when I came out after getting my wisdom teeth pulled, the dentists informed me I was trying to sing 'Help' by the Beatles and was attempting to harmonize with myself to hilarious effect
I just realized that I don't know what I said or did between going under for wisdom teeth and waking up with the gauze and whatnot. That may have been a strategic decision by my mother...
Fun fact: cocaine is used as an anesthetic for certain nasal surgeries
Fun story:
Lo these many years ago, I was supposed to have surgery done on my nose to 1) repair a deviated septum, I guess, but mostly 2) fix whatever the fuck is wrong with my sinuses that causes me to get sinus infections on the regular, mostly by scraping the passageways more open.
When I woke up from anesthesia and was in post-op, the doc told me that they were really only able to do the first part. This is because, in order to do the second part, they reach in and gently brush your nasal passages with just a soupcon of cocaine. This is supposed to cause all the blood vessels to ... constrict? ... which results in cleaner work.
Instead, when they did that, my nose just basically exploded in blood. I was, apparently, like some kind of anime sword-slice victim, but intra-nasally. Their primary reaction was, "It's not supposed to do that!"
So they stopped the surgery, and I've never gone back to have it looked at a second time.
My septum, at least, is no longer quite so devious.
Thus ends the story of the only time I've ever done cocaine.
The time I had general anesthesia, I think I was a little punchy or arm-flaily when I came out of it? At least, that was the first thing I remembered being told, from an arms length away.
Some people, particularly younger patients (more likely with men, especially those with a history of physical trauma or contact sports) emerge a little aggressively from general anesthesia.
And that's okay! We easily work around that.
Oh hey, this is me! I have a bad reaction when waking up from any sort of anesthesia, so the workaround my mom figured out when I was a kis was that you gotta literally and physically hold my hand when I start coming to. Gently, of course, but you still gotta give it a lil squeeze so I know you're not hostile and everything turned out okay.
The attending nurse did this when I was waking up in the recovery room after my jaw surgery (many, many years ago) because my dad was in the bathroom and left explicit instructions to her in the off chance that I woke up while he was preoccupied. You can imagine my surprise when I came to with an aching face, looking at a smiling stranger telling me that everything was fine and that I was going to make a full recovery. It completely overrode my impulse to panic and fight, replacing it with a lot of questions and absolutely no ability to ask them through my very swollen lips.
Hey lots of questions about Anesthesia here! I'll answer them when I get home.
It's very safe you have nothing to worry about.
Is there a way I can go under without having a complete existential crisis beforehand? Shit do be freaky
Yeah, absolutely. You could certainly have your anesthesia provider walk you step by step beforehand to let you know how things will go. Also, request some kind of anti anxiety medication preoperatively will really smooth the experience out.
I wonder if there's anything they can do about the dread that sets in the moment I learn I need a procedure. Got a possible jaw surgery in a couple years (only if the surgeon can make a case to my insurance that it's needed and they ought to pay for it. Hooray US "healthcare"), and I've been worried about it ever since.
I had jaw surgery a year or so after graduating high school (got my upper jaw broken so they could slide it forward a bit to fix my underbite and let me breathe through my nose worth a damn). No idea if your potential surgery would be similar to mine, but I have no problem answering questions about what the experience was like.
As far as the anesthetic part, as far as my brain is concerned the entire procedure took about 1 second. I remember lying in the operation room, blinking, and then all of sudden I was in my post-op room where they had me stay for a night or so (I can't remember how long), before they discharged me.
Hey lots of questions about Anesthesia here! I'll answer them when I get home.
It's very safe you have nothing to worry about.
Is there a way I can go under without having a complete existential crisis beforehand? Shit do be freaky
Yeah, absolutely. You could certainly have your anesthesia provider walk you step by step beforehand to let you know how things will go. Also, request some kind of anti anxiety medication preoperatively will really smooth the experience out.
I wonder if there's anything they can do about the dread that sets in the moment I learn I need a procedure. Got a possible jaw surgery in a couple years (only if the surgeon can make a case to my insurance that it's needed and they ought to pay for it. Hooray US "healthcare"), and I've been worried about it ever since.
I had jaw surgery a year or so after graduating high school (got my upper jaw broken so they could slide it forward a bit to fix my underbite and let me breathe through my nose worth a damn). No idea if your potential surgery would be similar to mine, but I have no problem answering questions about what the experience was like.
