The Anesthesia Chronicles

I got my wisdom teeth taken out last week and ended up taking a short medical leave from the blog. Sorry folks.

Although this isn’t news to me, I do dumb stuff when anesthesia is involved.

I had knee surgery when I was 14 and they put my IV in the back of my hand. During that process, I passed out… my dad almost did too. When I woke in recovery (thinking I was still in the operating room) I found dried blood on my arm and my IV was now in my wrist. Somewhere in the anesthetic-induced black out, I became agitated and pulled out my IV.

Fast forward to last Wednesday. With the nitrous gas flowing through the tube over my nose, I calmly chatted with the surgeon as she started my IV in the inside of my arm. Although I remember nothing of my Wednesday between 7:00am and 2:00pm, here’s what I’m told happened:

When they brought Brad back to see me, he tried to get my to check my blood sugar, because we had talked about needing to check it right after the surgery. Apparently, I took my PDM from him with tunnel vision focusing on turning off my temporary reduce basal rate. Instead of doing either of those things, I deactivated my OmniPod (ended all insulin delivery). When he told me that’s what I had done, I got angry with him and said that I had to do it myself because he couldn’t be bothered to do it for me. (Don’t take anything that someone says while under anesthetic seriously, in my case, I become very much un-Rachellike and get agitated.)

While he dreaded having to do a pod change on me the whole ride home, I dozed in the passenger seat. After arriving home, autopilot kicked in. My husband watched me gather the items that I needed and drunkenly execute a successful* OmniPod change. I stuck the pod on my arm and when he asked me why I explained that I needed to sleep so it couldn’t go on my back (the next site in the rotation) and it would be out of my way if I stuck it on my arm.

What we learned

I felt phenomenally dumb when I found out that I’d deactivated my pod instead of checking my blood sugar or turning off my temp basal (at least it was pod change day). But I’d say we learned a valuable lesson. When I have been under general anesthetic,  I should not be allowed to attempt even basic self-care. I should also not be allowed to touch the insulin controls. We also learned that I’ve gotten pod changes so ingrained in my head that I can do them while impaired.

I’m not the only one

I found out that other people have done stupid things, including cussing out the entire office as well as crying uncontrollably, after having wisdom teeth removed. So I know that I’m not the only one who does dumb stuff when affected by anesthesia, what did you do?

 

2 thoughts on “The Anesthesia Chronicles

  1. I had a fun allergic reaction to a local anesthetic and had to be coded. That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever done under anesthesia.

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