My patient today said she was feeling anxious about the procedure.
I asked her if there was anything specific bothering her or was it just the whole shebang, and she said she was worried about waking up. Ah, I thought, she’s nervous about awareness – not an unusual concern. I told her I’d be there to make sure that didn’t happen, but she didn’t seem reassured. Turns out she meant she was worried she wouldn’t wake up at the end of surgery. Oops. No wonder she was shaking like a leaf.
The patient I looked after yesterday also had a number of concerns – including her needle phobia, having a catheter in her bladder, and looking weird with half her hair shaved off. The fact that she was having an enormous tumour cut out of her brain, and she might wake up paralyzed, or unable to speak, or possibly may not wake up at all, didn’t seem to be foremost in her mind. You’d be amazed how common that is. There’s nowt as queer as folk, I suppose. Evolution didn’t prepare us for this.