So tired, I may well be officially dead

[ailbhe]

We went to CCDE, it was good but totally different to or from my previous CCDE experiences, we got back, I am incredibly tired and have been taking antihistamines to combat the huge swelling insect bites. The one on my foot is particularly annoying but it's down to a dull painful itch now, and the swelling is minimal, so hurrah hurrah for drugs.

I am even more tired now than before my supposedly restful weekend. Thank all the gods that Rob was working from home today; I would not have been safe to supervise a baby, not even as docile and sedentary a baby as Linnea.

I cancelled my dentist appointment today, it's rescheduled for the end of the month. Tomorrow we go for the pre-op appointment for my exam under general anaesthetic. I'm pretending as hard as I can not to be afraid of the general now - it looks like I will just have to get used to them and suck it up and deal. But if I die, um, could someone please publish the pomes anyway and give the money to a worthy charity, like a birth trauma one or a breastfeeding promotion one or something?

I'm just tired. I'm not even having a general tomorrow - it's not until next week. I will compose a more suitable Farewell Cruel World post closer to the time, I suppose. I did last time, for Linnea - a post about how happy I was and how much I loved her, as I recall.

Do normal people feel this way about this kind of loss of control?

Comments

Re: So tired, I may well be officially dead

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

Do normal people feel this way about this kind of loss of control?

i don't know, being as i am hardly normal, but i am terrified of general anaesthesia because my life just *poof*, goes away and is no more while i am under. i actually prepared for it, last time, like i would prepare for death, complete with leaving notes for my loved ones; notwithstanding the actual risk.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm not normal in most ways, and being under general anestesia doesn't really bother me. I've only actually had it 3 times - the first time I was scared to death, the second time was emergency surgery and I was happy to be pain-free as I went under, the third time I was more worried about what the procedure was going to show.

In my brain, it's going to sleep. It doesn't really bother me.

IV sedation, on the other hand, where you're not really under but you don't remember what happens, bothers me because I've become aware when I shouldn't have been (like when they were putting in my dental implant). *shiver*

But fears like this can't be argued with, because they don't come from the rational portion of the brain. So do what you need to do that makes you as comfortable as you can be beforehand.

*hugs*

[rosefox]

you're not really under but you don't remember what happens

Oh my goodness that would freak me out so much. It's hard enough for me to trust my memory as it is. I am not about to let anyone deliberately sabotage it.

[rosefox]

General anesthesia terrifies me. When I had all four wisdom teeth out at once, two of which hadn't even broken skin yet (the surgeon looked at my X-ray and said "Let's get this all done with now because otherwise they'll cause you trouble later"), I made them give me local anesthetic and begged for a mirror. The more aware I am of what's going on, the better I feel. My personal panic is informed by my vivid awareness that I'm extremely hyperreactive to medication that has any effect on brain function, including things that affect consciousness. I took one 25mg Benadryl last night, for example, to combat a rash that I hoped was an allergic reaction (it's not, dammit, which means four weeks of cortisone and itching and cursing a lot), and sixteen hours later I'm still shaking the last of the wool out of my head. When I was on Percocet painkillers (whopping loads of acetaminophen/paracetamol and oxycodone) after the above-mentioned wisdom tooth extraction, I would take one and make sure I was sitting down half an hour later so that I wouldn't fall over when I passed out. To top it all off, I was raised on the story of Libby Zion (scroll down a few paragraphs) because her father is a dear friend of my mother's. I don't begin to trust anesthetologists to listen when I tell them about my knowlege of my biochemistry or to notice that they're overdosing me until it's too late.

I suppose I'll have to go through it someday. I'm holding off as long as possible in hopes that better and safer anesthetics will be developed. I'll still expect to be overdosed, but it won't be quite as dangerous as it is now.

[barakta]

I hate losing control with general anaesthesia and I've had in the region of 40 of them. Most of them I had as a kid and most were short exploratory ones. I still resist them knocking me out even now and they have to zonk me with the gas. They've never been able to use veinous needles on me and I won't take sedatives before hand because I hate what they do to me.

I don't know how one overcomes this loss of control issue, I am less bad when I know and trust the surgeon/anaesthetist but sadly I haven't had a known theatre team since I was a kid. I find that telling the anaesthetist that you want as little sedation as possible does work, as they will avoid giving you post-op/pre-op crap. For a shorter anaesthetic you should not need large amounts of sedation or medication.

[ailbhe]

I may well need to be sedated for most of the time I'm in the hospital - the PTSD isn't pretty. Last time I only needed sedation for the times Rob could not be with me; this time, Rob may not be with me at all. Which would be bad.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I don't know, not being normal, but I always have the thought, when I prepare to go under, that this might be the last I see of the world.

It's not major panic and it hasn't stopped me undergoing whatever it was, but the thought is still there. More so than how much will it hurt afterward.

[ailbhe]

It's not the world that bothers me. It's Linnea.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Given the source of your problems, I would say this is totally how normal people react.

I get freaked about hospitals and nothing of this order of magnitude has happened to me. I know you said Rob can't be with you this time. Is there anyone else you can trust to help?

[ailbhe]

We are looking into having his parents watch L for the day so he can be with me. We'll discuss things at the pre-op tomorrow and that might help.

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

I tore my scalp off when I flipped a car over, exposed four inches by four inches of skull, and was admitted to hospital so I could have IV antibiotics in preparation for the skin graft.

I was a bit tired, a bit itchy, otherwise fine.

I entertained the nurses when they gave me my twice-daily skull washing.

My condition was officially designated a Cosmetic Injury.

I played Risk with my girlfriend, the guys came over for an rpg session, I read lots, somebody snuck a few canned Guinnesses in. Basically, aside from the bandage and the IV pole, business as usual.

Then the anaesthesiologist came by with the release forms and told me he was going to make me stop breathing and trust his machine to keep me alive.

He honestly could not understand why this might bother me a bit. That he was going to kill me. For a cosmetic injury.

It wasn't the loss of control. In the few hours after the accident, they were sticking locals in me with wild joyous abandon and I had no idea what was going on up there. I didn't mind this.

But I didn't think that having what was, in essence, a bad scrape, justified risking my death, even a little bit.

(As it turned out, the graft didn't take and scar tissue grew instead, so they needn't have bothered.)

t!