If the trade off is between loss of certain memories and emotions and death I know which one I choose. (Some memories, a bad marriage for example, you may wish to forget!)
“Some memories, a bad marriage for example, you may wish to forget!”
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
After my cancer surgery almost 3 years ago, I vowed never, ever to have gen. anesthesia ever again, no matter what. Totally messed with my congnitive function, was a total zombie stumbling around barely able to think or remember, for weeks. I have taken a lot of herbs to help restore function, and it did gradually improve, but my memory is not the same.
Never, ever again.
To forget my first wife would be catastrophic. Those lessons need to be fresh in my mind.
In some cases where I’ve been along with friends/relatives who needed to go under for a procedure I’ve told the Quacks to go as light as possible on the knock-out stuff. The main reason being they can’t predict what decade the guy might wake up in. The wrong decade could be troublesome. In the same cases I’ve found that a light dose brings cognition back before the day is over. But a normal dose will have the person asking me all the same stuff for the next two days. And then having noticeable effects for as long as three months out.
All that convinces me that anesthesia is witchcraft. they get snippy when I get on their case-—after the work is done. I try to be polite going in. My Mom said I could go to doctor school if I wanted but I flunked bedside manner. And my own Quack says the only thing he can find wrong with me is my attitude.