To be scared of anaesthetic?

[TrueFriendsStabYouInTheFront]

I am having an operation at the end of October and I keep getting cold feet as I'm so scared of the thought of anaesthetic. Please tell me IABU and that all will be fine!

Could I ask for your experiences if you've ever had surgery?

Best sleep I’ve ever had!!! Then the next few nights as well. You don’t really feel anything but you just go to sleep.

The counting bit was strange. I was counting backwards and nothing happened at first and I remember thinking ‘am I doing this wrong?’ Next thing I was in recovery. All fine.

I really appreciate that, @HicDraconis; all these things are so much better when they're properly explained. To my shame I didn't realise either just how complex the whole thing is, but I've been reading an excellent online thing (from Australia as it happens!!) and I'm starting to see just why anaesthetists would be attracted to their speciality

On my own silly phobia, FWIW I was given a tiny bit of local in my hand before the last cannula was put in, but that anaesthetist was so very understanding and helpful. I just wasn't sure if I struck lucky with him and whether it would be a reasonable thing to ask for in future, but now I feel much more confident

Do you reckon patient, empathetic types are somehow drawn to the field in the first place, or does experience in the job make them that way?

I had an emergency gas GA and was so scared ( of the emergency rather than the GA) that when they were counting down from 10, at about 7, I hit slightly hysterical thrashing and screaming and begging them not to start because I was still awake so something had gone wrong 😂 I remember the anaesthetists assistant stroked my hair and said “we’re going to look after you” for some reason it was all the reassurance i needed and next time I went kept breathing and went right out. When I came round for ages I was totally in love with both him and the anaesthetist - totally gooey eyed - I wonder if they get that often 😭

Mind you I also loved the anaesthetist who did my epidural. They must get the highest satisfaction rates of the whole hospital lol

Good luck. It’ll be fine and the start of a new chapter in your life

Moomin8

Why even bother coming on these threads if you absolutely will not move away from it being 'normal', to be 'terrified' of a GA, despite overwhelming evidence of its safety?

What do you get out of it?

@Miljah what? I’ve said I’ve found my GAs fine. Of course they are safe. But anxieties about them are normal when you’ve never had one.

I was really worried about having a GA as I had been put to sleep in an unpleasant way for a tosillectomy as a child and also remembered having gas at the dentists. When I had an anaesthetic as an adult it was completely problem free. I went out before I counted to 3 and woke feeling I had had the best sleep of my life with a feeling of total well being ( had they given me something else?). I was not nauseous at all. Nothing to worry about.

I've had gas inductions as I'm practically impossible to cannulate. (My veins made one consultant anaesthetist cry) I can therefore confirm that it does still happen, but rarely. I do hope I don't ever wind up needing emergency surgery with @HicDraconis as my anaesthetist, I'm not sure I want to martyr myself for the enviroment

Even if you've got a horror of needles, you're so much safer off with a cannula in. I only don't have them because it can take hours to cannulate me.

moomin whatever.

@Chouetted if you ever end up needing emergency surgery with me as your anaesthetist, then you will have IV access placed before you go to sleep for your own safety. Everyone has a vein somewhere, even if I have to use an ultrasound to find it (and the ones in the neck and groin are always available...) Elective surgery the same would apply, and I'd have more time to put something in place. I would be gentle as with all patients and I wouldn't even try a peripheral cannula in someone with known difficult veins, I'd go straight for a larger vein in the neck or groin, appropriately secured. On the plus side, those lines stay in for a period of days and can be used for blood tests as well as giving fluids and meds, so once it's in you shouldn't need to have any more needle punctures during your stay. However, you're extremely unlikely to require my personal services unless you require surgery in NZ.

@puzzledandpissedoff Not all anaesthetists are empathic or patient! I don't think it's a particular characteristic of the speciality; some of my colleagues would definitely not fit this description but are still very good at what they do. In a sense there is a spread of empathy from one end of the spectrum to the other. Different subspecialities within anaesthesia tend to attract those with the appropriate levels of empathy for those patients - so my subspeciality interest is obstetric anaesthesia, which requires a relatively high EQ, while one of my colleagues who has probably got an IQ in the several hundreds, but an EQ in the low 20s, prefers the more complex neuro/intensive care cases.

YANBU but only from the point of view that it's reasonable to be scared of something that could go wrong... in reality I love general anaethetics; you go all trippy, then have a really intense sleep, and really, they hardly ever do go wrong.

I had a long one for an op to put pins in my arms, and I did unfortunately vomit coming out of that, but a shorter one I had was awesome - woke up feeling really refreshed.

@HicDraconis I assume by Gas you mean a GA administered by mask? I had that only 4 years ago and I had a cannula in anyway. I wonder why they did it like that? The anaesthetist was fairly young, no reason to think she might be a bit old fashioned

@passtyecherrycoke Everyone still breathes in oxygen through a facemask before they go to sleep - the anaesthetic is usually put in through the cannula rather than the mask though. All my patients still have to breathe through the facemask and it still smells plasticky and odd in spite of not having any volatile (anaesthetic gas) in the oxygen mix.

@HicDraconis

I wasn't going to post this but seeing as though you specialise in Obstetrics Anaesthesia I will.

I had an emergency section under GA ... and woke up!
I remember someone fiddling with something around my throat and thinking 'bloody hell I've woken up, this isn't good!' I wasn't remotely scared, it was a little surreal. I remember someone noticing I was awake and saying something about Midazolam. The next thing I remember was waking up 'properly' in recovery.

