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.
I have, a few years ago, and it was for eye surgery. It went perfectly fine. I’ve second I was counting backwards from 10 and the next I was waking up in recovery.
However my dad, many years ago, went under for summer kind of arm surgery and woke up on the operating table.
As I understand it, the difference is that in the past, the administration of anesthesia by an anesthesiologist was tricky and imprecise. It took a look at your vitals, your weight, gender, whatever and use that to determine how much to give you. Sometimes your body however would be the kind that that wasn’t enough for.
Now they monitor your vitals more precisely, and can tell by what your brain is doing whether or not you’re properly under or not, and can adjust the anesthesia far more precisely.
It gives me the shudders to think of waking up on the table, but I suppose it beats the years prior to that, again, where it was “Jeremy, get the 40 proof… You, bite down on this and don’t scream too loud, you’ll pop a vessel.”