(no subject)

[ewx]

I'm reminded by stuff going on elsewhere at the moment of the two operations that took place on my toe - one in a GP surgery, which in the end did no lasting good, and one in hospital. The former seemed well organized and was in a freshly painted room, but had just the doctor and a nurse; they rushed the anaesthetic slightly and of course in the long run didn't do any good anyway. By contrast the hospital version was a bit disorganized in that the timing and details like whether I'd have a local or general anaesthetic were unclear until surprisingly late, and the room seemed really quite spare compared to the gleaming theatre in the hospital of the collective unconscious; but there were two people at the business end of things, plus an anaesthetist in attendance all the time (and they waited until it was clear it had taken, not that it took that long), and they actually fixed the problem on a permanent basis.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Did you have to do the whole night-in-hospital-beforehand-for-observation, ritual-purification-and-preparation-of-the-victim thing or do they just let you turn up for it?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I spent a night in hospital beforehand with no food after a given time. I was starving afterwards...

[rejs.livejournal.com]

Gosh. I just turned up and had it done under local (both times, the latter being the permanent cure). I didn't think it was the sort of thing that needed a general[1].

I did get to stay in hospital afterwards the second time, because my toe refused to stop bleeding on a reasonable timescale. Bloody thing.

[1] My dad did get a Colonel for some things there, but that's what comes of having a load of army medics based in the area.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

They didn't give me a general either.

[karen2205]

Having had a general for my appendectomy, I wouldn't recommend them unless you really need them. They make you ickily groggy for days.

[sparrowsion]

If I was groggy for several days after the general I had earlier this year (in and out of hospital the same day, but it was private) I'm sure it was more to do with the vast quantities of pain-killers than after-effects of the anaesthetic.

[karen2205]

I'm pretty certain my grogginess was down to the anaesthetic - unless they gave me lots of painkillers while I was anaestheised, the only drugs they gave me were pethadine, ibuprofen, paracetomal and a variety of antibiotics.

The pethadine made me drowsy, and I wasn't impressed that noone had warned me it'd do that before hand, but didn't seem to have any lasting effects.