After being anesthetized, the anesthesiologist said, "It's very uncomfortable"

I have been working as an anesthesiologist for 20 years and have always wanted to experience general anesthesia. However, my poor body has never given me the chance. Although the high-intensity anesthesia work has caused me to suffer from stomach problems from time to time, and my blood pressure and heart rate have also become worse, it is not to the point where I need surgery.

Some things are called "you can only encounter them by chance". A few days ago, my colleague got appendicitis. I did not gloat over the misfortune, but I keenly felt that this was a great opportunity.

In the past, patients would tell me about their feelings during general anesthesia. However, patients do not understand medicine, so I can only half believe it. Although colleagues from other departments of the hospital occasionally perform surgery, they are not anesthesia professionals, so their answers may not be very accurate.

This time, my colleague from the Department of Anesthesiology performed the surgery. After the surgery, I was able to get an accurate answer.

In order to ensure the accuracy of the results, I decided to volunteer.

On the day of the operation, in addition to sympathy, I felt a little excited: this time, I could finally know the patient's true feelings. Knowing the answer will help me further optimize my anesthesia plan in the future.

For the sake of more patients, please sacrifice this time. With this feeling, I started the anesthesia.

Before the anesthesia, my colleague also knew my thoughts. He negotiated: After the operation, you must tell me your experience of the whole process. This also includes what I said or some of my behaviors when I was in a state of confusion.

I shouted in agreement and the anesthesia began.

The anesthesia process was nothing special: laparoscopic surgery, general anesthesia with laryngeal mask. Since the operation time was very short, I controlled the dosage of muscle relaxants and long-acting analgesics.

In order to verify the exact moment when a person loses consciousness, I would deliberately tell him before administering each type of anesthesia so that he could check it after waking up. Of course, even if I didn't tell him, he would be able to guess which drug it was. But in order to make the result more accurate, it was necessary to tell him.

I thought that my body, which was passively breathing anesthetic gas every day, should be resistant to anesthetics, but the result disappointed me: during the whole anesthesia process, my colleague seemed to be very resistant to anesthetics. As soon as the anesthetic was given, he fell asleep completely. Maybe he was too tired, or maybe his body was always in sub-health.

The operation was over in less than half an hour.

As I watched the surgeon finish the last stitch, I turned off all my medications.

According to the plan, he should wake up a few minutes after stopping the medication.

However, more than ten minutes passed and he showed no signs of moving. He even showed no signs of breathing on his own, which should have been restored long ago.

The surgeons and nurses would look at me from time to time. Although I didn't look at them, I knew what they were thinking. They were nothing more than "Did you drop the ball?", "Did you give me too much medicine?" or "Did you take too much care of me?" and other sarcastic remarks.

Finally, he seemed to have a little bit of breathing resistance. Just a little bit of resistance, my tense spirit seemed to say silently: Thank God!

After a few minutes, he began to struggle, and although I tapped his shoulder several times, it didn't seem to have any effect.

I manually measured the tidal volume and respiratory rate, and I felt that my breathing was sufficient. I looked at the screen again and all indicators were normal. So I decided to remove the tube early.

After taking the syringe and deflating the air, I successfully took out the laryngeal mask.

The moment I took it out, I heard him say in a daze: I'm dying of suffocation!

When I heard this, I thought to myself: Hey, I slapped you so many times just now, but you didn't respond to me. As soon as the tube was pulled out, you said you were suffocating to death. Isn't this embarrassing for me? Besides, you have a laryngeal mask to ventilate you, how could you suffocate to death?

Seeing that he couldn't raise his eyes, I temporarily suppressed my complaints.

After a few minutes, he seemed to be almost conscious again. At least, his answers were clear. The only thing that made me unhappy was that he was grimacing and shouting about how uncomfortable he was.

At that time, I was thinking, it's just a small operation, with only a few holes in your stomach, and I'm taking care of the laryngeal mask you use, so how could you feel uncomfortable?

I couldn't argue with him at that time, so I thought I would talk to him after the operation. So we sent him back to the ward.

Afterwards, I had another anesthesia.

After the operation, I rushed to see him to find out how he felt.

Who would have thought that as soon as I entered the ward, he said with an unhappy face, "It's so uncomfortable."

After controlling his emotions a little, he said self-deprecatingly: Maybe it's because of my physical condition, anyway, I feel very uncomfortable.

At this time, he also knew what I wanted to ask.

He first asked, was there anything special about the whole process? Or did you use drugs that you rarely use.

I denied all these questions.

Seeing that there was nothing special, we began to discuss the possible reasons for the discomfort:

I asked him: Where exactly does it hurt?

At that time, what I thought was that the impact of the surgery must be ruled out first.

He said that the operation was short and no catheter was inserted. The most uncomfortable part was the back and throat. The shoulder was also a little painful. As he spoke, he pointed to his left shoulder.

To be honest, when he pointed to my left shoulder, I was shocked reflexively. This is because the pain of myocardial infarction may appear in the left shoulder in addition to the precordial area.

Soon, I thought of the real cause of the pain: laparoscopic surgery uses carbon dioxide for pneumoperitoneum. The compression of the diaphragm by carbon dioxide pneumoperitoneum and the stimulation of the gas itself on the phrenic nerve are the main causes of shoulder pain after this type of surgery.

However, since we have always believed that this type of surgery is less traumatic and no analgesic measures are given, the pain is so obvious.

Then he revealed another surprising experience: he said his back ached, and the discomfort was like lying in bed for half a month.

We were both confused by this situation: there was no mention of this feeling of patients in various anesthesia textbooks or materials!

After much thought, the only possible explanation is that we used muscle relaxants during the operation. Under the effect of muscle relaxants, the muscles suddenly lost all their muscle tension, and then recovered completely after the operation. Perhaps this tension and relaxation made the muscles feel like running a 100-meter race.

In addition, throat discomfort is also one of the problems he repeatedly mentioned.

He said that it had been almost two hours since the operation and he had been feeling swelling in his throat, just like pharyngitis.

After the discussion, we rethought our anesthesia: no matter how minor the surgery is, we may need to consider the issue of analgesia. Sometimes, it is not just for pain control. The patient's discomfort may be more uncomfortable than the pain. In terms of operation, we can consider using less air to prevent leakage.

This time, it was the true feelings of our anesthesia colleagues. Looking back, so many patients did not react, perhaps they thought these were the feelings they should endure during the operation. In fact, we can really do better!

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