Umbilical hernia surgery

[WeeWeegieChick]

I got a hernia 17 years ago while playing with my eldest daughter. Surgeon at the time suggested leaving it well alone if I was planning on having other children.

3 children later and after the hernia lying hidden behind newly acquired layers of flab it decided to pop out and has left me with what's best described as a perfect stitch feeling in my abdomen.

surgeon called today with a date for surgery in a couple of weeks. I have a huge phobia of anaesthetics due to my dad stopping breathing during a routine op and having to be resuscitated. Also due to significant sexual assaults I struggle about having lack of awareness or control in situations and I'm now wondering if I could ask for a local anaesthetic instead so that I am awake,

Does anyone have experience with this?

anaesthetist pov - it's usually minor day case surgery. Have never seen one done with local and imagine it'd be quite hard to achieve that comfortably (especially if, as your post suggests, you're overweight). Almost all patients stop breathing under anaesthesia - it might be helpful for your anaesthetist to know more about what happened to your Dad, but unless it was an inherited problem with metabolising anaesthetics or an inheritable cardiac problem I really wouldn't worry too much about the same sort of thing happening. It's important too to remember getting the hernia fixed as an elective procedure is usually lower risk than waiting for it to become an emergency.

i've probably worded that poorly, I'm 10st 5 and have peri belly so to me it's flab

definitely agree the risks are less when it's elective and the worry of it becoming strangulated is always there.

with my dad, his heart stopped and full blown resus. My family "selfishly" (obv sarcasm) have a horrid habit of cardiac events so there's always concern around anything like that