As far as the anesthetic part, as far as my brain is concerned the entire procedure took about 1 second. I remember lying in the operation room, blinking, and then all of sudden I was in my post-op room where they had me stay for a night or so (I can't remember how long), before they discharged me.
Yeah, I'm getting the top and bottom jaws both broken to fix my bad overbite on the front and side.
And I know what anesthesia is like, I've had it three times previously. That just makes me more anxious because it truly freaks me out that they just stick a needle in my arm and then suddenly several hours get deleted and I wake up with sore body parts. It's like what I imagine dying is like, and death really scares me
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
They have nearly completely grown back! Still a few scabs of dried blood here and there, but overall much better. This time next week I might be able to actually start eating messy foods like toast once again. 😂
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
They have nearly completely grown back! Still a few scabs of dried blood here and there, but overall much better. This time next week I might be able to actually start eating messy foods like toast once again. 😂
How long till you reintroduce posterior to your diet?
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
yeah they asked me whether I wanted general or local for my wisdom teeth, and they weren't done asking the question before I answered general
knock me the fuck out for that shit
Hmm. I think I'd choose local if I could also get like a valium or something. Because yeah having someone working inside my skull would be really stressful, but I quite liked the sensation of having minor surgery just under a local. How novel it was to be able to feel it but not have any pain.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I got my wisdom teeth out with just local anesthetic and hearing the dentist crack those teeth while I was conscious without any pain was definitely an interesting experience.
They have nearly completely grown back! Still a few scabs of dried blood here and there, but overall much better. This time next week I might be able to actually start eating messy foods like toast once again. 😂
How long till you reintroduce posterior to your diet?
Regarding local anaesthetic and odd feelings, I'd say the most surreal experience I've had was when I got my lasik done. They used anaesthetic drops to numb my eye, and boy THAT is a weird feeling. It still functions fine but you are acutely aware of its presence. Then they fitted the tube around the eyeball, had me stare at a glowing red dot, I get a whiff of vaporized me, and it's done. The tube comes off, I blink a few times, and 20/800 vision has turned into 20/15
I only had 1 wisdom tooth so they just did the local for me.
After they gave me the anaesthetic they put on a short video about taking care of your mouth until the hole healed back up and walked out to give the drugs time to numb me up.
Unfortunately, they accidentally put on the Spanish version of the video so I just saw a bunch of people who looked miserable while only understanding about a 1/3 of what was being said. Not super helpful.
For my wisdom teeth, I opted for the local + laughing gas (do they even use that anymore?) because the general anaesthetic made my friend throw up, and I was pretty emetophobic as a kid/teen. Which is how I discovered I don't react to laughing gas.
The local worked pretty dang well, but it was still not a fun experience. They had to pull my jaw open wider than it wanted to go to get enough room to work. The joints were stiff for weeks.
I had an easy recovery, though. Ibuprofen and soft foods for a few days and I was set.
Regarding local anaesthetic and odd feelings, I'd say the most surreal experience I've had was when I got my lasik done. They used anaesthetic drops to numb my eye, and boy THAT is a weird feeling. It still functions fine but you are acutely aware of its presence. Then they fitted the tube around the eyeball, had me stare at a glowing red dot, I get a whiff of vaporized me, and it's done. The tube comes off, I blink a few times, and 20/800 vision has turned into 20/15
This is exactly my experience, except the whole time I was staring at the red dot I could feel my eyeball vibrating around in the socket. Just a completely strange experience. Utterly painless, though.
Local for wisdom teeth. It doesn't help much with pressure pain on nerves though and one of the teeth was basically lying on top of the main jaw nerve. So that was fun. 5 jabs for that in total I think.
The lead up to my wisdom teeth removal was much more interesting than the aftermath. They had me taken an Ativan about an hour before to loosen me up. I popped it and sat at the computer for a bit until my mom called me down to leave. I stood up and immediately went straight back down, fortunately onto my bed. I staggered down stairs with both hands on the railings the whole way. In the car my head was glued to the window and cars on the street had extra wheels. They got me seated and popped a monitor on my finger which I waggled a bit before realizing that there was suddenly an IV in my other arm that I did not feel. They told me to count backwards from 100 and flipped the valve to knock me out. I got to 99.
