Going Under the Knife, with Eyes and Ears Wide Open
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
My only regret was not asking for a mirror so that I could watch.
Many years ago TLC (before it degraded into trash) had an excellent show called "The Operation" where it would show EVERYTHING that happened during a medical procedure. (From a teaching hospital) It was incredible to watch and very educational.
That's an understatement. In fact, the comparison is actually unfair to trash.
>... an excellent show called "The Operation" where it would show EVERYTHING that happened during a medical procedure ...
I don't see why TLC couldn't air a similar show today. They could just focus on the human element, which is to say drama that's either completely scripted and/or manufactured via editing in post.
Gore would be completely off the table though. The average viewer just wouldn't be able to enjoy their super-sized soft drink watching that.
>It was incredible to watch and very educational.
Network executives at Discovery have most likely since instituted an organization-wide ban of the word "educational" on general principle.
I find podcasts today to be way better today than any "educational" tv shows ever were.
It's worth noting however that reality television predates YouTube. That's not to say there weren't still alternatives back then, but when comparing the two mediums I think it at least constitutes a small dark age of sorts.
Granted, I loathe executives that peddle the trash far more. There's something morally bankrupt about it, especially considering viewership can be in the millions. It's analogous to a software company with zero regard for craftsmanship; kicking garbage out the door because they know it'll sell.
I mean, I drive an hour and a half to a dentist that will knock me out during the procedure and I'm agoraphobic; I'm more afraid of the drive there than the actual procedure. No way I'm going to have anything even more serious done to me while I'm fully aware of what is happening.
But for other procedures I think being awake seems an interesting thing.
Only thing I found out is that paracetamol/acetaminophen doesn't do much for me, and that naproxen is a much more effective OTC painkiller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postoperative_cognitive_dysfun...
When I had my wisdom teeth extracted the oral surgeon loaded me up with a lot of local anesthetic. So while it was an unpleasant experience the pain was bearable.
Also, what's with all these people saying they had a dentist remove their wisdom teeth? I didn't; I had to go to an oral surgeon.
Local anesthetic is frigging amazing.
The recovery period, in comparison, was hell.
Swollen face, bleeding, subsisting on yogurt and milk for a week, unable to open mouth fully, opiates that made you drowsy/nauseous and didn't do much for the pain.
Going back for a checkup a week later, my surgeon tried to force my mouth open for inspection and I almost passed out from the pain.
So, I've had my wisdom teeth removed under local anesthetic and I've had an endoscopy under local anesthetic. The wisdom teeth is not so bad, it's nowhere as bad as an endoscopy.
FWIW, my son has had to go under general anesthesia almost a dozen times now, and the protocols that the anesthesiologists use at our hospital use now require a respiratory therapist to be in the room when anesthesia is removed, and it is done in stages, so that it is made absolutely sure he is breathing on his own before the breathing tube is removed and he is fully awakened. I'm sure part of it was driven by the fact that what you went through is both awful, and should have been prevented.
I'm saying only to let you know that I really empathize with the anxiety it can cause, and that if you ever are in need of surgical care again, perhaps you should discuss it with your surgeon or care team before-hand..hopefully they have protocols in place where you won't have to go through that again.
On another note...holy crap on the endoscopy! I can't imagine how much local anesthesia that must have taken, or how odd that must have felt!
For endoscopy, yes it's the stuff of nightmares, being with a tube coming out of your mouth and completely helpless is a very weird feeling. They only spray the throat with a local anesthetic to numb it, it's not really painful but it's the helplessness that is disturbing...
The reason why I finally had my wisdom teeth removed, was that I had one of them in my lower jaw, that was growing in almost sideways into the molar in front of it, causing a large abcess in the tooth. My dentist was surprised it had never caused me pain before this (I had spent a few years bouncing around, and hadn't gone to the dentist for years, so the fact it got so bad was likely entirely preventable...)
Anyways, because of the way it had grown pushing into the other tooth, the roots of the wisdom tooth were very curved (not quite fishhooks, but close!), so the procedure took a couple hours, while under only local anesthesia, where I could hear and fell him drilling, and chiseling, and digging in my jaw to remove the tooth in pieces. At one point in the middle of the procedure, he needed more images to see what was left, and left large metal pins in the holes from my roots as reference points of how far he had gone into my jaw so far. He gave me the warning "You really don't want to bite down while these x-rays are done", hah! Needless to say, when all was said and done, this was a pretty painful recovery, and still had bits of broken tooth root and bone pushing out of my gums for a few weeks after.
On the other hand, when I removed the wisdom tooth from the opposite side of my jaw, to keep things even, it had grown in straight, and was a very simple procedure where the tooth came out in one piece, and I had very little pain in recovering.
Everything had healed up beautifully now, and the dentist was able to save the abcessed molar, but man, I don't want to go through that again ever, and I can total understand why some people elect general anesthesia for such a procedure, since it really is a crap-shoot on how "simple" of a procedure it is. General may have its risks, but I'm sure people being scared to ever see their dentist again comes with risks as well!
It's not worse than medical bankruptcy, or thousands in bizarre and excess medical bills. I was awake for a very minor operation due to financial fear.
The healthcare system is bizarre. I literally could not get upfront fee quotes from doctors (or anyone else) for the procedure. It was maddening and made me wish for mandated price transparency: https://www.aei.org/publication/an-antidote-for-obamacare-ca...
You'll likely never know. You'll either wake up in your afterlife paradise, which doesn't seem so bad, or you'll find out the hard way that that there is no afterlife. In which case, the lights never come back on.
Who knows what they're doing to you while you're asleep?
Given that there's a room full of people, at least one of which you can count to have some ethics, I imagine they'll just cut you open and fix your problem.
What you really need to worry about is them taking off the correct limb.
This is optimistic thinking for some of us.
Huh? I don't think you really know that the surgery prescription was correct, in that case? Or can you really do anything about an unethical surgeon while awake, but your gut or something wide open?
On the other hand, when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, my friends suggested staying awake. If you're asleep the dentist is rougher and recovery is longer.
My dentist is my brother's friend. While he was taking one of the teeth out, I heard a large crack and he said "Awe fuck". Nothing serious, but my tooth cracked and it takes longer to finish. He'd prefer to pull out the tooth whole, root and all. Dentist knew I wouldn't care, but some people would be alarmed.
Alas, I was instead treated to the sight of my anesthesiology resident trying to conceal her panic while she paged her attending because I started feeling the surgeon cut into me - not pressure or tugging, but a whole shitload of pain making me see stars. She had given me a max dose of anesthetic to achieve what she thought was an acceptable level of analgesia but apparently it wasn't good enough. I got treated to the ketamine trip of my life, and then thanked the stars for versed.
Would do this again though given the chance - even with this kind of horrific one-off experience and that I don't have much memory of the surgery otherwise, I am pretty satisfied with the entire situation and how it played out. I don't know that I'm pushing back against paternalism or suspicion, I just want to sate my curiosity, you know?
Two years ago, I had a vitrectomy and I was awake for that. For that, I would rather have been asleep. Even if you can't feel them poking your eye, it's a bit unsettling.
Then when I had a major operation I asked for local anaesthetic, but they tented things up and refused to let me watch. :(
As one who has been under general anesthesia on and off since 18 months old, I'll confirm your suspicions with anecdata. When I was a kid, and the anesthesia back then would make you way foggier than the modern stuff, I be back bouncing around in about 24 hours. The anesthetics have gotten better over the years, but the recovery times have gotten longer. As of about five years ago, it takes about a week for my head to clear up.