Pre-op worries: The anaesthetic

When you are deciding to have bariatric surgery there are many things you need to take into account. Just like any other surgical procedure there are potential risks and complications to going under anasthetic and having surgery. You need to weigh up the potential benefit for yourself against the potential risks to decide whether it’s something that’s right for you.

Before my gastric bypass I had been under a general anasthetic once before when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I came through that one okay but I didn’t particularly enjoy waking up out of it. I think because I’m such a control freak and don’t like not feeling like I’m in control, I find it frustrating to come out of an anasthetic because I don’t like the feeling of not being all there.

To be completely honest I didn’t really start worrying about the anasthetic until a couple of days before the surgery. I had so much to think about in general around surgery and the pre-op diet preoccupied me quite a bit in those couple of weeks leading up to it. While there are many risks in choosing to have surgery and be put under I think everyone, at some point, worries about the possibility of not waking up after an anasthetic.

I think this was probably the main worry for my husband and my parents as well. My husband was fantastic and came to the hospital on the day of my surgery with me and waited while they did the procedure. He then sat there with me for hours after I had woken up but was still quite hazy and basically just laid there napping on and off.

I think if you have had an anasthetic before and come out of it okay you have slightly less to worry about. The surgical teams are professionals and do this everyday and are able to manage emergency situations well. One of the reasons the surgical teams get you to lose weight beforehand is to lessen the risks of giving you a general anastehtic. The higher your BMI, the bigger the risk. This was one of the things that really made me stick to my pre-op diet because I wanted to lessen that risk as much as possible.

When you’re thinking about having baritatric surgery and deciding if it’s the right decision for you or not the associated risks of surgery need to be taken into account. For me I got to the point where the benefits to me having the surgery and improving my quality of life and hopefully lengthening my lifespan was worth taking the risk of going under for the procedure. Obviously things turned out well for me and there were no complications associated with the general anasthetic.

Is or was the thought of being put under a worry for you surronding bariatric surgery? Did you worry about it for a while or like me did it only really strike you as something to start worrying about a few days out from when it was going to happen?