Awakening (during anesthesia)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
It's also entirely possible to have a cardiac arrhythmia while fully conscious - if you've had an orgasm, there's a good chance you've had a brief, though mild, period of arrhythmia in the form of skipping a heartbeat periodically until orgasm subsides. In the case of more severe cardiac fibrillation, it will take a period of time before you actually lose consciousness depending on the severity.
In the case above, where more anaesthesia was being admitted, it would seem posible that fibrillation would have been caused by lowered blood oxygen to the heart in the period between the extra anaesthesia being used and it's taking enough of an effect for intubation to be done. In that case, a quick shock might be needed to restore normal heart rhythms subsequently.
Source - The other half is an obstetric surgeon and her best friend is an anaesthesiologist. Any errors are my own; I'm not a doctor and don't claim to completely understand even if I do come from a medical family.
Anesthesia has never had much effect on me - dental procedures are uncomfortable, but bearable enough, for me as I'm quite aware of what's going on with locals, and having had something more serious for an impacted wisdom tooth removal once, I now prefer the unpleasantness of a little pain rather than the aftereffects of the more serious stuff, and I dislike "being under". After talking about it with the docs afterwards, I believe I simply have a serious fear of dying, and my brain intensely dislikes not knowing what's going on, and fights it. A matter of trust I suppose.
If this happened, then yikes, I hope I never need general anesthesia....
"I think I'll go for a walk."
...
Did you feel happyyy?
The article paints a very clear cause-and-effect relationship between the surgery, trauma, and her life's troubles. I doubt that in reality the effects were so clear cut. We're not seeing the whole story, just the part that makes a coherent narrative. Whatever happened—this, or something else—certainly has produced an emotional trauma which is something Ms. Campbell needs to address in her own life. But I doubt very seriously that the right response is to get everyone worked up about something that may or may not be to blame.
A quote from the article:
> She explored the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder with her therapists, but could not identify a triggering event. One clue that did eventually surface, though, hinted at a possibly traumatic experience. During a session with a hypnotherapist, Campbell remembered an image, accompanied by an acute feeling of fear, of a man looming over her.
It is very similar to the histories of false memories recovered after hypnosis that are discussed in the book "Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan in chapter 9.
It discuss tree main branches
* Alien abduction
* Satanic cults kidnapping
* Past lives
* Repressed child abuse
The common pattern is that the subject has unclear symptoms, and after many hypnosis sessions a traumatic "memory" begins to appear and later after a few repetitions it became very clear and detailed. But the details are very difficult to corroborate or refute. (Some people even went to jail because of the supposed abuses.) The "memories" in this article look very similar.
(There is real cases of child abuse, but it is not repressed for decades.)
Regarding the anecdote about the dental surgery study, I am personally not surprised by the results. When I was having my wisdom teeth removed, one of my anesthesia options was to be put to sleep for the procedure. The doctor said that the sleep would be like taking a nap, and the purpose of being asleep wasn't to prevent any pain (I would immediately awaken if other anesthesia was not used and they started pulling out the teeth), but rather so that I wouldn't be anxious about the procedure. With this in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable that patients in the study would remember strange occurrences while they were asleep. They probably woke up because of the commotion and went back to sleep after things were back to normal, not remembering much consciously. I would bet that if a study were done where volunteers were asked to sleep on an airline flight until they reached the gate at their destination and were interviewed under hypnosis a bit later, they would probably remember things like the announcement to put away electronic devices. They might not remember that normally, however, kind of like how you forget dreams after you wake up. (Well, I do anyway.)
Ultimately, the subject matter that the article covers is extremely important and interesting, but I thought the negative overtones were not proportional the actual risk of waking up during surgery and experiencing a lifetime of emotional pain as a result. People already irrationally weigh risks when considering surgery, and I don't think this piece will help them make a more rational decision.
As it is, doctors and surgeons would generally not put you under general anaesthetics if they have a choice. As soon as you're using general anaesthetics, you've significantly increased the risk to the patient and so it needs to be procedure that justifies the added risks.
Frankly, there's plenty in medicine that we don't fully understand. However, for the risks that there might be some bad side effects the upside often more than make up for it. In this case, for the claimed 0.1% risk of having some level of awareness (a number which is refuted and more recent and wider ranging studies have put closer to 0.005% (or one in twenty thousand)), of which only a tiny percentage claim to have been aware enough to feel pain, the upside is that you can be treated for things which, pre-anaesthesia, you'd die of.
On the top of my head. Although I suppose anyone with medical degree will laugh my suggestions away and with good reasons, but there should be some good ideas over there.
I wonder what effect a lifetime's meditation practice might have here. As in, if one's trained one's brain through many thousands of hours of focus and deep self-inquiry – to find and become aware of the source of their awareness – whether they might innately be more prepared to deal with become conscious mid-surgery (even if their "personality" isn't conscious, just their I...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome
Luckily it doesn't involve "remembering" a child being abused by a parent.
There are times when I 'wake up' during the night, but I feel paralysed and unable to move any part of my body. It only lasts a few seconds before I either fall back into a dream where I thought I woke up or I managed to move something and actually wake up.
Often, during the paralysis, I experience weird things that are part of the dream-like state I'm in; The feeling of something like a cat thrashing and hissing on top of me, or a strange spider-like leggy thing being on top of me, or the sensation of being watched, surrounded or having something near me.
This feeling disappears as soon as I can move.
That's probably your primal brain freaking out for being paralyzed in the dark.
The main reason why it isn't used more often is 2-fold: there is a risk from spinal or epidural anaesthesia of infection or paralysis since it is an invasive procedure; and secondly an awake patient is a risk unto theirselves: they could move, they may talk (?annoying to the doctors)
If you were undergoing a procedure you could very likely elect to have a regional block if you preferred. Just make your preferences known to the doctors
I hope they nail this as it will probably lead to the closest thing we can get to a hands free keyboard.
On a separate note it was weird watching youtube video of someone else's appendectomy knowing that all of that was done to me too. You know it's like watching someone eating lemon. :)