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Author Topic: Remembering surgeries  (Read 11379 times)

PthariensFlame

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Remembering surgeries
« on: 11 Oct 2012, 16:51 »

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate board for this topic, but I've just had a surgery for which I was given Versed (Midazolam).  In fact, it's the third that I was given Versed for.  The odd thing is, I remember every one of them at the same level of detail as every other memory from the same general time period as the corresponding surgery.  The memories are not traumatic (I was disconnected from all external sensory input, after all, so there was no pain), but they're present nonetheless.

Is there anyone else who remembers surgeries that they weren't "supposed to" like that?  As far as I know, I'm unique in this respect amongst my real-life peers, but I'm wondering if a significantly wider cross-section of the world's population has anything interesting to say on the matter.
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TheEvilDog

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #1 on: 11 Oct 2012, 17:14 »

Nothing quite along those lines. When I had surgery on my foot, I must have been about 14, the anaesthetic they gave me wore off just after they completed the procedure because I vaguely remember being lifted off the table and wheeled off to recovery. Which shouldn't happen, because I remember when I told the surgeon he was surprised that had happened, I should have woken up before they got me out of recovery.

Although I do have a reminder of that operation. When they inserted the catheter into the back of my hand, however they did it, the nurse managed to bend the needle, so later when she was removing it, it tore the back of my hand. So I have a very minor scar where it happened now.
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nekowafer

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #2 on: 11 Oct 2012, 18:05 »

I've had two surgeries, in completely different places, for completely different issues, and I remember nothing about them. I've also been put under for an endoscopy/colonoscopy and remember nothing of that, though I'm assuming it would have been slightly less traumatic than a surgery. Are you willing to tell us what surgeries you had? Sometimes people are just put in a "twilight state" if they don't need to be completely out for the procedure.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #3 on: 11 Oct 2012, 18:31 »

Two experiences:
I had an emergency appendectomy in 1974. I'd headed over to the hospital ER after dinner with stomach pains. It was determined to be appendicitis late in the evening, and the surgery was performed early in the morning. Because of the meal, I was given a spinal block and what may have been scopolamine. I had vague memories of conversation and perhaps pressure at some point in the surgery, but it wasn't alarming.
Maybe 10 years ago, I was scheduled for a sigmoidoscopy, to look at the last few feet of large intestine. It was not to be painful, so I wasn't given a general anesthetic. The physician asked if I wanted him to go further. Since I hadn't experienced serious pain, I told him to keep going. There were two awesome cramps during the rest of the procedure, maybe 8/10, and I recall groaning. Then it was over. Since then, they've been standard colonoscopies, anesthesia and all.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #4 on: 11 Oct 2012, 19:59 »

Are you willing to tell us what surgeries you had? Sometimes people are just put in a "twilight state" if they don't need to be completely out for the procedure.

I had my adenoids taken out at age 8, a wolf tooth taken out at 12, and just had my wisdom teeth removed today.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #5 on: 11 Oct 2012, 21:38 »

I was conscious for all my wisdom teeth (and all other pulled teeth since  :-(), just a local.  The only other surgery I had was to get my jaw put back together in 1986 after a particularly horrendous bicycle accident. 

I was completely out for that one. 
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nekowafer

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #6 on: 12 Oct 2012, 04:44 »

I believe my ex had his wisdom teeth out, and was given a choice to be put under or not. He chose not to do it, because it cost a lot of money. So I'm assuming the doctor would use less intense anesthesia in general for that, because it is a dangerous type of drug, and you don't need to be completely knocked out for that procedure.

I've never had any serious dental work done, though, so I don't know for sure. I was given some Valium for my first set of fillings, though, because I was so scared.

My first surgery was a tonsillectomy at age 25. I was out for maybe an hour, tops. That surgery sucked so bad. I couldn't eat or talk properly for at least three weeks.

