I’ve only been put under general anesthesia once in my life, and ever since I’ve wondered what exactly happened to me during those lost hours. It turns out nobody really knows. But if they ever find out, they may get a little closer to solving the riddle of consciousness. That’s the subject of my newest brain column for Discover. Check it out.
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"Celebrated curiosity monger"
Carl Zimmer writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist.
He is the author of twelve books, the most recent of which is Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. His website is carlzimmer.com and his address is blog at carlzimmer dot com .
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Copyright © 2012, Kalmbach Publishing Co.
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March 17th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Consciousness is a big subject.
A few years ago I was anesthetized for more than 8 hours. Waking was very different from waking from sleep. I felt that no time had passed — perhaps due to anesthesia + cooling my blood. It was a strange and wonderful feeling (ecstatic that I was out of surgery).
The perceived jump in time was eerie. Recently I’ve been reading John Locke and his concept of identity. Extrapolating from Locke, the sense of personal identity involves, in part, creating a story of your life which is continuous in space and time. No discontinuities. Anesthesia felt like a discontinuity.
A second really weird thing about waking from surgery. I heard the people in recovery discussing when to take the breathing tube out. They decided on 10 minutes. My mind felt alert, my throat hurt, and I wanted the tube out. When it came out, they watched as I tried to breathe on my own. Although my breath was shallow, I could do it. But then a sudden fear: breathing took extreme focus and conscious attention. I didn’t have it in me. I wanted to relax and rest, not work and breathe. Fortunately, the effort needed to breathe didn’t last long and I was soon breathing automatically.
Anesthesia is a weird thing.
March 17th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Thanks, Johnk for your experience; pretty interesting.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:59 am
I agree about the oddness. I was recently “put under” for about 45 minutes. Coming out of it was not anything like waking up after sleep.
I’m one of those who have a pretty good internal clock. If I need to wake up early, I normally do so shortly before the alarm goes off. And if I wake up in the night, I most often have a pretty good sense of the time even before I check the clock.
Coming out of anesthesia was very different. I had no sense of whether any time had passed or not. If I’d been told that the operation had been postponed and I’d only been out for 30 seconds, I would have accepted it without hesitation.
It did indeed seem like a discontinuity.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I’ve gone under 3 times in my life. Twice for leg surgery, once for the removal of some impacted molars. It really was an experience. Placing the mask over my nose and ask me to count backwards from ten. I got to eight before I blacked out. When I woke up again I was clear headed and pain free, of course they told me that when the anesthesia wore off it’d be a different story. Perhaps some lingering jumble in my brain prevented the pain signals from reaching me, but it was a very strange experience.
The real horror stories come from people who don’t react normally to it, who are paralyzed completely but aware of their surroundings and can continue to feel pain. So when they go under the knife its incredibly traumatic. Doesn’t happen very frequently at all but it does happen from what I understand. Really interesting.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The thought of being drugged unconcious while some wacko messes around with knifes on some of your organs makes me sick!
March 17th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
My theory on anesthesia is that you are always conscious and able to feel pain during the surgery, but the drug messes with your brain and makes you tell other people that you were unconscious, and also prevents you from objecting if ever you need another surgery.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Very interesting article, Carl! What intrigues me is that you, in a completely different way, reach a conclusion similar to that of a recent study published in PLoS biology: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000061&ct=1#toclink4
It’s reviewed here: http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/igniting_the_flame_of_consciousness.php and here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16775-consciousness-signature-discovered-spanning-the-brain.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
March 18th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
@Scott Belyea:
I’m curious, did the anesthesia mess with your circadian rythms? In other words, can an extended bout under anesthetics cause jetlag? Or do our circadian clocks march on, but are just cut off from the rest of the brain as those highways are shut down during anesthesia?
March 26th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
My recent brush with anesthesia last month nearly killed me. Thus, I hope to avoid it for as long as possible.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:44 am
I have been reading everyone’s responses and they are quite in contrast to my experience. I was under anesthesia for 2 hours. And acutely aware of the time. What’s odd is I heard murmurings about what to cut and blah blah. I can’t figure out though whether I actually was hearing what happened. Or if I was dreaming it because I had been thinking about the surgery so much.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:05 am
i was on general anesthesia 2 weekends ago. with the mask on, i can still remember gradually losing consciousness and got to blink only once before i totally passed out. it was 7am
then suddenly i was awake and feared that they will start the procedure with me still conscious! despite the drugged state i started to think of something to tell them that i was awake, that’s when i did the ‘what time is it’ gesture with my both hands. then i heard a voice “it’s 9am. the operation’s finished”.
