A few comments in this thread mention "genera anaesthesia side effects" and long-term problems. I have never heard of this and a quick wikipedia/google search is not bringing up good source on the topic. Is this substantiated or another "vaccines cause autism" kind of thing?
General anaesthesia is actually somewhat dangerous.
Your chance of dying from anaesthesia is around 1 in 100,000 - 185,000. While it may seem like a safe number, it's orders of magnitude higher than winning a major lottery.
That number also doesn't include medical fuckups during anaesthesia, like overdose, airway obstruction. In that case the number shoots up to 1:2500 - 1:5000.
When having staples inserted (and also removed a year later) into the growth plates in my knees, I was given the option of having my legs numbed too for pain relief. I'm glad I took that option now - unless it was post-op only.
From the second op, I had a huge black bruise on my thigh in the shape of a hand print. I couldn't imagine the pain if I'd have woken during the cause of that.
There was recent news on the detrimental effects of general anesthesia has on the very young and old. Apparently it can be neurotoxic but healthy adults don't seem to have long lasting problems.
A family friend of mine went under general anesthesia and woke up senile. He was in his late-70s, early-80s at the time. Lives in a nursing home now. Once in a while can have some moments of somewhat clarity but they only last for a minute or two.
It seems possible, due to what is used for general anesthesia. However, the person in the story was not given general anesthesia, only a local anesthetic.
