Woken in the early hours this morning by Simon crying out in his sleep.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite disturbing when he does this. He sounds genuinely distressed: \u201cHelp! Help! Help!\u201d I used to wake him up when it happened but then I read you\u2019re better off just letting them sleep, because otherwise they\u2019ll remember the dream, whereas if you just leave them alone, they\u2019ll have forgotten it by the next day.<\/p>\n
Years ago, Simon and I were doing a guided horse ride somewhere in rural New Zealand when the subject of our jobs came up. The young woman who was guiding us said that she\u2019d heard that people were awake during their operations but the drugs we used just stopped them remembering the ordeal. I was horrified and assured her that that was very unlikely.<\/p>\n
Imagine my surprise the either day when a group of us were chatting in the theatre control room at the end of our shift and one of the senior registrars said that his aim with the sick and elderly was \u201dawareness without recall\u201d. it was a technique he\u2019d learned in the NHS, he said. When you see how little of our anaesthetic drugs you can get away with, as some of his seniors over there do, then you\u2019re more comfortable using less. Certainly there\u2019s a downside to using more drugs than you need, in that you have to then give different drugs to combat dose related side effects like low blood pressure, and in extremis there are worse things than awareness (like CPR). Still, I don\u2019t think most of us would advocate this as a policy. It\u2019s possible he was joking – you never can tell with Englishmen – but it was a little chilling, nonetheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Woken in the early hours this morning by Simon crying out in his sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3q3","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10000,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/20\/the-sleep-of-the-just\/","url_meta":{"origin":13147,"position":0},"title":"The sleep of the just","author":"Interloper11","date":"April 20, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"How soon one gets used to, and then takes for granted, the great pleasure of being able to anticipate a full, untroubled night of slumber when you close your eyes last thing at night. I\u2019d like to think that my efforts at improving mindfulness recently, helping to break the cycle\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/IMG_3239-290x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13228,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/28\/still-thursday-paris\/","url_meta":{"origin":13147,"position":1},"title":"Still Thursday! Paris","author":"Interloper11","date":"August 28, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Got to the gate before Simon in the end, and there was some sort of unexplained delay in boarding, but we got underway without too much delay. An uneventful 11 hour flight, and arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris at 9pm. An hour later, we were letting ourselves\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13218,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/27\/holiday-thursday-26-8-2026-singapore-transit-hotel\/","url_meta":{"origin":13147,"position":2},"title":"Holiday Thursday 27\/8\/2026 Singapore transit hotel","author":"Interloper11","date":"August 27, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Day 2 of our holiday - or is it? - always weird when you\u2019re still en route and between time zones. I went straight to sleep as soon as I could on the flight, I didn\u2019t wait for dinner, nice as it looked. My screen wasn\u2019t working so I couldn\u2019t\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6799-225x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9791,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/01\/my-love-affair-with-technology-is-a-rocky-road-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":13147,"position":3},"title":"My love affair with technology is a rocky road part 2","author":"Interloper11","date":"February 1, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometimes I have trouble sleeping at night, and have got into the habit of listening to my meditation app to help me get back to sleep. In order not to wake Simon, I have to get my little dose of yoga nidra with headphones, which are uncomfortable and hard to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/IMG_6979-300x245.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12416,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/17\/d-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":13147,"position":4},"title":"D day","author":"Interloper11","date":"November 17, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Or S day? For surgery? Or O day (operation)? Or, indeed L day (laparoscopic cholecystectomy), or even G day (gallbladder). In fact, virtually any letter but D. But whatever it\u2019s called, today was The Big Day\u2026Simon has had his gallbladder removed. He was first on the list so I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4185-768x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4185-768x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4185-768x1024.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12226,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/28\/still-at-sea-west-of-bergen-sunday-28-september\/","url_meta":{"origin":13147,"position":5},"title":"Still at sea west of Bergen Sunday 28 September","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 28, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Lovely long sleep, unfortunately Simon no better today. On the plus side, he managed his biggest meal in a week, completely fat free, for breakfast. I thought I\u2019d show you a photo of the pavilion. You can see the enormous glass roof is retractable so in nice weather it can\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_3592-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}