Over the last couple of days I've had a health issue that escalated quickly and landed me in hospital. The surgery I had for it tonight is under general anesthesia but is pretty minor and safe.
However, the catch is that is:
A) I've never been admitted to hospital overnight before and have never been asleep for a procedure, so I've been accidentally thinking about death more than I'd like.
B) Because my throat is swollen they couldn't do the general anesthetic the usual way and I needed to be awake while an alternative approach was applied.
I want to pause here to point out here that the anaesthetist was amazing he explained things well and held my hand for the worst parts.
To apply the anesthetics they numbed my throat and nose, then began to insert a camera followed by a tube in via my nostral.
All was fine at first if a bit uncomfortable, but as it headed past my vocal cords I realised I couldn't swallow because the pipe had filled the space, this started to panic me but i knew it was part of the process. Then as the pipe reached further into my wind pipe I started coughing uncontrollably, I started to panic more, but they'd told me this would happen.
Then things got worse, I realised I couldn't breathe I kept struggling for breaths but the pipe was blocking any hope of air getting through. My mind jumped straight to "somethings gone wrong". They kept reassuring me it was going well and everything was normal but I could only think "they just haven't noticed yet". I open my mouth to let them know that somthing's wrong and that I'm not getting oxygen, but either the anaesthetic has started working or the tube was blocking my vocal cords and not even the slightest sounds come out.
In that moment I just thought, this is it, I'm dead. There's nothing I can do and I'm going to die. And then I lost conciseness...
Of course I guess this all only happened in a few seconds and my thoughts were likely quick flash thoughts not anything as elaborate as the above, but still I hope you get the idea.
Then I woke up in recovery
It had all been fine, they knew what they were doing, nothing had gone wrong. However , once I had my bearings again I found my self just thinking "Oh, I lived". Suddenly I was struggling to not start sobbing uncontrollably, I'm not sure why, I don't think it's ever happened to me before, and it feels pretty irrational. I'm not sure if its relief or the thought of what could have happened.
I couldn't really articulate to the nurses why I was upset so I just said that I was a bit overwhelmed, and did my best to keep it together.
This is where I am now, its the middle of the night and each time I think about it I have to pretty much hold my breath to not break down into a fit of sobbing in the middle of the ward. Which i'd really like to avoid since it feels a little silly and would be very awkward.