Oh I once got some bad chalazions removed from my eyelid and they did local for that. I gotta say, even though it didn't hurt, the feeling of pressure on my eyeball and scraping gunk out of the underside of my eyelid was not pleasant. They gave me a stress ball to squeeze cause I was squirming so much.
SirToasty on
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
Locals are very difficult to work on me. In the last three dental visits it took 5+ shots and nearly half an hour before my face even started to tingle. Towards the end of the work I was already regaining feeling.
Red hair?
Bingo
My biological grandfather had the reddest hair. And I am not necessarily a red head, but had a smattering of red hairs throughout, when I had hair. Pain pills like hydrocodone, and other drugs barely touch my pain. I also need 5+ shots of lidocaine when at the dentist.
Edit: Mainly with painkillers, they make me hot and sweaty and itchy all over. I don't care for them.
Hey Everyone, its your favorite neighborhood nurse anesthetist, megaman001, here. I've come to answer a number of questions that popped up in this thread over the last few pages.
I apologize for the lateness of this post. I meant to do it Thursday night, but I got stuck late at work because a patient decided to get really drunk, smoke some methamphetamines, and then fall down a flight of stairs which more or less shattered their left tibula, fibula, and a majority of their ankle bones.
Anesthesia as it's known is really a spectrum. Depending on how anesthesia providers manipulate drugs and injections they can achieve a variety of results. Similar to how a Witcher can use multiple potions and oils to various effects.
The easiest way to think of anesthesia is on a continuum. On one side is "Completely awake and feeling everything" and on the other is "Completely unconconscious and feeling nothing". Then there's everything inbetween. Depending on what medications are being used, how they're administered, how often their administered, and what the visible results are. As you've seen in this thread alone, multiple people have discussed the same medical procedure, with wildly different experiences. Everything is controlled by your provider.
Basics of Anesthesia
A general anesthetic is defined as any anesthetic that requires airway manipulation. That is, an endotracheal tube or a laryngeal mask airiway. A "sedation anesthetic" could also be called a "MAC" or "Monitored Anesthesia Care" which doesn't require airway support. The key point to keep in mind is that a provider can achieve similar anesthetic depth (consciousness and sensation) with or without airway support. On top of that we have Regional Anesthesia (injections of medications that impair nerve induction in extremities / tissues) which prevents feeling (like a dentist) as well as Neuraxial Anesthesia (injections of similar medications into your spinal tissues to prevent sensation over large parts of your body.
Memory Loss
Every type of anesthetic is accompanied by some intravenous medications that universally fuck up your short term memory. This is to achieve two things - first, you stay calm and comfortable for the anesthetic and two - so you don't remember anything. It's expected you'll have a patient chatting with you and then afterwards doesn't remember the conversation. We don't tell anyone what you've said.
Red Hair? What the fuck?
Okay, one of the weirder things to come out in anesthetic research over the last thirty years is the prevalence of people with red hair and, let's say, a resistance to anesthetics. I say resistance to anesthetics because these patients require larger amounts of anesthetics to achieve the same response. Yes, it's weird, but we're learning a lot about genetic markers and responsiveness to medications. For example, you can now request gene assays to figure out what opioids (if any) a patient is more or less responsive to. It helps guide pain therapy.
Dentists do anesthesia, or something?
Dentists, along with periodontists and oral surgeons, have a weird gray area in terms of their training and credentials to both do a surgical procedure and administer anesthesia at the same time. This is a terrible fucking idea. Full disclosure, I am a CRNA, so in some sense telling a surgical staff to have a CRNA do their anesthesia separately is good for me and my billing. However, you can easily google the multiple (and I mean multiple) incidences of a dentist / oral surgeon / periodontist doing both anesthesia and surgery at the same time which leads to their patient dying. In this case, it's often children. I cannot stress this enough - your surgeon needs to be responsible for their surgery and your anesthesia provider needs to be responsible for everything else. I would not, ever, allow myself or any member of my family to have a medical procedure involving anesthesia without an anesthesia provider available separately from surgery. Ever.
I'll just get high as shit before my procedure!
Marijuana or CBD has relatively little impact on your surgical course. However, if you're under the influence of recreational drugs you may not be able to complete the paperwork to have your procedure and that's just a huge waste of marijuana.
Cocaine, Alcohol, and Methamphetamines can have major impacts on your anesthetic.