Second surgery was on my lady parts, last year. I was out for a couple hours and the whole thing went very well. Easy to wake up, very little pain, and I was basically back to normal in a couple days.
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Redball

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #7 on: 12 Oct 2012, 04:49 »

My wisdom teeth came out in pairs in the mid-50s at U of Michigan dental school, entirely with local anesthetic, lots of it, and a recollection of hammer on chisel. Total cost was about $10. And this memory: Instructor, behind the student doing the extractions, "No, no! Never do it that way!"
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pwhodges

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #8 on: 12 Oct 2012, 05:00 »

I have never remembered anything from a general anaesthetic (two appendix operations; hernia; orchidectomy for cancer).  Obviously, local anaesthetics (vasectomy; angioplasty and stent following heart attack) I do remember.

Possibly my first memory is of lying with my head on a rubber sheet in hospital having a cut on my head stitched after I had fallen out of a moving car when a door fell open on a corner; but whether I had been knocked out or anaesthetised, and whether the memory is from the time the stitches were being done or before or after I cannot say.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #9 on: 12 Oct 2012, 05:09 »

[...] hammer on chisel [...]
Then I have had some old school surgery done some 10 years ago because my dentist used an old screwdriver to push the tooth loose. The mechanics' approach to wisdom teeth extraction.

On topic, none of the two surgeries i have undergone has left a memory. When I'm out, I'm out.
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TheEvilDog

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #10 on: 12 Oct 2012, 07:30 »

My sister had to have her wisdom teeth out when she around 15, all four of them, on the same day. The dentist who referred her suggested she put under with a general anaesthetic and as a day patient. Due to a slight reaction to the anaesthetic and the swelling from the operation itself, her cheeks ballooned to about twice their normal size. Called her a hamster for about three weeks after that...

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #11 on: 12 Oct 2012, 09:58 »

My brother had all four (impacted) wisdom teeth out, along with four molars (for space) and the extra tooth that had grown in between a cuspid and a bicuspid (we used to call it his tricuspid).  9 teeth, one surgery.  He was 14.  His mouth looked like a football, and he lived off peach milkshakes for a month (we had a peach tree). 

Braces for the next three years. 

His teeth are gorgeous, but the bastard still won't smile. 

two appendix operations...


0_o  How many appendices did you have? 
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pwhodges

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #12 on: 12 Oct 2012, 10:10 »

One appendix, two operations.  I'm going out now, but will tell the story later.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #13 on: 12 Oct 2012, 11:47 »

I broke my arm when I was about 25. The doctor said I could wear a wrist-to-shoulder cast and probably never regain full use of my elbow, or he could screw a plate to the bones. I chose the latter.

I was lying there forever with my arm resting on my stomach, waiting for them to start the surgery. It was early in the morning and I was on painkillers and no food (I broke it the afternoon before) and so I was drifting in and out of sleep. They explained that they were going to do a "pain block" on just my arm. They did, and then went away again. I just lay there, arm on my stomach, while they set up the sheet and whatnot...it seemed like forever.

I heard them talking and testing their equipment on the other side of the sheet...ahhh, would they NEVER start...and then I looked down at my hands for some reason. My hand was not resting on my stomach, it was going through the sheet and they were operating on it! WEEEIIIRD!

A couple years later I had LASIK. They asked me how many valium I wanted. I said I didn't know, so they gave me two. It is done while awake, because you have to watch the little lights. I don't want to talk about it any more, but it didn't hurt.
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ackblom12

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #14 on: 12 Oct 2012, 14:40 »

LASIK was a fun thing to be awake for. I watched them shoot a friggin' LASER into my eye and reshape things and I could smell it.

Did I mention they shot a LASER into my eye and how awesome that is?
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Zingoleb

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #15 on: 12 Oct 2012, 18:40 »

LASIK is something I'm seriously interested in for the future (I'm legally blind, but otherwise I have healthy eyes, so I'm probably a pretty good candidate. I like seeing things past my nose!).

