a question that makes me wonder and laugh a bit

[Guest shani d]

i dont know if its related to humor section or to here

but i read a lot of srs storys and i love reading those and dont intend to stop doing so anytime soon

but in all of those storys people describe the next day or two after srs as very trippy because your still very very drugged from anesthasia and i wonder

how in the world they put so much aneshthasia in your body?? is it enofgh to put down an elephant? or is it just a very small dose of it can bring you down so hard? do they actualy put a lot of it in your body? or just a tiny amount?

[Carolyn Marie]

Interesting question, Shani. I suppose it depends on a lot of factors, including the length of the surgery, the type of anesthetic used, the age and weight of the patient, known allergies, etc. The general answer would be, whatever amount is necessary to keep a particular patient under sedation for the required time. You can find out more details on the Web with a search.

Carolyn Marie

[Guest Jenni_S]

Anesthesia, I'm not sure; I wasn't conscious, after all. I do remember the morphine afterwards, though. While I wasn't given a "button," and not able to just press it and get more, I was able to ask for it whenever I liked. And having never had that before, I was, shall we say, a tad loopy. But it does definitely make the pain tolerable. As nurses are wont to do, they were asking "What is your pain level?" frequently. I distinctly remember answering once, "Nine, but it's all good," because, you know, morphine. It was only available for two days, but they were definitely two very weird, very surreal days!

[Guest]

Hi Shani,

I had a "boot camp" type of surgery - not for the faint of heart. After surgery, I had Duladid injections for about 8 hours, and then switched to pills. I was mostly lucid for the time after the Duladid wore off. I remember that first day after surgery quite well. Not because of the pain but because I had a severe post-op bleed and was in pretty bad shape for a few days after.

But, having anesthesia for long times has a long-term effect on the body, with elevated temperature lasting as long as a week, many other more subtle effects. At nine months postop, the ends of my fingernails were turning brownish and simply flaking away. My doctor said that it's a common side effect of anesthetic, and that it was just growing out to the tips that long after the surgery. Similarly, my hairdresser noted how thin my hair became after surgery.

I am usually up for humor any time. I can't think of anything that was funny then...

Love, Megan

[VickySGV]

My memory of the first couple of days is almost like watching myself from a distance, surreal, but not really loopy. Pain, and the medications, the bruising and the medical appliances used took my control away from my body and thus ME. The medical procedures of having vital signs checked at specific intervals, dressings changed, catheter bags, and drain bulb emptied, the medications being given, and hospital food trays etc just all flow together. I did have a period during the first two days where my emotions from all of it did send me in some strange directions with many hitting me all at once. To a casual visitor (which I can thankfully say I did not have) I would have seemed a mess. Humor was not one of the emotions to any great degree.

[Guest SamIThinkIAm]

Not post-op in the SRS sense-------but I have been through at least a dozen or more surgeries in my 22 years, some major, some not too bad.

Surgery and anesthesia take a *lot* out of a person just in terms of physical trauma and shock in addition to the wide scale adjustment and healing process.

Add to that stress, fear/being overwhelmed, being in pain and more often than not some pretty good pain meds post-op and regardless of what and how much they use to put you under for surgery it makes you loopy, exhausted and out of it.

It's not like slowly drifting off to sleep---it's closer to being knocked out or simply just...'stopping'. You get shutdown even if you don't want to.

So it's a bit traumatic and disorienting to 'come back' and your brain has to catch up and get back online, first simple awareness/primitive emotions and all the way up to your normal level of functioning.

With that in mind it's to be expected that things are a bit off/fuzzy/unreal...you aren't yourself nor are you functioning/thinking/experiencing things in ways you normally would.

Example:

Let it be known that, surgically, I'm 'one of those' types of patients.

I experience what some have coined 'post-operative delirium/confusion' and even as a child, I needed to be strapped down to the stretcher OR my mother *had* to be in the recovery room (even if it meant she needed to suit up like a surgeon) to manage me.

Layman's terms: I come around after anesthesia kicking, screaming, crying, biting and fighting like a wild animal. I can't be reasoned with, I can't be calmed down and the surgical team knows in advance to stay the hell out of the way until at least 15 minutes after I've woken up by which point I start to come to my senses.

Normal functioning? Not a combative person and pretty rock-solid emotionally.

[Guest Leah1026]

The day after surgery I was up in a chair at the bedside.

The next day I went for a short walk in the hallway.

Every day after that my activity level gradually increased.

Now my surgeon, like most other North American surgeons, likes to get you up and moving ASAP. Doing so helps prevent clots, speeds healing and lessens the chances becoming severely constipated from pain medication. Nobody I knew was "trippy" after surgery. Worn out a bit and sore, yeah, but not trippy. That said I was very happy when I woke up after surgery

[Guest KimberlyF]

I've had a few different procedures in my life so at this point, I knew that as soon as I started to feel an uncomfortableness growing, to ask for more, instead of waiting for it to hurt. Even then, the one time it took a while for the nurses to respond, and the pain had shot up quickly, so I needed the morphine ASAP. I was on 3 different drugs that were staggered. The morphine was the only one that worked within a minute.

It's hard to not feel good on morphine. I wouldn't like to feel like that every day, but when I'm passing a stone, it's better to be loopy than curled up in a ball.

[~Nova~]

I am terrible with anesthesia. It stays with me for a month or more. Just lingering there like a beggar on a street corner. Yuck!

My surgery was 6 and 3/4 hours and all I remember is telling the anesthetist that he was late. Good night. I woke up on the most uncomfortable cot in the world and there I stayed for 12 hours. That was Almost 2 years ago and I think the anesthesia just wore off about a moth ago.

Everyone reacts different, talk to the doc and anesthetist.