Prompt / Thank you Miss Hill!

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Dec. 29/18

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The dreams they tell, I don’ t always think it’s the anesthesia. I do wonder, but I say nothing out loud.

” There were three of them, big playing cards, just like the movie Alice In Wonderland, you know, the mean  Queen of Hearts, flat card body with her square  head on top and the Jacks lined up behind her, but no heads in my dream, just life sized cards falling out of a window. And me, down below, thinking I could catch them. Then the luau started…”

Now he’s waving his arms left and right. I reach quick for his swinging IV tubing and turned to the CRNA for the remainder of report.

” …and he got some Ketamine due to sensitivity to the Propofol and Fentanyl”

Aah, good old Ketamine.

” You girls are so pretty with your crowns on… hey, my dream, what does it mean?”

Vital signs good, abdomen soft, no pain.

“Sir, I think you should ask someone else…after your medicine wears off.”

Tomorrow

While you’re wishing for the day to be over, someone else is wishing for another day.

Dream, Dream, Dream

I wonder if my patients dream during surgery.

I wonder if the last person they see pops up in their subconscious while their surgeon is cutting, suctioning, or fixing immovable joints and stenotic veins.

I wonder if anesthesia makes “sleep state” dreams more vivid, less vivid, or ominous in their meaning.

People seem to be less afraid of the anesthesia, and more of the cutting and alterations made while they “sleep”. That’s ironic to me, seeing as the incisions are portals to our pain —reminders of our presence here.

Anesthesia steals our time.

I’ve had patients again and again wake up post procedure with the confused look on their face because it feels like only minutes have passed when it has been over an hour. I’ve had recovery nurses tell me the confusion post-op patients feel makes them anxious and elevates their pressure.

It’s the only instance when I don’t sing the praises of anesthetics — when you encounter those that are sensitive to their time here, whether it’s blissful or complicated.

So I hope that when they must “sleep” on one of their visits to a surgery center or the surgical unit of a hospital, they dream.

And they remember it.

And it’s a good dream.