Slipped our lovely elderly gentleman a small warm up dose of midazolam before his general anaesthetic today, and was quite surprised to hear him then fess up to a previous heroin addiction. This sort of truth serum reaction to the drugs we give is actually pretty rare, you might be relieved to hear.
I had a general anaesthetic myself a couple of years ago, fixing a broken nose. The anaesthetist came out to theatre reception, put a drip in my arm, gave me an injection of something, and I remember nothing from then on. The thing is, I know I must have been awake for at least another ten minutes, while they wheeled me into theatre, checked me in – during which I must have been awake and talking – put the monitoring on, gave me some oxygen for a minute or so, and then gave me the drugs to render me unconscious. And I honestly hate to think what I was doing or saying in front of all those people for that missing time. Chances are, nothing unusual or outrageous, but I have always been afraid that in such a situation I would confess my love for a colleague – no one in particular, which does make it a rather odd fear – but just the possibility that I might have done so still gives me a shiver of anticipatory embarrassment, like a recovered memory hanging around in the background, pretending its not really there.
The first thing I remember after the op is being mid sentence in a discussion with the recovery room nurse. She had a patient look on her face. I’m certain recovery staff hear much more in the way of disjointed rambling conversations than theatre staff do, but they are used to it, and for some reason it doesn’t seem such a concern what I might have been droning on about as I woke up. The recovery room has much more of a feeling of drugged relief, even if occasionally mixed in with some pain or nausea, as compared to the heightened anticipatory adrenaline-filled fear of that preop time.
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