Anesthesia Best Quotes

And then I threw up from all the anesthesia and my teeth were still chattering and they were telling me not to vomit so hard, otherwise my stitches would bust open. I said,'I don't know how to vomit softly.' That's like telling someone to shit perfume.

It is the moral anesthetic of our day to ask God and our friends to only understand our sin from our point of view. This mind-set of seeing sin from a personal point of view has led to, at best, weak Christians crippled by sin and untouched by gospel power, or at worst, wolves in sheep’s clothing who hunker down with offices in the church, teaching feeble sheep a perverted catechism, one that renders sin grace and grace sin, one that confuses doubt with intelligence and skepticism with renewed hope. When we live by the belief that sin is best discerned from our own point of view, we cannot help but to develop a theology of excuse-righteousness. We become anesthetized to the reality of our own sin. One consequence of this moral anesthesia is the belief that you are in good standing with God if you give to him what the desires of your flesh can spare. But sin, biblically rendered, is both a crime and a disease, requiring both the law of God and his grace to apply it for true help.

Other mysteries have been untangled. Redheads are known to feel pain especially acutely. This confused researchers until someone realized that the same genetic mutation that causes red hair also increases sensitivity to pain. One study found that redheaded patients require about 20 percent more general anesthesia than brunettes.

I have no idea. You know what’s really scary?” “What?” “No one will tell you.” “Like who?” “Anyone. It’s the damnedest thing. I really want to know what I’m up against. So I ask my best friend, she’s had two. She says, ‘Oh, when you see what you get it’s worth it.’ That’s no answer, right? So I ask someone else who didn’t use any anesthesia. She says, ‘Oh, you’ll forget all about it when you see the baby.’ That’s not an answer either. And my mom was knocked out, old-style, when she had me. So she can’t tell me, and she probably wouldn’t. It’s some kind of mom conspiracy.

I held Boke when they gave her anesthesia and stroked her head as she slipped off to sleep. I thought I’d leave, but Dr. Magee invited me to stay. I watched, wanting to be a witness to this miracle. It took what, forty-five minutes? And it would change Boke’s life forever. And mine, too. I had come to Kenya thinking I would be blessing these kids with good works, and I was the one being blessed. When it was over, Dr. Magee said he was impressed I didn’t flinch once. It was one of the best reviews I’ve ever received. I went with Boke to recovery so that I would be the first person she saw when she woke up. I sat cradling her and marveling that you could already see the transformation of her mouth being made whole. I held her in the crook of my right arm, and in her postoperation sleep, she wrapped her little hand around my left index finger. When she was fully awake, someone went to get her mom to tell her that the surgery was a success. She came in, and we smiled at each other. She had no idea who I was and wanted nothing from me but to step in when she was in need. I hugged her, thinking how scared she must have been. The doctors worked all day, so I stayed late and did the same the next day. When it was over, Ken and I were exhausted, and I could not stop thanking him for getting me involved in Operation Smile. It gave me perspective on what mattered. I hadn’t planned on doing so much soul searching, but being so far away gave me an opportunity to look inward in stillness.

Before anesthesia, surgeons removed bladder stones, drained ovarian cysts, and amputated legs, but little else; they were rewarded for their speed more than their skill. A surgeon named Robert Liston, in an attempt to best his own speed record for amputating a leg, accidentally cut off one of his patient’s testicles and two of his assistant’s fingers.

There is in Dutch birth participants a deep-seated conviction that the woman’s body knows best and that, given enough time, nature knows best and that, given enough time, nature will take its course.”2 When I visited Japan, I found similar attitudes among the women and midwives with whom I spoke. “Birth is natural,” several said. “I would be afraid of an earthquake, but not of having a baby without anesthesia. That’s just the work that women do. Besides, if you take anesthesia, you miss the ecstasy. You miss the euphoria.

Having come this far, exposed and candid, perhaps I can find sanctuary behind one incontestable truth pervading operating rooms across the country – the reality of everyday miracles. From time to time the inexplicable and the impossible happen. Behind a paper mask and under artificial lights I get to perform surgery on an unconscious body, the physical part of what we think of as a pet. Essentially I’m working construction. I’m the guy splicing wires, welding pipes, shoring up support beams, and generally renovating the house. All the other stuff, the important stuff, I cannot influence. These are the intangibles, the memories, the history, the bonds, the things that make a difference between a house and a home, the things that make the difference between a body covered in scales or feathers or fur and our pet. It is this everything else that eludes me. This everything else is the spirit of the animal. Under anesthesia, it might move out for a while, but when the surgery is done and the gas turned off, it comes back. In our worst-case scenario, regardless of whether it returns or not, it doesn’t cease to exist. Anesthesia is just a training run for the soul.

A perkier bit at the beginning of a Three Stooges comedy, Restless Knights (February 20, 1935), has Brennan playing their father, decked out in a large night cap and a fake white beard, lying on his deathbed calling for his sons. He confesses in tremolo that they are of royal blood: “Years ago I was the royal chamberlain of the Kingdom of Anesthesia.” Now, he urges them to offer their swords in service of their imperiled queen. The quality of the writing is best exemplified in Brennan’s telling Curly that his title is “Baron of Grey Matter.” Brennan then says, “Come close my sons so that I may bless you,” and rises enough to give them a sweeping triple slap, as the light fades on his 120-second part in this sixteen minute short.