Apparently this was because the GA that they use for this procedure is light as they have the baby to consider. OP PLEASE DON'T LET THIS EVEN CROSS YOUR MKND THOUGH!! 😆 it only happened as i was 42 weeks pregnant!!

Good luck, I've had loads of GAs since (similar surgery to you) and was absolutely fine.

I'm having one in January. I'm thinking of cancelling. I'm utterly terrified of hospitals and needles.

My friend runs the or and he's promised to be on that day and male sure I have medication to take before I go but I'm getting tearful about it this far ahead, by then there's next to no chance I won't cancel.

Hmmm they told me the last 3 breaths would contain the anaesthetic gas so I assumed that’s how I went out. It was all a bit panicked though

@BetsyBigNose they will only do my endoscopy with a general. They've has too many cases of people freaking out apparently.

They are amazing. I've had a few. My first they said I would feel funny and that's that. I remember blinking and my vision blurring and the. I woke up. 😂😂

Second one I had to have a nerve block in my neck so they gave me "date rape" as they called it as they needed me awake but not there before knocking me out.

I remember turning my head to the side, blurry vision and then I woke up.

Apparently before the anaesthetic I was telling the surgeon I loved him and that I was thrilled to be able to shave my armpits again (frozen shoulder surgery). I knew something had gone on as when I woke all the staff were smiling and holding in their laughter.

Easy to say but don't worry. They are all amazing and do it a million times a day.

@clickymad - Wow, that really surprises me! It turns a procedure which usually takes around 15 minutes (from entering the 'Operating Room', to the patient being wheeled out again once it's been done, usually still mostly sedated) into a much more time consuming, not to mention expensive procedure with all of the extra risks associated with having a GA. Some patients even choose to have the procedure without sedation, as they 'can handle it' (since it's not actually painful, you would just need to be able to resist your gag reflex in order to swallow the tube and be able to control your anxiety levels) it's definitely not for me!

Although I hate having endoscopies done, I think I would prefer to stick with the sedation and throat numbing spray rather than opting for the GA, especially since I have to have them so frequently.

I'd love to hear the details of the incidents that led to them taking the decision, some of them must have been pretty dramatic to prompt such a major policy change.

@BetsyBigNose it's in the States so I'm sure the fear of being sued (and the extra lovely money they'll make from me ) is a factor.

Sorry to hijack the thread for my own purposes briefly OP, but @HicDraconis - I've learned this evening that I need a small orthopaedic op (proximal gastrocnemius release), and that although the surgeon can do it with local he prefers a GA. I don't imagine it will be for very long.

I am severely emetophobic, and when I last had a GA (for an endoscopic cholecystectomy) I begged the anaesthetist for as many anti-emetics as he could administer, and no opiods at all. I felt vaguely sicky as I came round, panicked and asked for more anti-emetics, and I think I had cyclazine? Unfortunately I spent the next 10 hours scarcely able to move my limbs or wake up properly, and had that horrible low level travel sick sensation that is miserable but you don't actually vomit. Even water made me heave, and I rather rudely told them exactly what they could do with their manky ham sandwich. One of the nurses kept saying it's the drugs, it's the drugs (when I complained that I felt like I'd been run over), and the anaesthetist mentioned that I'd had fentanyl whilst under.

Is there any way of knowing which of the many drugs I had might have been responsible for that awful dead-limbed, nauseous feeling that took 10 hours to pass, so I know to ask not to have it next time?! I'd had 2 anaesthetics as a child and had no reaction like that before...

I had the gastric sleeve op in 2012. The anaesthetic was actually quite lovely, like sliding into a warm bath. What freaked me out was walking down from the ward to the theatre with one of the doctors. I had this panicky sense that I didn't want to go through with it. But the doctor got a nurse to sit with me outside the room where they anaesthetise you, and talk through my fears. Knowing I could withdraw consent at any time before I went in strangely helped. I also asked the surgeon how many patients he had killed (by this time I had had the pre med and was past the point of feeling shame). He said he had a 100% success rate for that type of op.

It is a big thing, and when they came round the next day to show me photos of my stomach that they had removed, I felt very nauseous, but you can ask not to see if you prefer. I had a lot of students around me because my local hospital is a training hospital and centre of excellence for bariatric surgery. The main thing is that you get a lot of shoulder pain after a general, from the trapped gas. You might not be up to walking much after the op but the more moving you can do, the better.

@blutopia without access to notes it’s difficult to say which drugs caused what issues. Cyclizine can be very sedating.

For your next operation just tell the anaesthetist your concerns and work out a plan with them. If you can get hold of some acupressure bands, wear them to theatre. Ask if there is an alternative anaesthetic that will give you less nausea (there are two - you could have TIVA which is Total IV Anaesthesia, or a spinal), ask about non sedating anti emetics (ondansetron, hyoscine patches, dexamethasone, metoclopramide, very low dose droperidol).

Good luck!

I was absolutely petrified.

The doctor was really nice, told me he'd done thousands of operations and no one had ever died, everyone always woke up.
I don't know if it was actually true or not but it really put me at ease.

The actual anaesthetists were really nice as well

I am have a GA this afternoon for a trapeziectomy with ligament reconstruction. I am TERRIFIED! I have had them before for gynae ops and a hysterectomy and I was fine but I am really working myself up today.

I had Midazolam once for a colonoscopy and it had literally NO effect on me whatsoever so I have now got the idea in my head that the anaesthetic is not going to work and I will feel the whole thing!

I wish I could cancel!!!!!!!!!!! Please calm me down