Last time, I used: “Anybody need anything while I’m out?” and that went over well. May not make it through this surgery on Friday, so I turn to Lemmy for top-notch suggestions for my potential last words!
Last time, I used: “Anybody need anything while I’m out?” and that went over well. May not make it through this surgery on Friday, so I turn to Lemmy for top-notch suggestions for my potential last words!
“I’m aware that consciousness still exists under general anesthesia, but the brain is no longer capable of forming memories, so have fun stabbing me with knives, I’m actually going to feel it!”
But hang on, there’s an interesting topic. Is consciousness the current processing, or is it the memory (and perhaps something additional)? Since not all nerve signals arrive in the brain at the same time, consciousness provably isn’t immediate. Perhaps it’s the recent memory of what just happened?
Separately, is it still pain if you’re not conscious of it?
Doctors used to assert that babies didn’t feel pain, because 1) they couldn’t tell us about it, and 2) they didn’t remember it later. They would just not anesthetize babies. Of course, that endpoint of this line of reasoning is horrifying, but it’s still a fair question. When we say “pain” do we mean the firing of the nerves, or do we mean awareness of it?
To be fair, dosing babies with anesthesia is way more difficult, and there’s zero record of whether they have any drug allergies or intolerances
Nowadays, you can test for anesthetic drug resistances with DNA site testing, (as in, a blood test), though of course, this does not mean that it is always used, for various reasons.
A personal anecdote:
I’ve had one done after I had bad side-effects to ADHD medication I had tried, and I haven’t had any bad effects in the medications I’ve tried since. (besides drowsiness)
Edit: I want to say, I’m not saying that getting the dosage right is not incredibly difficult, I just wanted to mention that we can detect drug allergies without putting them under, (so to speak).
That’s good to know! I just swelled up for a week because my new dentist used a different kind of local anesthetic, so it was close to the front of my mind. That would have helped a lot