Just, like, be honest. We don't give a shit what you did and we don't report you. We would rather you survive your anesthetic.
I had <X> response to <Y> surgery and or anesthetic?!
An individual's response to an anesthetic is unique. I cannot stress this enough. If I took everyone participating in the PA Forums and gave them the same amount of anesthetic and opioids, I would likely have roughly ten or so different results in terms of memory, pain relief, movement, etc. Also, most anesthesia providers are shit with accurate terminology when it comes to their own job. Providers refer to sedation level anesthetics as 'generals' as often as they promise people they 'won't remember or feel anything'. That's all incorrect and I don't know if it's due to ignorance or an unwillingness to explain things clearly to their patients. Though, in their defense, most patients don't want to know a goddamn thing about their anesthetic to begin with. This isn't meant to deflect anyone's particular experience, but explain (maybe) why you can talk to a friend about their wisdom teeth extraction and have radically different experiences.
I'm scared.
The thing that stuck with me through my training and into practice is that most people, and I mean almost everyone, is more scared of their anesthetic than the actual surgery. Sure, your surgeon may be removing most of your abdominal cavity for metastatic cancer, but what you're really scared of is going to sleep. The hardest part of my job is convincing someone over maybe five minutes that they can trust me with everything.
I don't know what to tell you to feel better, but I'll offer you this. Anesthesia and surgery is as safe as it's ever been in human history. It's more dangerous to drive to the hospital for a surgical procedure than it is to actually have the procedure performed. Speak to your anesthesia team and I hope you love and trust them.
If nothing else, please feel free to PM me directly if you've got anything medically going on and maybe I can help out.
MegaMan001 on
I am in the business of saving lives.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
There are currently 124 loci that have been found to be involved in hair color, so the hair color/pain-anaesthesia tolerance thing is proooobably one or more of those being in linkage disequilibrium with one or more loci that affect nociception.
Genomics is screwy as fuck.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I'm gonna have to get the polyps roto-rooted out of my sinuses again in the near future and probably on a regular basis for the rest of my life, and I'm really hoping to find a way to do it with local anesthetic. They put me to sleep last time and apparently it made my blood pressure fluctuate wildly in a way that left everyone on the surgical team worried and frazzled and generally bummed out.
The good news is that the first time was a polyp removal and a sinuplasty to correct my deviated septum, so I'm hoping that just fucking with the soft tissue will give me more options going forward.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Locals are very difficult to work on me. In the last three dental visits it took 5+ shots and nearly half an hour before my face even started to tingle. Towards the end of the work I was already regaining feeling.
Red hair?
Bingo
My biological grandfather had the reddest hair. And I am not necessarily a red head, but had a smattering of red hairs throughout, when I had hair. Pain pills like hydrocodone, and other drugs barely touch my pain. I also need 5+ shots of lidocaine when at the dentist.
Edit: Mainly with painkillers, they make me hot and sweaty and itchy all over. I don't care for them.
There is a slight history of red hair in my family. I have cousins with very red hair, and my father had a reddish tint to his when he was younger.
And for whatever reason, I am basically immune to the effects of Fentanyl, and I think it's that part of my genes that is responsible.
I have been given huge doses of fentanyl for procedures and it was the functional equivalent of pushing saline.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
If I don't remember stuff due to drugs, it's like it didn't actually happen! Except for the lingering side effects like waking up with injuries and soreness, because apparently they aren't particularly gentle when cracking open your ribcage like a lobster.
So while the actual act of being forced to sleep is terrifying, it's preferable to the alternative of staying awake for a procedure
I had an echocardiogram come back and they haven't called me to talk about it but I saw the report in my MyChart and it sounds really bad and I'm honestly pretty shook up about it
I had an echocardiogram come back and they haven't called me to talk about it but I saw the report in my MyChart and it sounds really bad and I'm honestly pretty shook up about it
I'm not a cardiologist so I am not going to offer to interpret it for you, but I will say that there's miles between a diagnostic and how people feel every day
I had an echocardiogram come back and they haven't called me to talk about it but I saw the report in my MyChart and it sounds really bad and I'm honestly pretty shook up about it
I'm not a cardiologist so I am not going to offer to interpret it for you, but I will say that there's miles between a diagnostic and how people feel every day
That's fair
They probably will want some further tests I imagine though since I have not been feeling great for a while
I've got an appointment with primary care to talk about sending me to a cardiologist again since the pulmonologist ordered the test originally suspecting pulmonary hypertension.
