propofol (the stuff that killed Michael Jackson), fentanyl (the stuff that killed Prince). Oxy, the works.
I was having weird hallucinations. If I closed my eyes, I could see a perfectly painted brick wall about a foot in front of my face. I could see the detail on the bricks and the mortar, the texture of the paint. Bonus - every time they put me in a different room, the wall would change color.
Just went under for the first time a few days ago. Pretty sure the Xanax they gave me prior knocked me out before the anesthesia did. Only memory was getting up on the operating table then a few hours after I got home. No memory of anesthesia, waking up after the surgery or getting home. Woke up feeling groggy and didn’t realize ~10 hours passed. Couldn’t stand up and walk on my own until the next morning.
8 weeks ago, June 26. I remember getting ready, they put an IV in. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up. When I woke up I was shivering, but I wasn’t actually cold. They immediately gave me some cookies and water and 2 Oxycodone pills and I got dressed and my mother-in-law took me to her place where I was staying the night.
