I am watching Larry King right now and the topic is anesthesia awareness. It is so frightening to think this can happen. The show's stats say that this happens to 40,000 people a year: That they are not put out during an operation, and they feel searing pain throughout the procedure. A friend of mine who has had lots of operations says that it happened to her once.
There is some knowledge that it takes more anesthesia to put a redhead out; that redheads process the pain medication differently. I had heard it before and Dr. Sanjay Gupta just mentioned it on this show. This hits home for me, as I have red in my hair. Inside, my hair looks dark brown, but in the sunlight it is definitely red. My fear would be that inside the operating room, they would see brown hair and not red.
This is all hypothetical as I am not going to have surgery, and hopefully I won't. I guess I worry about it because of my red hair. Interestingly enough, all of the guests on the show who have had this happen to them all have red hair but one.
My only experiences with pain problems/pain killers have been when as a child my dentist could never deaden my tooth and pulled it anyway; when I went to have a cyst removed, and the doctor deadened the skin, but it felt like he was pulling the skin off; and when I went for my colonoscopy and I opened my eyes for a second during the procedure. I didn't feel anything, bu my eyes boinged open for a tad. These situations just give me pause. If ever in a similar situation, I guess I better speak up that I am really a red head.
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