I’m scheduled for surgery on February 1st.
While I have induced and monitored anesthesia on animals for years now. I myself have never been under anesthesia, I’m well educated regarding anesthetic but when it comes to myself or my own animals all of my common sense goes right out the window so let’s just say me being anxious about this is an understatement.
After talking about my usage my doctor urged me to not consume cannabis of any kind for a month before surgery. This has been difficult because just the idea of the surgery is causing me to consume more due to the anxiety. At this point I’m 2 weeks from surgery and haven’t stopped yet. I’m not sure if 2 weeks is actually long enough, idk what I’m looking to accomplish by posting this…maybe just some words of encouragement or reassurance that I probably won’t die.
Should I reschedule my surgery or just die? I think I just need someone with parental vibes to tell me I’ll be alright😂
Your doctor is a joke. It doesn’t matter if you smoke weed. If it did, anesthesia would be killing people all the time.
I was fine until he got in my head😩
I had no intentions of stopping until he started telling me horror stories about people coming in on edibles and waking up during surgery. Also said his colleagues patients have died
If it matters so much, then the only responsible thing for him to do would be to drug test you first and then decline you as a patient if you failed the test. It would be textbook medical malpractice to do otherwise if there was a lethal danger to you. But of course he isn’t doing that. And his insurance company providing his very expensive med mal insurance doesn’t make him, either, which should also be telling. They really don’t want to kill you at the hospital and if it was as easy as a pee test to know who was about to die, then that would be happening.
I think it comes down to more the fact that they have to give you more anesthesia if you smoke weed…
You do know 1/1000 people do not receive enough anesthesia when going into surgery and are conscious but unable to move the whole time…
I saw a video about a woman who had to have an eye removed and she wasn’t able to move and conscious through the whole thing…
I’d recommend brain wave monitoring to make sure you receive the correct dose so you’re really out
Waking During Surgery: Can BIS Help?)-,Does%20BIS%20Brain%20Monitor%20Cut%20Waking%20During%20Surgery%3F,forehead%20to%20monitor%20brain%20waves.
“Doctors call it “unintended intraoperative awareness” or “anesthesia awareness.” Patients call it downright scary. It happens rarely – to about one or two out of 1,000 surgery patients – but it does happen: During surgery, patients become aware of things that are happening to them.”
Fuck that shit
This is actually not the case. Absolute shitload of anecdotal evidence exists of people having extreme tolerance to anesthesia from cannabis use.
My 135 lb girlfriend was given the maximum amount of anesthesia they could legally give her and she woke up 3x during surgery and she blazes like a chimney.
I don’t think it has to do with safety of dangerous drug interaction as much as it just not effecting you nearly as strongly.
Definitely don’t go high. Seen evidence that receptors, are pretty much fully refreshed after about a week without THC.
I would give it 48 hours probably at least as my gfs recount of waking up multiple times during surgery sounded no bueno.
I inquired with the doctor and first thing he asked after was if we were frequent cannabis users. Said it’s kind of fucked up because there’s been no real attempt to quantity the effect and doctors are instructed to just use their best judgment on the matter. One of the ways cannabis being schedule one hinders necessary knowledge
You should talk to your anesthesiologist about your cannabis use. I don’t know where you live, but if you live in any place that has a lot of cannabis usage that specific doctor who will be putting you under will know if their specific drug mix has any issues with cannabis in your system.
There’s some pretty good evidence that cannabis impacts the effects of other drugs (enhancing or diminishing returns) so be honest and upfront with them about it.
Yes - this is possible. Yes - this does happen. Patients die sometimes (regardless of cannabis usage!). And yeah - its very possible that you will wake up, if you don’t tell the anesthesiologist or if they don’t know what they are doing with cannabis consumers.
Its good that your doctor knows. Try to consider all the other things people STOP doing before surgery. Smoking, taking other medicines, eating, etc. All of those things have a specific purpose - even something as simple as not taking NSAIDs for the days before surgery. Or reducing salt intact - can have specific impacts on the path of the surgery.
So let them know that you had been consuming, be specific about doses - just like you would be if you had eaten something or taken any other medication. That will let them know how to handle YOU specifically. Because you are a precious human - who is physically different than most other humans on the planet, if not all. And they need all the info they can get to make the right kind of decisions.
I don’t know what kind of surgery you are having - or how long you are going to be under - or what other medicines they will want to use during your surgery. But they do. So let them know, and they can make right choices.
Just in case there is any doubt - patients do wake up and patients do die from complications related to anesthesia on the regular. Including because of cannabis complications. It happens - its not any worse than any other kind of complications that happen from aneasthesia and surgery in general.
Just in case people are wondering - they have been quantifying this - even with the scheduling of cannabis. Here is a NIH study about just this very thing - its pretty specific about has excellent references if anyone was so interested in it.
And we 100% expect that now that the MMR has been signed into law that we’ll see even more studies like this moving forward.
I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to type all of this out. I didn’t sleep at all because I was up reading horror stories online about people waking up while under. You’ve made me feel a little better!
yeah sounds to me like a doctor who is far behind the times and let their own personal opinion shine. doesn’t sound like legit medical advice.