Not so General

I am scared of general anesthesia. I am always afraid that I won't come out of it. I don't know why. Sometimes our fears are illogical, right? Well this here's one of those kinds. I am scared that I won't come out of the anesthesia and even though the surgery itsself may turn out to be a smooth and easy success, it will be the stupid anesthesia that gets me.

Okay, so tell me that the possibility of that happening is very slim. I'll buy that.

But then I am still afraid of general anesthesia because I absolutely detest the after-effects for the day or two or three following the surgery. Constipation I can deal with...I'm a pro at managing that by now. But that deep, dark, irrational depression that comes from the leftovers of the anesthesia drugs in my system is unbearable. When I know I should be happy that he's actually going in there to finally REMOVE some tumors, I may just end up depressed and feeling helpless afterwards anyway. Then again, maybe anticipating so much as I am now will help me combat and avoid that depression. I've informed Pete about it and asked him to make sure I'm pushing fluids like crazy just to flush the anesthesia out of my body in the days following the procedure.

What I don't get is for the three chemoembolizations I've had done, I was "consciously sedated." They kept pushing more sleepy-time drugs into me per my requests. I figured as long as I was coherent enough to ask for more then I definitely needed more. The first time I didn't know I could ask for more so I just lay there silent and still, kinda loopy in the head, but then I could actually feel Dr. G poking around in my liver and it was a strange and uncomfortable feeling: sort of an achy-pain. So now Dr. G says that tomorrow's RFA procedure is "much less invasive than the chemoembo." He says he's just going to make two or three little slits in my abdomen (my entire torso is already full of scars leftover from many previous "little slits" - for biopsies, port placements and removals and replacements, etc. so what's two or three more!?) then go in with what looks like a needle but actually has a sort of claw device on its tip, and I guess this claw or tip or maybe some other tool will provide the radio frequency burning component of the surgery which I think will loosen the little nasties so that he can use the claw to remove them from my liver. After he's removed the lil' nasties, he can go back in and "burn" away any leftover cancerous tissue.

Yuck.

Well, when it's explained to me that way, then I know I really don't want to be anywhere near awake to feel/hear/sense any of that. Another plus for anesthesia is that wonderful feeling you get: they tell you to count to ten or whatever, you get to 5 and you're OUT like a light. A second or two later (or so it feels!) you're awake and it's all over, leaving you with these thoughts: Wait what just happened? Where did I go? Did they do it? Is it over? Where am I? This isn't the operating room I was just in a second ago! How'd I get to post-op so quickly? OMG did I snore!? Did I drool!? How's my hair??!?! LOL

I remember when that first happened to me when I got my wisdom teeth removed several years ago. I was in my mid-teens and it was in early high school I believe. My dad took me. We went into this kind of large exam room with one of those dentist's chairs in the middle of the room. I sat in it and they hooked up the arm band to monitor my blood pressure and then stuck that clippy thing on my forefinger to keep an eye on my pulse, too. Now, my dad's technique in helping me feel better or at the very least, to distract me, is to tease me and make me laugh! I remember we were messing with the pulse machine while the dentist and nurses were out of the room. He'd tickle me, I'd laugh hysterically and then we'd get all excited as the pulse meter would go up and start beeping rapidly! Immeditately after that, Dad would say, "Okay now think of something sad," and he'd make sympathetic sounds like, "awww" and "it's okay little girl..." while I tried my best to focus on something really very sad.....all this just so we could watch the pulse machine drop as low as we could make it. Then we'd repeat all of this until the dentist returned and we'd explain to him what an awesome game we had just invented! Needless to say, he was not impressed.

So the doc or anesthesiologist hooks me up to the O2 mask and asks me to count backwards from 10. After each number I'd say, I'd hear my Dad from somewhere in the room blurting out other random numbers just to mess me up and get me off track from my counting! I'd say "ten" then giggle, "nine" HAHAHAH, "eight..." and I was out.

What I believed was really only 2 seconds later, I was awake in the same room, and felt compelled to ask my dad, "What happened? Couldn't they get in there to do it? Why am I awake so soon?" That's when he told me it had been an hour and a half since I fell asleep and all four (well, mostly) of my wisdom teeth were out. Weeeeeeeiiiiirrrrd!

I suppose I'll just think of that fun time with my Dad as I approach the knock out drugs. And I do feel comforted by knowing that the anesthesiologist's job is to just stand there next to me and monitor all of my "numbers" that indicate how well i'm breathing, hear beating, etc. he controls the drugs...a little more a little less. That's good to know that that's his only job. I will try very hard to forget about my second chemoembo when I was consciously sedated and right in the middle of everything, the anesthesiology nurse who was monitoring me up and left because it was time for his lunch break! Of course, someone came to relieve him but still...I knew all of this was going on and I didn't feel comfortable with it one bit! After that I've tried to avoid scheduling such procedures or surgeries around the noon to one o'clock hours! Jeeeesh!

Good news! I may not have to stay overnight in the hospital afterall! Dr. G originally thought that we couldn't get in for the procedure until late afternoon but as it turns out the procedure is starting at 10:30am...an hour or two long (I think?)...say a couple hours in post-op and I should be done around 3 or 4 at the latest. We'll just have to wait and see. Pete and I are both packing overnight bags and we've asked his parents to come "water the dogs" in our long absence tomorrow just in case.

Okay I'm not feeling quite as afraid anymore. I just therapized myself! Now what the heck am I gonna talk about with my therapist this afternoon?! LOl

P.S. As you may have noticed, I've been getting a lot of spam comments on recent posts. Therefore, I chose to turn on the "word verification" function on my blog. So, from now on, when you leave a comment, you'll enter your name and info as usual but there will be one more step where you will need to look at an image of a word and type the word you see in a box. If you have trouble distinguishing some of the letters in the word, you should be able to click on a little image of a speaker that will sound out the word for you. This will prevent much (if not ALL!) of the spam comments on this blog! If you have trouble with this new step, email me and I'll help ya out!