As a compliment to the thread about near death experiences I’d really like hearing people’s experiences of losing consciousness under general anesthesia and what’s it like coming back.
Also interested of things anesthetists may have noticed about this during their career.
Once. Quite recently. Uh, nothing weird happened really.
While I was being administered, I could feel my eyesight drift upwards and I got clear memory of everything, including asking the doctor if they weren’t going to ask me to do a countdown or to talk about a certain topic like my favorite show as I drift. I can recreate the entire conversation up to the moment I knew I was about to lose conscience and just let my head lean a bit for comfort.
However, once I woke up again, I had a full conversation with my wife and I remember exactly 50% of it. I did not slur words nor say anything weird. I moved myself from the stretcher to the bed on my own apparently, but no memory. I was basically fully in control of my own agency… except for the fact I was extremely prone to falling asleep on the spot, and my brain was basically refusing to retain most of it. I even had to pee to a container and apparently managed to do it without causing a mess despite falling asleep on it, and then waking up to hand over the container. Anything you asked, I could easily reply, and I was clearly listening to requests, but if you ask me to tell what was spoken and in what order, I’ll fail you even tho I can recognize the event.
One thing I do not remember is the two nurses in the post-op room calling my name to check if I was good or any of the stretcher movement stuff. They did ask me what to call out beforehand, and said there was a procedure for checking on you before sending you to back to the overnight patient room, but that was the last I’ve seen them. Probably.
So, basically, that’s it. Large blackout, then groggy with memory loss. Then normal.