I saw the movie Awake yesterday, and I decided I wanted to blog about my experiences with anesthesia...random. I know.
If you don't know what the movie is about, I'll give you a little rundown.
Hayden Christiansen goes under anesthesia for a heart transplant, only, the thing is, he hasn't been given enough anesthesia and he is aware of everything happening, and he feels everything.
But he can't move or get anyone's attention because his body is paralyzed from the anesthesia.
Helpless? Yes.
But I myself have worried about something like this happening to me.
I've gone under general anesthesia 4 times.
The only time I don't recall the anesthesia being a nightmare was when I had my wisdom teeth removed.
Every other time it was a total nightmare.
I hate anesthesia.
The first time I had surgery, I had no idea what to expect.
I was having surgery to remove an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit.
I was probably around age 12.
I was freaked out about it, but what could I do?
I just had to wait and see what happened.
They put me in a little room called "the fish room" (named so because there were fish painted on the walls).
They started an IV (which, quite frankly, hurts like a bitch).
Then they inject this liquid into the IV, and then everything goes downhill.
I can't even do justice to the feeling that this IV anesthesia brings on.
Your head feels like your brain is going to explode. You feel like you could vomit at any moment, but yet you feel like you couldn't physically do that even if you wanted to.
There are people around me in the room, and I can hear them talking about things, and all I can remember asking them is "Is everything supposed to be getting blurry?" and they said "Yes."
Almost as bad as going under the anesthesia is coming out from it. I came to in "the fish room" and I don't even remember opening my eyes. I was so fucking out of it. They kept asking me questions.
"Are you in pain?"
"I don't know."
"Where does it hurt?"
"I don't know."
"How bad does it hurt?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want to see your parents?"
"I don't know."
I believe that qualifies as the perfect definition for "Out of it."
They have an oxygen mask over my face, and the smell of the oxygen is sickening. It's making me even more nauseous. I keep trying to take it off, and they keep putting it back on.
The anesthesia resulted in my night from hell.
I came to at around 4 in the afternoon, and I didn't stop throwing up until about 8 the next morning. I threw up every hour on the hour. Just when I thought I wouldn't get sick any more, those damn nurses would come in to take my blood pressure, and BAM, I'm throwing up again.
It wouldn't have been so bad, except for the fact that there was nothing for me to throw up. I wasn't allowed to eat anything 24 hours before the surgery. There was no food in my stomach, nothing. All there was for me to throw up was bile.
It was probably the worst night ever.
Even worse was the fact that every time I threw up, the muscles around my 4 inch incision moved, and it hurt like a bitch.
The second time I had surgery was a few years later.
I was having surgery to have a triangle-shaped area of muscle cut out of my Illiotibial band in my hip.
I had surgery at Wolfson's Children's Hospital, and it made me feel a little better knowing these people were accustomed to working with kids.
This time the IV didn't hurt as much because they give you this awesome white goo and put it on the back of each hand, and cover it with tape. They let the goo sit for a few hours, and then when they go to start your IV, that area of your hand is numb.
Not so bad as before.
They put you in a hospital bed in a room with about 5 other beds and people. This is where they come and give you the intravenous anesthetic, a little thing they like to call "Happy Juice."
Happy Juice my ass.
This must be what it's like to take Ecstasy. Or Acid. Or something.
I looked it up, and apparently sometimes they use Barbiturates in the IV anesthetic. UGH.
Seriously, you are being drugged up, in every sense of the phrase.
If you were to ask me what the WORST feeling in the whole world was, I would say the feeling that you get when you're given an IV anesthetic.
I lie there for a minute or two, and as expected, everything goes blurry.
They come and get me and start wheeling my bed into the operating room.
Let me add that being on a moving bed while drugged up and seeing blurry....not a good feeling at all.
They wheel me in the OR, and I hear "Someday" by Sugar Ray playing on a radio.
Then I do the most embarassing, drugged-up thing ever.
I start to 'Raise The Roof'.
I kid you not.
I remember nothing after this, but I remember doing that, clear as day.
Of course, my doctor mentioned to my parents that I was in there, raising the roof, so everyone got a kick out of it.
I really don't like being under the influence of medicine/drugs that make me unable to control my actions.
It makes me feel helpless, and I HATE IT.
The next time I went under anesthesia, I was supposed to be having a muscle on the inside of my thigh cut.
This time, my doctor gave me an option.
