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Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment.

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1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me because I was shaking too much for them to operate so I was unconscious for the whole thing.

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Purely anecdotal, but I had surgery a few years ago (relatively minor). But I could feel for months after a sort of 'unconscious PSTD' I don't know how else to describe it. Even after it was healed and the pain was gone, there was just a deep sense of 'something bad happened in there' feeling. I'd have dreams of someone digging around in my body. Anyway, it's all gone now, but a weird experience for sure.

PTSD can happen especially when something goes wrong with the anesthesia. Happened to a man named Sherman Sizemore many years ago: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/family-sues-after...

Dramatized retelling of the story at 21m04s: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ny_s07D-LT8&t=1264s

There's also the movie Awake (2007) incorporating this element of being aware but unable to communicate it.

I have vivid dreams and smells from a surgery where the visions and feeling of them poking me are incredibly intense. The question is whether it’s a memory or a manifestation of fear. I rarely dream (every few years), but this vivid dream comes through on occasion.

I had the same thoughts "but won't i feel it THEN?" when I was getting an upper endoscopy. The anesthesiologist said you're in such a trance, dreamlike state plus with the inability to form memories its like you're not your real "consciousness" but something different. Sort of like your brain is in "limp mode" and its not really _you._ This was both comforting and slightly terrifying in a different way.

Obviously it would be worse if you remembered it, but the trauma is still there even if you don't. Ask Bill Cosby's victims.

Oh apparently from downvotes, some people here would prefer to remember being raped by Bill Cosby. Well I hope I get what you wish for, lol.

People will downvote anything, SMH.

I do remember my lung biopsy where they went in down my neck. Maybe they give less drugs for that than for your upper endoscopy. My memories have a slightly horror movie vibe but I would not be put off having the procedure again.

You might have been dreaming. I had a memory of the doctor saying "clamp down" and I bit down on the endoscope and he said "not you." I asked him if that happened and he said nothing like that happened at all and it was just a false memory/pseudo dream. Or he was lying to me.

I remember there was a lawsuit when a guy left his phone recording when they wheeled him in for a conscious sedation procedure and the doctors and nurses were making fun of him audibly how fat he was. Seems like they're confident enough in people not remembering for them to do that - or being able to dismiss it.

I've had an upper endoscopy and a colonoscopy, both the same day, and both without anesthesia. If they didn't take a biopsy, it likely shouldn't have been too traumatic, consciously or subconsciously - maybe that's a bit comforting to know.

I had a dentist explain to me the same for getting my wisdom teeth out, as if it was a selling feature. At least for me, having my memory wiped is far more scary than just being put unconscious (or having some pain and a local anaesthetic).

A colleague warned me of the same when I was having my wisdom teeth removed. As a result, while I was being put under, I was very focused on the effects of the anaesthetic. I feel about as confident as one can be that I was completely unconscious during the entire operation. I remember the surgeon asking me to count to ten, and the specific feeling of my vision melting and swirling around, before suddenly waking up with the surgery over.

When I wake up from dreams, even with no memory of them, I sometimes have "a memory of a memory"; the tip-of-tge-tongue feeling that there's something interesting I'd experienced, but which I now can't remember what it was. But with the anaesthetic, there wasn't anything like that at all.

Similar for me, although I did not realise I had gone under. I counted to ten, and when I reached ten I opened my eyes and was in a different room and the surgery was over. Very weird!

I was one of the last if not the last patient the dentist who took out my wisdom teeth gave general anesthesia to (at my request, he was normally only doing local). Afterwards, the whole dental office staff (and my mother!) entertained themselves with having conversations with my incoherent self as I came out of the anesthesia. Apparently, I declared that I was ruined and would never be able to sing opera again (point in fact, I had never sang opera before).

Had a few eye surgeries (vitrectomies) under sedation, no pain but lots of flashing lights and lots of kaleidoscope patterns. It was pretty wild.

I was lucky that coming out of sedation was actually fantastic, like the only time I can remember feeling that blissfully relaxed was in maybe a few beach holidays I went on as a kid.