time did not pass. no dreams. weird
December 8th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I was just wondering, if anyone knows, is being delusional and kind of out-of-it a common part of coming out of anesthesia? If so, to what extent? I’m writing a short story and I want things to be accurate. The story is about a girl who was involved with some sort of accident (still working on it), and now has problems remembering things like emotions and colors and simple information (severe amnesia, I guess), and important people and events in her life like her boyfriend, dying father, troubled past and all the good things, too, of course. In the beginning of the story, she is coming out of anesthesia, and I want that to feel real, because I know the amnesia bit is very over-exaggerated and not to mention, overused. Hopefully, it turns out well, and not too dodgy.
January 2nd, 2010 at 4:56 pm
I am interesting in the “suddenly” going into and “suddenly” waking up from anesthesia (which has ramifications for brain theory). This seems to me nothing like drifting off to sleep or groggily waking up but happens quite quickly. Do you agree?
February 21st, 2010 at 10:51 am
I’ve asked many people about their experience of being put under and how they felt aftwerward. Both times I’ve experienced it the feeling was the same – a sleep so deep I have no sense of the time having passed. I pretty sure I wouldn’t have noticed if I died! I’ve concluded that souls don’t exist becuase death would be an even deeper sleep, and therefore more unaware than being put under. So if I have to wait 15 billion years for the universe to collapse and expand again, spawning another habitable planet, then it will feel as long as a 2 hour surgery. The whole experience made me very comfortable w/ the notion of dying and liberated me from faith in an afterlife.
March 20th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Interesting stories! Here’s mine. I’m so afraid of general anesthesia (because no one can tell me where you “go”) that when I had abdominal surgery I asked if I could do something else. The doctor said a spinal-epidural would work fine. The nurse gave me “something to relax you” and I was pretty well out of it from that before they even started the spinal injection. The next thing I remember is “being back” and in the recovery room with a really sore throat. I asked the nurse why my throat was so sore. She said I woke up screaming in the middle of the surgery (I have a very vague fuzzy-dream kind of recollection but no memory of any pain). She said the surgeon was “not pleased” and “they put you down with general after that.” Later, in my room, I apparently chatted happily for hours with friends and family and took phone calls. The next day…I had no idea what I’d said or even some of the people I’d talked to. Whether that was the anesthesia “hangover” or the shot of Darvon they gave me in my butt…who knows. 20 years earlier I’d also had a spinal-epidural for an appendectomy and also woke up! I remember that episode clearly because I told the surgeon he was “pulling” on me (I was being stitched up) and I didn’t like it. Then I told him I wanted a different doctor!
July 13th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Horror show
Horror show
Horrow show
July 13th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Michael Jackson died of a Profofol overdose. This drug is also known as Diprivan. It’s wonderful, but it can be deadly when put into the wrong hands. Long live anesthsia.
November 20th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
since 2001 i have had 7 spinal surgeries and have been under anesthisea for as long as 14 hours. since then my life has been very different. I dont feel like the same person i was before the surgeries. My mind keeps going back to the times i was under (did something happen ?) its as if i have become obsessed with the matter of trying to find information on this. If there is anyone out there who feels the same please reply.
sincerely lisa
October 5th, 2011 at 4:13 am
2 months ago i had a maijor sergery for blockage in my intestine……operation lasted for 8 hours…….. first i woke up nd felt smthing very cold on my abdm nd then i tried to move ma fingure but couldnt..then tried to open ma eyes still couldnt, nd then i heard they were goin to start the operation, nd i was like wtf they r goin to operte while am feeling every thing, then i tried to stop my breathing so i could tell them i am up, but there was a pipe in my throat , nd i failed again nd then they started operation nd for a while it was like hell it wass so painfull but i couldnt do anything….nd then black out,,,, then i found myself in this circular tunnel nd it was moving i saw my life like lil flury……it was flash pack of the past nd in the end it was again black out, nd then smthing started which i couldnt explain, it was like thousands of years there i was now fed up with all that……..nd at the end of that thing it was sm hopital bed………..nd again that unexplainable thing started , again it ends nd again it started, nd it was like real life……it was like millions of years in there… nd then again its black i couldnt understand nd next thing was my a sound it was of my mum, talkin to me….nd was also talkin to her that i dont like to b here it was a dammm strange experience