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One of the first drugs they give you before surgery interferes with the formation of long term memories. There’s a good chance you were awake and aware for quite awhile after the first injection… you just couldn’t make long term memories about it.
Plot twist: you were awake and screaming all through the surgery but you don’t remember it.
Even worse, there have been people who woke up during surgery but the paralytics were still working just fine, so they were awake, aware, and fully experiencing the pain of surgery but couldn’t move or tell anyone.
Some Bella in twilight shit.
There’s a theory about general anasthesia similar to that. Probably false but fun to think about.
Yeah the theory that general anaesthesia doesn’t put you to sleep and numb the pain, it only paralyzes you and prevents you from forming any memories. So you remain awake and feel all the pain of surgery, you just can’t scream and you won’t remember it.
The only reason I doubt that theory is because the pain would cause the heart to race which would be noticeable on the monitors and other autonomic effects like sweating and vomiting.
When I had to get surgery, they gave me opiates first, then the other stuff. I remember them giving me the opiates, everything became… soft and fuzzy. Like, not visually, just, the opposite of sharp. Actually, quite a nice feeling. And then they announced that they’d proceed with the other stuff, and I time-skipped to when it all was over.
I got half a valium when I had my last surgery. I was super jittery. I remember the nurse giving me this tiny half-pill and thinking “That ain’t gonna do shit” 30 minutes later, as they’re wheeling me into the theatre, I’m smiling up at everyone and thinking " Hey, you know what’s great? Everything. Everything is so damn wonderful."
Then I woke up normal again and vomited on a nurse.
i’ve had three procedures where my anesthesia was insufficient. two, fortunately, were dental and i could grit my mental teeth for five minutes. one was a gastro surgery and i think they just forgot to give me the ForgetMeNow because i was wide awake and talking to them the entire damn time while they rummaged around in me.
Wee there’s a nightmare I didn’t need to have…
Is the inability to form long term memories a side effect of something, or is that the main point of one of the drugs?
Causing memory loss is an important part of anesthesia. Usually it’s done with very strong sedatives that are in a similar family to benzodiazepines.
I’d assume they meant short term, cus losing long term memory formation for any amount of time would be trrrifying
I’m unsure of it being the intended effect or a side effect
Nope, I definitely mean long term. That’s the whole point… you don’t remember what happens for a little while, and it’s definitely on purpose. They also give you a soporific (makes you unconscious) and a paralytic (so you don’t move voluntarily or otherwise).
That sounds like short term though
Like roofies affect short term memory, you can’t form memories during a short period of time (e.g hours). Short term memories feed long term memory.
Short term memory is what I ate for breakfast, long term memory are my ABCs and knowing how to drive.
What we have here is a terminology problem.
When you experience anything it immediately forms a short term memory. To retain it for more than a brief period that short term memory has to be converted or moved to long term memory. These anaesthia drugs interfere with the process that moves short to long term memory.
Hm. I am not super firm on the definitions, but I remember having a hard time forming new memories when I took quite a bunch of cannabis. Scary shit. I basically “existed” in intervals of around a (subjective) minute or so, with nothing to do except to wait it out.
How long term are we talking about? Because I remember being immediately surprised by it once I got awake, way before the effects fully subsided. It’s not that I just don’t remember it now, specifically.
Yeah, you won’t remember anything from the time it kicks in to the time it wears off, give or take a couple of minutes.
The first time I went in for a surgery, my memory ends shortly after they pushed the first drug into my IV but my mom was there and she said we talked for another 15 minutes before they took me to the OR. I remember none of it but she says I was completely lucid as far as she could tell.
I see! Curious.