How did it feel? Could you see something coming towards your eye, was there any discomfort (physically or emotionally)?
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #16 on: 12 Oct 2012, 18:43 »

I haven't had Lasik, but I have had some laser surgery in the eyes related to glaucoma. No pain, no anxiety.
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Zingoleb

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #17 on: 12 Oct 2012, 19:21 »

But you don't understand - I'm practically made of anxiety. I'm a bundle of anxiety loosely held together by scarves and glitter.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #18 on: 12 Oct 2012, 19:32 »

Well, a more specific answer to your question, there was no discomfort, physically or emotionally.
Is your bundle penetrable by someone else's experience? It helped me to cope with my anxiety about an upcoming event to hear, not that I have nothing to worry about, or that I shouldn't worry, but that the person speaking to me has experienced the event that worries me, and come out the other side unscathed.
It helped me get through Army basic training half a century ago, for example. Millions of men, my father included, had undergone an almost identical experience. Or a stent a few years ago. It helped to know that the laser treatment would take a minute or two, and why I need not be concerned about moving my eyes during the treatment (I forget whether I'd be immobilized, whether it was easy to control or that maybe it didn't matter whether I did or not).
My experience with laser treatment isn't the same as Lasik. But millions of people have experienced Lasik, and to my limited knowledge, the unhappy experiences were not with the sensations but with the outcomes.
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ackblom12

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #19 on: 12 Oct 2012, 19:43 »

Yeah, no pain in the least. The only discomfort I recall was when they use a small vacuum on your eye to stop blood flow and such, and that was just pressure, a couple seconds of total blindness in the eye and then it goes back to normal. You can't "see" the LASER go into your eye.

As far as bad experiences with it, yeah, mostly it has to do with people being disappointed with their results. One of the things overly optimistic people don't understand is you may not get 20/20 vision out of it. It'll be better than what you had, but it's not guaranteed to be "normal" vision. Of course, I ended up with 20/15 after being borderline legally blind and with a fairly intense stigmatism, so hey. Also, your eyes are still going to deteriorate same as anyone else's with age, so you won't have that nice vision forever, but it's wonderful in the years of good sight, especially after wearing coke bottle glasses most of my life up to then.
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Carl-E

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #20 on: 12 Oct 2012, 19:56 »

I like my coke bottles.  Especially after having my cornea scratched by breaking glass back in high school when I tried contact lenses for a few years. 


Oh, and there was the staple gun incident, too.  That was the last day I ever wore contacts. 
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Omega Entity

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #21 on: 13 Oct 2012, 15:52 »

I had locals for all 3 of my tooth extractions (one wisdom, one molar, and one... was it a premolar? Not one that you can easily see looking head-on, but not in the back, either.). The molar was probably the most traumatic, as that sucker just didn't want to come out.
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nekowafer

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #22 on: 13 Oct 2012, 18:46 »

Oh, and there was the staple gun incident, too.  That was the last day I ever wore contacts.

Dare I ask?
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #23 on: 13 Oct 2012, 18:56 »

Had my wisdom teeth removed, all 4, back in my freshman year of college. I was barely awake, but I chose to stay awake during it. I remember feeling pressure, and hearing it, but I was pretty out of it, so instead of being scary it was just interesting. I didn't bother with the painkillers after the initial drugs wore off, and luckily I recovered within a couple days.

The previous summer I'd had my gallbladder removed. They told me the next thing I'd know, I'd wake up in recovery. Next thing I knew, I woke up an hour and a half or so later.

So yeah, those are my only two surgeries...so far (knocks on wood).
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #24 on: 14 Oct 2012, 01:20 »

One appendix, two operations.  I'm going out now, but will tell the story later.

I was a cathedral choirboy, so went to the boarding choir school in Oxford.   During the last night of the holidays, I woke screaming with pain, and my parents called the doctor out.  He examined my belly, and eventually diagnosed that I had constipation and should return to school the next day as expected. 

The pain subsided to a dull ache, but did not vanish; after a few days walking became somewhat uncomfortable, at least when processing into the cathedral.  A swelling appeared on my tummy.  I showed it to matron at bath time, and she told me to stop fussing.  At the next weekend, when we were required to sit down and write home, my postcard (written in pencil - I still have it somewhere) said that I was still uncomfortable.

When my parents got the card, they rang the school and insisted that I was taken to see the doctor.  So I was fetched out of class and walked the half mile to the doctor's surgery.  He examined me and pronounced that I had appendicitis, and arranged for me to go to hospital.  I walked back to school to change and wait for the ambulance, which was not an emergency one, but the one doing the rounds picking up old ladies for their routine appointments.  At the hospital outpatients area I was put on a trolley and after a while they wheeled me through to inpatient admissions.  There I had to be transferred to a different trolley, so I swung my legs over the edge to get off, and they shouted at me: "DON'T MOVE!", and then lifted me across.  Basically, I had an appendix abscess so large they were worried it might burst if I moved - and I been walking around town half the morning.

