Could a Dose of Ether Contain the Secret to Consciousness?
discovermagazine.com
discovermagazine.com
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/16-could-dose-ether-con...
A friend of a friend is an extremely senior anaesthetist. Extremely senior. When asked what she does for a living she looks very serious and says "I poison people until they're nearly dead, and keep them that way for hours. Then I bring them back to life."
Cool trick.
As someone who's been under full anesthesia twice, I can definitely relate to the knotted-stomach feeling... It always seems fine from a distance, but when you're actually sitting in the waiting room or lying on your bed in the corridor, waiting to be put to sleep, it's truly a terrifying experience. "Someone will put me to sleep now and there's a small chance I may not wake up" is what usually goes through my head. It gives me the shivers to think about it even now.
And then you wake up and feel immensely drowsy and this pain thing keeps nagging at the edge of your consciousness (but that's ok, you can get an extra morphine shot and make it go away).
On the whole, I think the conclusion has to be: don't get yourself in situations which will require you to be operated (both of my surgeries were caused by things I had done).
What I do remember is how quickly everything went by .. apparently my operation was 2 hours long, but I remember it going "bink" like that, and I was being wheeled through the hospital in what seemed like a lightning flash of time. Also, the nurses were hot.
But yeah, I'm with you on the don't-get-yourself-in-surgery-situations .. also, gunshot wounds: not funny.
That is not to say you have to consciously injure yourself, of course.