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.
It varies depending on the drugs used, I’ve been under multiple times now, the big one being for an open heart bypass.
That one I saw nothing, felt nothing, but coming out of it I remember them pulling out the breathing tube and putting me on a bi-pap machine. I had to beg to be taken off of it because it was stopping me from exhaling. I could breathe in fine, but the back pressure wouldn’t let me breathe out.
Then the drugs, it was a combination of a bunch of things, propofol (the stuff that killed Michael Jackson), fentanyl (the stuff that killed Prince). Oxy, the works.
I was having weird hallucinations. If I closed my eyes, I could see a perfectly painted brick wall about a foot in front of my face. I could see the detail on the bricks and the mortar, the texture of the paint. Bonus - every time they put me in a different room, the wall would change color.