I've heard stories where people have been knocked out for the surgery but they dream and feel every bit of pain. Most people forget about it when they wake up. Some don't.
let us know how it goes.
That's
extremely unlikely nowadays due to improvements in monitoring. I'd heard those stories too, so I looked into them before I was having surgery. I prefer to know the risks even if I'd prefer not to think about it.
I was surprised to find how advanced a speciality anaesthesia is. It's possible that the anaesthetist is more medically qualified and experienced than the surgeon.
Back to the OP's concerns:
In my experience, the worst thing about my op was the usual "nil by mouth" beforehand. Lack of food becomes very unpleasant quite quickly.
You might have seen the "patient's eye view" scene from some older medical TV programs. Being wheeled along corridors on your back on a bed, lights passing by overhead. That's real. Outside the operating theatre, it's anaesthetic time. I never felt the anaesthetist putting the needle in the back of my hand (I was looking the other way). He told me he was going to start the anaesthetic and what it might feel like and I was awake in a different room. The disconnect was that sudden and complete, as if I had been teleported through space and time. One instant outside the operating theatre, the next instant in the recovery ward without any sense of any time having passed.
Coming out of anaesthetic was A-OK for me. A nurse came over to ask me if I was OK and I laughed. I was very OK indeed, thank you very much. They'd given me morphine because there was going to be hefty post-operative pain (they cut open my scrotum and did some work on my testicles and plumbing and that's going to hurt for a while). Potent stuff, morphine.
Shortly afterwards, I ate the best meal I have ever had. Spectacularly good food. Objectively, it was probably just OK and my experience of it was greatly affected by my hunger, but subjectively it was the best meal I have ever had.
I checked myself out of the hospital a few hours later. I had to wait until someone could remove the shunt from the back of my hand and a doctor assessed me, which is as it should be. I could have stayed in overnight but I preferred to leave. Hospitals are full of sick people
