A tale of two anaesthetics

Many years ago... what? No. This was after the wheel was invented, thanks for asking.

*ahem*

Many years ago, when I was bearing my wee bairns, it was discovered, that when in fact I should have been in nasty, horrible, rip-the-head-off-anyone-who-came-near-me labour, I was in fact... not. I, apparently, lack the appropriate enzymes, uptake gizmos, biological whatever-it-is to properly process pitocin, that darling little hormone that causes labour to start and progress to the point of popping out a wee 'un.

So, t'was nothing else to do but to go under the knife. Luckily, there was no anaesthesiologist available who was qualified to perform an epidural, because if there's anything worse than hearing they're going to cut you open, it's that they're going to cut you open while you're awake. Ew. So they knocked me out.

They did rather a good job of it the first time. Too good in fact. The nurse in the recovery room had to wake me by screaming my name at me (it sounded like screaming to me) and I was so groggy that when my husband placed the baby next to me on the bed, I couldn't even lift my hand to touch her. In fact, I could hardly see her, I was so groggy. The fact that no one in the room who was fully conscious (i.e. everyone but me) was intelligent enough to give me my glasses didn't help. Nor did the post-surgical searing pain as the morphine (good stuff, that) hadn't quite kicked in yet. They could have handed me a pair of bowling shoes and I would have been none the wiser at that point. "Twins!" I would have mumbled, as they wheeled me off to the maternity ward, "I wasn't expecting twins."

Fast forward four years. Second baby, same scenario. No labour for me. Out they put me again. And again a general. (Relieved I was, I can tell you.) But this time there was no slowly coming to in the recovery room being screamed at by a nurse who was probably not only annoyed by the fact that I wouldn't come to but also that I was making her late for her coffee break. Oh, no. I thought I'd save them all the trouble of waking me and woke up on my own. In the operating room. Tube still down my throat. In fact, I think it was the sputtering and gagging sounds I was making that alerted them to the fact that the patient was not, in fact, still unconscious as she was meant to be. The first words I heard that time were not my name but a somewhat frantic, "Oh my god! She's waking up! Get that tube out of her throat!" The only thing that kept me from panicking was the fact that, while I was conscious and could hear plainly enough, I was still paralyzed from head to toe. Couldn't even open my eyes. Couldn't speak even after they took the tube out. The drug that knocks you out is separate from the one that paralyzes your muscles, it would seem. And it's darned hard to panic and run around the room flapping your arms, when you can't even blink.

The good thing was, I had a lovely nurse who refrained from screaming anything at me, even my name, and very kindly explained what was going on, reassured me that everything was fine and that, in fact, my obstetrician was very pleased with me as I'd 'done a very good job.' Which struck me as quite funny, because I'd done nothing but lie there unconscious while all the serious work was going on. So I laughed. Only inside my head, of course, as I was still incapable of making any sound. So, it would seem that even general aneasthesia can't knock out my sense of humour. Which is nice. Because I was going to need it when I met my roommate later that same day. But that's another post.