I think it's an uncontrolled blood pressure thing mostly. Just from googling around which yeah, bad idea. Just wish the doctor would call and tell me more themselves.
They've not refilled my water pill for like a month and I imagine I need to be on more pressure stuff and alter my diet significantly.
Specifically it was an enlarged left ventricle, but the thing that has me really worried is the tricuspid valve readings they took. Apparently trivial to mild regurgitation there. And that was a nonexercise echo.
I think it's probably gonna look worse when my heart is really working. Givin my symptoms of extreme shortness of breath and fatigue with even minor exercise like walking around the store or to the mailboxes. And the occasional palpitations.
I'm also worried they'll have to take me off my stimulant meds.
Tallahasseeriel on
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
I let them keep me up while they took out my wisdom teeth
that *pop*, it's a unique sensation, I didn't want to miss out on it
I didn't even need my wisdom teeth out, my head was plenty big for them, I just wanted that painkiller script lmao
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Oof, I had local for my wisdom teeth and wish I hadn't because I have mild synesthesia on sound and the sound of teeth being ground out of my skull was unpleasant.
On the other hand, I opted for local because both times I've been put under my reaction to coming out of it is to try and slap myself awake. Repeatedly. So I figured maybe doing that after mouth surgery would be not so good.
Posts
knock me the fuck out for that shit
Fun story:
Lo these many years ago, I was supposed to have surgery done on my nose to 1) repair a deviated septum, I guess, but mostly 2) fix whatever the fuck is wrong with my sinuses that causes me to get sinus infections on the regular, mostly by scraping the passageways more open.
When I woke up from anesthesia and was in post-op, the doc told me that they were really only able to do the first part. This is because, in order to do the second part, they reach in and gently brush your nasal passages with just a soupcon of cocaine. This is supposed to cause all the blood vessels to ... constrict? ... which results in cleaner work.
Instead, when they did that, my nose just basically exploded in blood. I was, apparently, like some kind of anime sword-slice victim, but intra-nasally. Their primary reaction was, "It's not supposed to do that!"
So they stopped the surgery, and I've never gone back to have it looked at a second time.
My septum, at least, is no longer quite so devious.
Thus ends the story of the only time I've ever done cocaine.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
https://swordscomic.com/comic/DXLIX/
Bit late for the stone discussion, but I just read this and felt compelled to share it.
Oh hey, this is me! I have a bad reaction when waking up from any sort of anesthesia, so the workaround my mom figured out when I was a kis was that you gotta literally and physically hold my hand when I start coming to. Gently, of course, but you still gotta give it a lil squeeze so I know you're not hostile and everything turned out okay.
The attending nurse did this when I was waking up in the recovery room after my jaw surgery (many, many years ago) because my dad was in the bathroom and left explicit instructions to her in the off chance that I woke up while he was preoccupied. You can imagine my surprise when I came to with an aching face, looking at a smiling stranger telling me that everything was fine and that I was going to make a full recovery. It completely overrode my impulse to panic and fight, replacing it with a lot of questions and absolutely no ability to ask them through my very swollen lips.
I had jaw surgery a year or so after graduating high school (got my upper jaw broken so they could slide it forward a bit to fix my underbite and let me breathe through my nose worth a damn). No idea if your potential surgery would be similar to mine, but I have no problem answering questions about what the experience was like.
As far as the anesthetic part, as far as my brain is concerned the entire procedure took about 1 second. I remember lying in the operation room, blinking, and then all of sudden I was in my post-op room where they had me stay for a night or so (I can't remember how long), before they discharged me.
Yeah, I'm getting the top and bottom jaws both broken to fix my bad overbite on the front and side.
And I know what anesthesia is like, I've had it three times previously. That just makes me more anxious because it truly freaks me out that they just stick a needle in my arm and then suddenly several hours get deleted and I wake up with sore body parts. It's like what I imagine dying is like, and death really scares me
They have nearly completely grown back! Still a few scabs of dried blood here and there, but overall much better. This time next week I might be able to actually start eating messy foods like toast once again. 😂
How long till you reintroduce posterior to your diet?
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Hmm. I think I'd choose local if I could also get like a valium or something. Because yeah having someone working inside my skull would be really stressful, but I quite liked the sensation of having minor surgery just under a local. How novel it was to be able to feel it but not have any pain.
