Different people react differently to different drugs. Also, amnesia isn’t usually all or nothing, it’s a gradient of fuzziness of memory. Midazolam (Versed) is often given to patients prior to anesthesia to relax them, and can inhibit memory formation. For me, I had an adverse reaction to it, and it gave me a panic attack, but also left me unable to voluntarily move or speak. So I just laid there, eyes wide and staring in horror until they finally gave me the true anesthesia. Blech.
Circa 2008, I don’t think we had great methods for detecting such cases, so I’m curious how your surgeons realized that you were awake. And there’s a term for that state in the literature: Inverse-Zombies. That happens about 0.13% of the time with some anaesthetics. And surgeons paid less attention to this stuff until about 1.5-2 decades ago, and you’d get some cases where people were awake, paralyzed and in pain. Some proportion of those had PTSD.
Perhaps you misunderstood my story. With surgery, they usually give a ‘relaxant’ (which can also inhibit memory formation) before the anesthesia which actually puts you asleep. In my case the anesthesia worked normally. The ‘relaxant’ had the perverse effect of giving me a panic attack and temporary inability to intentionally move or speak. A few minutes later, they gave the anesthesia and I went unconscious as per normal.
A few minutes later, they gave the anesthesia and I went unconscious as per normal.
You mean, you remember nothing after a few minutes into the anesthesia and so you assume you went unconscious as normal, despite the previous abnormality.
After all, as you said, it’s not like you could talk or make any kind of voluntary movement which might indicate to observers unaffected by anesthetic memory loss that you were conscious...
True! I have no evidence either way beyond that point of the anesthesia being administered. I don’t have any traumatic memories beyond that point though, so I feel good about it.
I had nitrous oxide once at a dentist. It is a dissociative anesthetic. It may have caused something like selective amnesia. I remember that the dentist was drilling, but I have no clear memory of pain associated with it. It’s a bit hard to evaluate exactly what it does, but it definitely has some benefits. Maybe the pain seemed too distant from me to be worth my attention?
Doesn’t dissociative anesthesia cause amnesia? If so, how could you know that you were hurt but felt indifferent to it?
Different people react differently to different drugs. Also, amnesia isn’t usually all or nothing, it’s a gradient of fuzziness of memory. Midazolam (Versed) is often given to patients prior to anesthesia to relax them, and can inhibit memory formation. For me, I had an adverse reaction to it, and it gave me a panic attack, but also left me unable to voluntarily move or speak. So I just laid there, eyes wide and staring in horror until they finally gave me the true anesthesia. Blech.
Circa 2008, I don’t think we had great methods for detecting such cases, so I’m curious how your surgeons realized that you were awake. And there’s a term for that state in the literature: Inverse-Zombies. That happens about 0.13% of the time with some anaesthetics. And surgeons paid less attention to this stuff until about 1.5-2 decades ago, and you’d get some cases where people were awake, paralyzed and in pain. Some proportion of those had PTSD.
Perhaps you misunderstood my story. With surgery, they usually give a ‘relaxant’ (which can also inhibit memory formation) before the anesthesia which actually puts you asleep. In my case the anesthesia worked normally. The ‘relaxant’ had the perverse effect of giving me a panic attack and temporary inability to intentionally move or speak. A few minutes later, they gave the anesthesia and I went unconscious as per normal.
You mean, you remember nothing after a few minutes into the anesthesia and so you assume you went unconscious as normal, despite the previous abnormality.
After all, as you said, it’s not like you could talk or make any kind of voluntary movement which might indicate to observers unaffected by anesthetic memory loss that you were conscious...
True! I have no evidence either way beyond that point of the anesthesia being administered. I don’t have any traumatic memories beyond that point though, so I feel good about it.
Either I’m wrong about what kind of anesthesia it was, or it doesn’t always cause amnesia.
It has some other negative side effects, rare for it to be serious, but possible. So it really is just better to ‘toughen up’ in this case.
I had nitrous oxide once at a dentist. It is a dissociative anesthetic. It may have caused something like selective amnesia. I remember that the dentist was drilling, but I have no clear memory of pain associated with it. It’s a bit hard to evaluate exactly what it does, but it definitely has some benefits. Maybe the pain seemed too distant from me to be worth my attention?