General anaesthetic scares me way more.

> so I was unconscious for the whole thing

Or so they claim - the patient would have no memory of that anyway.

The doctor who did the surgery was arguably the best doctor I’ve ever interacted with in my 57 years of life. He was horrible at starting appointments on time (much to the frustration of his staff) because he would spend as long as he felt necessary with each patient, regardless of what the scheduled appointment length was. He was essentially at war with insurance companies about coverage limitations (for the procedure, a stapedectomy, insurance companies wanted to have this be an outpatient procedure but he felt it was better for patients not to have to be in a car immediately after surgery so he informed patients beforehand that they would be checking in as an outpatient and he would declare complications after surgery that required an overnight hospital stay. Similarly, the antibiotic that the insurance companies had as their preferred formulary had a tendency to kill hair cells which made it a bad choice for in-ear application. All of his patients were advised that they had an allergy to this antibiotic and thus would have to be prescribed his preferred antibiotic). So, with this doctor, if he told me that the moon was made of green cheese, I would believe him without reservation.

> the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it

The short story "Transition Dreams" by Greg Egan touches on this concept

I can strongly recommend reading... anything else by Egan, just not that one.

It's not that it's bad. The problem's the opposite: He poses an existentially dreadful question which I can't definitively answer with 'no'.

That's what I love about this short in particular. Existential Sci-Fi!

I've thought a lot about this. If you experience immense pain for half a second, then immediately forget, it doesn't seem so bad. And anything bad that has happened to you that you completely forgot doesn't really affect you. Sometimes when I'm feeling ill, I'll think to myself, "If I remember having this thought, then this sickness is terrible, but if I forget the whole experience, it isn't. If I eventually forget this happened, then this current pain is not real." Then when I remember that, I know that moment in time contributed to my total self. But surely I have also thought this without remembering it.

Does a full day of torture, completely forgotten, really matter? How long before it does matter? We forget vast amounts of our lives constantly. And after death, forgetting everything, how much mattered then? It's a mindfuck.

It wouldn't matter even if you remembered it, if it wasn't for PTSD. That and the waste of a day.

The last question is strange, it implies that the goal of life is to fill up a trophy cabinet with golden memories and then, I guess, relish them for eternity, rather than to do things.

A life where I remember good memories is worth a lot more to me than a life where I do great deeds while sleepwalking and have no memory of it. What's the point of doing something if you don't even know you did it?

Oh yeah, I've had two cath lab visits. In both of them, I woke up in the middle of the process, conscious enough to recognize that the black-and-white image on the screen was me with a wire in my heart and little puffs of dye.

The first time it happened, I was fascinated watching the process. I thought I asked them a question about what I was seeing. I probably was just mumbling. The second time, I had a bright white ball of nuclear fire in my chest, and in my mind's eye, my ribs were slumping under the heat. I tried to tell them about the burning sensation, and I apologized for complaining (one should always be polite to the doctor running a wire through one's arteries and into one's heart).

In both cases, after I tried to speak, the room went black again.

As I relate the story, I can see how, for some people, it would be nightmare fuel. But for me it was this abstract "hey, that's cool."

I'm in the UK and was intentionally kept conscious during angioplasty and stent placement. Mind you, it was an emergency heart-attack kind of appointment! The experience was very cool and I recall that the wire-wriggling cardiologist wore a sectional lead suit (rapidly firing X-ray machine) and to my drug-addled brain, reminded me of the armored gorillas in the Planet of the Apes movies.

Colonoscopies used to be like this in the US more often (“you’ll be awake but won’t remember it”). I feel bad for the me that existed in that time window of discomfort. 20 years later they did general anesthesia (family history of colon cancer).

I had a low stakes cyst removal from my butt crack once. Sparing the other details, the anesthesiologist explained the different drugs, one to numb, one to prevent my memory from forming. I asked if they could leave out the memory drug and I could remain cognizant. She didn't mind and I had a nice chat with her about anesthetics while on my stomach having doctors cut out part of my butt.

...or that's what they told you afterward 0_0

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