Not soon enough!
Finding out the first dose wasn't enough, that was not particularly pleasant.
After they gave me the anaesthetic they put on a short video about taking care of your mouth until the hole healed back up and walked out to give the drugs time to numb me up.
Unfortunately, they accidentally put on the Spanish version of the video so I just saw a bunch of people who looked miserable while only understanding about a 1/3 of what was being said. Not super helpful.
The local worked pretty dang well, but it was still not a fun experience. They had to pull my jaw open wider than it wanted to go to get enough room to work. The joints were stiff for weeks.
I had an easy recovery, though. Ibuprofen and soft foods for a few days and I was set.
This is exactly my experience, except the whole time I was staring at the red dot I could feel my eyeball vibrating around in the socket. Just a completely strange experience. Utterly painless, though.
Oh I once got some bad chalazions removed from my eyelid and they did local for that. I gotta say, even though it didn't hurt, the feeling of pressure on my eyeball and scraping gunk out of the underside of my eyelid was not pleasant. They gave me a stress ball to squeeze cause I was squirming so much.
My biological grandfather had the reddest hair. And I am not necessarily a red head, but had a smattering of red hairs throughout, when I had hair. Pain pills like hydrocodone, and other drugs barely touch my pain. I also need 5+ shots of lidocaine when at the dentist.
Edit: Mainly with painkillers, they make me hot and sweaty and itchy all over. I don't care for them.
I apologize for the lateness of this post. I meant to do it Thursday night, but I got stuck late at work because a patient decided to get really drunk, smoke some methamphetamines, and then fall down a flight of stairs which more or less shattered their left tibula, fibula, and a majority of their ankle bones.
Anesthesia as it's known is really a spectrum. Depending on how anesthesia providers manipulate drugs and injections they can achieve a variety of results. Similar to how a Witcher can use multiple potions and oils to various effects.
The easiest way to think of anesthesia is on a continuum. On one side is "Completely awake and feeling everything" and on the other is "Completely unconconscious and feeling nothing". Then there's everything inbetween. Depending on what medications are being used, how they're administered, how often their administered, and what the visible results are. As you've seen in this thread alone, multiple people have discussed the same medical procedure, with wildly different experiences. Everything is controlled by your provider.
Basics of Anesthesia
A general anesthetic is defined as any anesthetic that requires airway manipulation. That is, an endotracheal tube or a laryngeal mask airiway. A "sedation anesthetic" could also be called a "MAC" or "Monitored Anesthesia Care" which doesn't require airway support. The key point to keep in mind is that a provider can achieve similar anesthetic depth (consciousness and sensation) with or without airway support. On top of that we have Regional Anesthesia (injections of medications that impair nerve induction in extremities / tissues) which prevents feeling (like a dentist) as well as Neuraxial Anesthesia (injections of similar medications into your spinal tissues to prevent sensation over large parts of your body.
Memory Loss
Every type of anesthetic is accompanied by some intravenous medications that universally fuck up your short term memory. This is to achieve two things - first, you stay calm and comfortable for the anesthetic and two - so you don't remember anything. It's expected you'll have a patient chatting with you and then afterwards doesn't remember the conversation. We don't tell anyone what you've said.
Red Hair? What the fuck?
Okay, one of the weirder things to come out in anesthetic research over the last thirty years is the prevalence of people with red hair and, let's say, a resistance to anesthetics. I say resistance to anesthetics because these patients require larger amounts of anesthetics to achieve the same response. Yes, it's weird, but we're learning a lot about genetic markers and responsiveness to medications. For example, you can now request gene assays to figure out what opioids (if any) a patient is more or less responsive to. It helps guide pain therapy.
Dentists do anesthesia, or something?
Dentists, along with periodontists and oral surgeons, have a weird gray area in terms of their training and credentials to both do a surgical procedure and administer anesthesia at the same time. This is a terrible fucking idea. Full disclosure, I am a CRNA, so in some sense telling a surgical staff to have a CRNA do their anesthesia separately is good for me and my billing. However, you can easily google the multiple (and I mean multiple) incidences of a dentist / oral surgeon / periodontist doing both anesthesia and surgery at the same time which leads to their patient dying. In this case, it's often children. I cannot stress this enough - your surgeon needs to be responsible for their surgery and your anesthesia provider needs to be responsible for everything else. I would not, ever, allow myself or any member of my family to have a medical procedure involving anesthesia without an anesthesia provider available separately from surgery. Ever.