They operated that evening, and decided that complete removal would  be too much shock to the system; instead, they opened up the abscess and put in a "drain" (actually a length of corrugated plastic to keep the wound open).  I had injections of penicillin and streptomycin in my bottom for week (this was 1958, so antibiotics were still rather a new thing); fortunately the strep didn't damage my hearing, which I now know to be its major side-effect.  Anyway, the drain was in place for several weeks, being cut shorter as the size of the abscess reduced, but I was kept in hospital until no more pus was appearing, and the wound had finally been allowed to close up.  I was in hospital for six weeks (maybe eight - my memory has got confused).  Forty-six years later, I got a new job (my present one) which was in the same hospital (which is now closed).

A year later I went back to a small local hospital to have my appendix removed; I was there for six days.  (When my son's appendix was removed, he was in for two days - such has been the change in the way recovery is handled.)  My recovery from this operation was slower than expected, and my family doctor redeemed himself by deciding to send me to a specialist who confirmed that I now had TB.  It had been caught early, so I was not infectious, and it was cured by six months treatment using antibiotics; however, the school doctor decided that he could not risk the other boys, and I was thrown out of school.  Shortly after I got to my new school, nine months later (off-games on arrival!) I got a hernia, which was operated on later that term.  I had chest x-rays to check the TB didn't recur for the next five years.
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BeoPuppy

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #25 on: 14 Oct 2012, 04:20 »

... other than that it was great?
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #26 on: 14 Oct 2012, 04:32 »

Goodness, that is quite the train of illnesses. Do you know whether some of the later issues would have been avoided or less serious if the doctor had diagnosed you correctly in the first place?

My brother had acute appendicitis and was rushed to hospital before it burst. I do occasionally wonder whether my stomach pains might be grumbling appendicitis but I suspect not. I keep meaning to go back to the doctors and find out for sure.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #27 on: 14 Oct 2012, 14:02 »

Oh, and there was the staple gun incident, too.  That was the last day I ever wore contacts.

Dare I ask?

My closest brother (I have three, all younger) was sitting at the kitchen table one day when I came down for breakfast, shooting staples into the cereal box.  My dad was always working on something in the house, and there were often tools lying around.  I hadn't put my contacts in yet, I just wanted some breakfast.  As I walked towards the table with my bowl and spoon, a staple ricocheted off the cereal box, and scratched the lens of my glasses, right in the line of sight. 

Had I not been wearing my glasses, it would have gone into my eye instead. 

I ate, went upstairs, put in my contacts, and dropped my glasses off at the opticians to have the scratch buffed out.  During the day, I thought about the shard of glass from a stained glass project that flew into my eye when I was wearing contacts, gouging my cornea two months earlier.  It took two weeks for it to heal and my sight to return to normal. 

I picked up my glasses after school, got home, took out my contact lenses and never put them in again.  I like my eyes. 


Edit: why don't spellcheckers look at meaning and intent?  "onto my eye" made no sense.  Changed it to "into". 
« Last Edit: 14 Oct 2012, 14:31 by Carl-E »
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #28 on: 14 Oct 2012, 14:10 »

I like my eyes too - and am now tempted to get some safety goggles to wear ALL THE TIME.
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Zingoleb

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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #29 on: 14 Oct 2012, 14:49 »

My glasses are actually safety-goggle level glass. These have taken a lot of damage over the years.

Yet another reason to keep wearing glasses, even after I get corrective surgery.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #30 on: 14 Oct 2012, 15:48 »

I like my eyes too - and am now tempted to get some safety goggles to wear ALL THE TIME.
Hannelore would approve. The rest of us, not so much.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #31 on: 14 Oct 2012, 15:49 »

I have decent vision (not perfect) and now I kind of want glasses to keep staples from my eye.
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Re: Remembering surgeries
« Reply #32 on: 14 Oct 2012, 16:23 »

I think I look good wearing glasses but my vision is basically perfect so I don't need them at all, and would prefer that nothing happen to make me need them.
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