Do I want to be given the IV anesthetic before I go to the OR, or do I want to wait and get it injected after I'm in the OR?
Based on my past experiences, I decided to wait and have it injected in the OR.
So this time I was 100% aware of everything that was going on when I got wheeled into the OR.
It's really creepy being wheeled into that room.
I saw the giant lights that they place above you so that they can see.
I saw the giant cabinets of medical supplies.
I saw trays of instruments.
Perhaps the reason they normally give you the IV anesthetic before you go into the OR is so that you don't see these things.
It's nerve wracking.
It was just my luck that the team of doctors operating on me were the same group that operated on me before, and they all remembered my little "raise the roof' incident.
We all got a good laugh about it.
They explain to me what's going to happen.
They're going to put the mask over my face and start giving me the "inhaled anesthetic".
Then they are going to give me the IV anesthetic, and they want me to count down from 100.
They tell me they're going to stick a tube down my throat so I can breathe during the surgery.
So they put the mask over my face.
I feel fine. It's not the best smelling stuff in the world (but then again, I don't think anything that comes out of those masks smell good). But the point is, I don't feel like I'm being given any anesthesia.
The anesthesiologist begins to mess with my arm. They're telling me I have really good veins.
I tell them "Thanks."
They inject the IV anesthetic, and still, I feel fine.
After a little while, I get nervous.
I ask the anesthesiologist, "Should I still be awake?"
He says "Yes."
A few more minutes pass.
I begin to wonder if it's actually going to work.
I start to freak out. What if I'm lying here, and I don't go under, and I can feel everything?
They tell me to count down, and I remember counting quite a while. In the movies, you see this happen, and people are out before they hit "97". I remember hitting "90" and really starting to freak out.
I could still hear the people talking around me. They were talking about flamingos.
There is no scarier feeling than laying on an operating table, with a mask on your face, doctors all around you, and all you're able to think is "Should I be able to hear this? Should I be out yet? What if they start sticking the tube down my throat and I'm still awake? What do I do if they start cutting and I'm still awake?"
This type of stress can not be good for my blood pressure.
I eventually went under.
The surgery didn't go as planned. The doctor made an observation when I went under the anesthesia that made him decide that cutting the muscle in my thigh might not be the answer to my problem.
When I went under the anesthesia, all my muscles went limp. This was because the anesthesia was affecting my brain. This led him to believe my problem was neurological.
He decided he couldn't go through with the surgery, having observed that.
I swear to you, Dr. Eric Loveless at Nemours is the best doctor in the whole world.
You should go google him. "Dr. Eric Loveless + Nemours"
I trust this guy with my life.
Honestly.
One would assume that having had nothing done to me (other than a needle injection on the inside of my thigh), I should have been able to come out of the anesthesia fairly quickly.
Not the case.
It was like the anesthesia would not wear off.
I was like a zombie in the recovery room for hours.
I remember it took every bit of my strength to try and open my eyes, and I'd open them just for a second, and it would just be too much, and I'd just close them again and fall back asleep.
I couldn't even bring myself to try and move.
Everything was just physically exhausting.
My surgery started in the middle of the day. It didn't last very long at all. But I didn't come around until about 8 that night.
Not a good feeling.
I remember mentioning to my mom that the doctors were talking about flamingos in the OR.
She told me I was crazy.
I asked my doctor the next time I saw him, if they had been talking about flamingos in the OR.
He was like "You heard that? Yeah, I was talking about having plastic flamingos out in my yard"
The fact that he was surprised that I heard and remembered something like that kind of worried me. Should I have been out before they said that?
I really don't like anesthesia. It makes me anxious in a way you'll probably never understand.
It makes me feel drugged-up, and that feeling is something I really hate. It makes me feel helpless. Like I'm the straight edge kid being force fed drugs that make me loose control of my actions. It's horrible.
I don't mean to freak anyone out, but honestly, for me, it's horrible.
Watching Awake yesterday, there were things in the movie that were all too familiar to me.
Being wheeled down a hall in a hospital bed, seeing the lights on the ceiling go by.
Being in the OR surrounded by doctors.
There is a part where Hayden is just being put under the anesthesia, and he's thinking of things, and he's like "Should I be able to hear them talking, should I be able to feel this?" and he, for lack of a better term, freaks-the-fuck-out.
I was sitting there in the theater, with my skin crawling, because I knew exactly what it felt like to be in that same position.
XMeganX
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