I'll just get high as shit before my procedure!
Marijuana or CBD has relatively little impact on your surgical course. However, if you're under the influence of recreational drugs you may not be able to complete the paperwork to have your procedure and that's just a huge waste of marijuana.
Cocaine, Alcohol, and Methamphetamines can have major impacts on your anesthetic.
Just, like, be honest. We don't give a shit what you did and we don't report you. We would rather you survive your anesthetic.
I had <X> response to <Y> surgery and or anesthetic?!
An individual's response to an anesthetic is unique. I cannot stress this enough. If I took everyone participating in the PA Forums and gave them the same amount of anesthetic and opioids, I would likely have roughly ten or so different results in terms of memory, pain relief, movement, etc. Also, most anesthesia providers are shit with accurate terminology when it comes to their own job. Providers refer to sedation level anesthetics as 'generals' as often as they promise people they 'won't remember or feel anything'. That's all incorrect and I don't know if it's due to ignorance or an unwillingness to explain things clearly to their patients. Though, in their defense, most patients don't want to know a goddamn thing about their anesthetic to begin with. This isn't meant to deflect anyone's particular experience, but explain (maybe) why you can talk to a friend about their wisdom teeth extraction and have radically different experiences.
I'm scared.
The thing that stuck with me through my training and into practice is that most people, and I mean almost everyone, is more scared of their anesthetic than the actual surgery. Sure, your surgeon may be removing most of your abdominal cavity for metastatic cancer, but what you're really scared of is going to sleep. The hardest part of my job is convincing someone over maybe five minutes that they can trust me with everything.
I don't know what to tell you to feel better, but I'll offer you this. Anesthesia and surgery is as safe as it's ever been in human history. It's more dangerous to drive to the hospital for a surgical procedure than it is to actually have the procedure performed. Speak to your anesthesia team and I hope you love and trust them.
If nothing else, please feel free to PM me directly if you've got anything medically going on and maybe I can help out.
Genomics is screwy as fuck.
The good news is that the first time was a polyp removal and a sinuplasty to correct my deviated septum, so I'm hoping that just fucking with the soft tissue will give me more options going forward.
There is a slight history of red hair in my family. I have cousins with very red hair, and my father had a reddish tint to his when he was younger.
And for whatever reason, I am basically immune to the effects of Fentanyl, and I think it's that part of my genes that is responsible.
I have been given huge doses of fentanyl for procedures and it was the functional equivalent of pushing saline.
So while the actual act of being forced to sleep is terrifying, it's preferable to the alternative of staying awake for a procedure
I'm not a cardiologist so I am not going to offer to interpret it for you, but I will say that there's miles between a diagnostic and how people feel every day
That's fair
They probably will want some further tests I imagine though since I have not been feeling great for a while
I've got an appointment with primary care to talk about sending me to a cardiologist again since the pulmonologist ordered the test originally suspecting pulmonary hypertension.
I think it's an uncontrolled blood pressure thing mostly. Just from googling around which yeah, bad idea. Just wish the doctor would call and tell me more themselves.
They've not refilled my water pill for like a month and I imagine I need to be on more pressure stuff and alter my diet significantly.
Specifically it was an enlarged left ventricle, but the thing that has me really worried is the tricuspid valve readings they took. Apparently trivial to mild regurgitation there. And that was a nonexercise echo.
I think it's probably gonna look worse when my heart is really working. Givin my symptoms of extreme shortness of breath and fatigue with even minor exercise like walking around the store or to the mailboxes. And the occasional palpitations.
I'm also worried they'll have to take me off my stimulant meds.
that *pop*, it's a unique sensation, I didn't want to miss out on it
I didn't even need my wisdom teeth out, my head was plenty big for them, I just wanted that painkiller script lmao
On the other hand, I opted for local because both times I've been put under my reaction to coming out of it is to try and slap myself awake. Repeatedly. So I figured maybe doing that after mouth surgery would be not so good.
I was also awake for my wisdom teeth, but sedated and euphoric and I couldn't care any less what they were doing.
Went back to school the next day on Vicodin which was easily my favorite day of school ever.