Anesthesia

I have been thinking about anesthesia again. Maybe it was the radio program that I was listening to while I was in my truck running errands. They were discussing plastic surgery for teenagers, and the risks involved. Especially the risks of anesthesia. So once again I start thinking of our dear Lennon.

I have lots of vets. I have my horse vet, my dog and cat vet and I have my rat/bunny vet. I happened to have to see my cat vet just after Lennon's death and before I had a chance even, to speak with Lennon's vet about what had happened to our lovely sweet boy.

I asked the vet tech to leave when Buddy (Dr. Urbanzcyk) came into the room to talk about my cat. The cat was going to be fine, but I was welling up with tears over Lennon. Buddy had been there before when a pet was dying...my beloved cat Foxboy. He had seen me like this before. In any case, I cried my eyes out to him about what had happened to Lennon.

We talked for a nice long while. One sentence he said to me rings like a bell in my ear very often since. He said:

"You know when we use general anesthesia, on pets or on humans, we bring that live person or animal down to the brink of death, so that they do not feel pain. But bringing them down to that place has serious and significant risks."

Risks, I think sometimes, we as a society do not completely acknowledge. Surgery is RISKY, people!

Having it to do over again, I probably still would have still chosen surgery for Lennon. He had a fast growing tumor and having it out sooner than later was the best bet for his health. Unfortunately, the anesthesia was too much for him.

I have a very good friend who is facing brain surgery soon to remove a tumor. I have been thinking about her constantly since hearing the news. Happily, the odds are completely in her favor and most healthy people have no problems with anesthesia, and she needs her tumor OUT. But what about those who go under the knife for cosmetic reasons, for god's sake? Why, why, why risk it???

I am no stranger to anesthesia myself, having undergone several procedures in my life and a few just in the past handful of years.  The latest was my two bouts with kidney stones in 2006. I had two lithotripsies, a procedure where kidney stones are blasted with ultrasound. You need to go under because your kidney gets beat up good while the stones are being crushed. I felt it afterward, boy-howdy, did I.

So, I have been recalling what it felt like to "go under". For those of you who have not experienced it, it is nothing at all, like going to sleep.

I have a very active dream life. As a matter of fact, if I do not remember my dreams from the previous night, upon waking, I feel very strange. Sort of like passing out drunk or something, (not that THAT is something I know very much about, but the analogy holds true in any case). If I cannot remember my dreams I feel like something big is missing from not only my memory, but my life.

Usually something during the day prompts me to remember the dreams if I do not automatically do so upon awakening. Its a good feeling to know where I was all those hours!

But having anesthesia is nothing like sleeping, at all. Going under is leaving existence and entering a big, black, deep, and silent hole where there is no marking of time and no sense of self or place or anything, any THING at all. It is really the oddest feeling to go under...and disappear, only to re-appear with no feeling of time passing whatsoever. I feel the night go by and my dreams being played out in some semblance of time passage, but nothing like that happens in surgery.

I met a man not long ago who was in his late 70's, raising his granddaughter, because his own daughter came out of HER kidney stone procedure too brain damaged to ever be normal again. Sad.

It occurred to me today while driving (I have some of my best thoughts behind the wheel) that many people who do not believe in an existence after death, probably believe that the experience of death is much like that of going under anesthesia. And how awful, if that were to be the case. That everything just, disappears and existence ceases.

I cannot and I will not believe that death would be like this.

It is just too awful to contemplate.

 

Comments

[Lenette]

Thought provoking post. I've only had anesthesia twice in my life. While I knew it has it's risks, I had never considered just how far the procedure actually goes:

"we bring that live person or animal down to the brink of death, so that they do not feel pain."

Heavy.