Being in Charge During Oral Surgery
Last spring I had oral surgery to remove four impacted wisdom teeth (one of them sideways impacted). I wanted to do it without sedation or general anesthesia. I had a hard time finding anyone willing to do it with me fully conscious. All the surgeons claimed that my particular case was an especially difficult surgery and would therefore be far too traumatic for me to handle being awake and aware during it. I finally found one surgeon who at least believed it would not be prohibitively difficult for him to work on me without anesthesia (although he, too, put up quite a lot of resistance to the idea). I managed to bargain him down to using only a local anesthetic and nitrous oxide (laughing gas) instead of sedation anesthesia. During the surgery, I realized the nitrous oxide was causing me much more distraction than benefit, so I signaled to the nurse to cut it, and she took it down to the very lowest level. I remember the entire surgery and participated fully in it-mentally, emotionally, and physically.
I am very proud of myself, both for how I got through the surgery and for not letting myself be intimidated or scared into submitting to unconsciousness. During the surgery I held steady and still, actively working on relaxing my muscles and breathing deeply. Things got pretty intense for awhile, when the surgeon couldn't get the first tooth loose and had to keep drilling away more of my jaw bone and straining at the tooth with his instruments. It was scary and felt overwhelming, but I remained present and visualized giving up my hanging on to that tooth. It seemed to come free the same time as something inside me let go of wanting to keep my wisdom teeth.
It was not a good idea for me to discharge while the surgeon was operating on me, since he was sawing and hacking on teeth laying right against the sensory nerve in my lip that I rely upon as a flute and bassoon player. Nor did my surgeon seem to have much slack for seeing me have anything other than positive feelings (understandably, he did not want to feel pulled to be both counselor and surgeon), so I remained calm whenever he was in the surgery room and shook violently from head to foot as soon as everyone left, returning spontaneously to a state of cheerful enthusiasm and physical relaxation the instant I saw the front of his surgeon's coat entering the doorway again. It was quite remarkable to me how my body could turn its discharge on and off so precisely and instantaneously!
I am enclosing a copy of the letter I sent to my oral surgeon after the surgery, telling him (now from personal experience) why having surgery with full awareness is a wonderful way to go. Hurrah for the gutsy and courageous! And hurrah for you, Harvey, for telling us it's possible!
Eileen Theimer
Berkeley, California,
USA
MY LETTER TO THE ORAL SURGEON
Dear Dr. X-,
Thanks for being flexible about working on me without sedation or general anesthesia. I knew that I wanted to go through with this surgery fully aware. Getting to pay attention to and experience almost every detail of the surgery was a very good experience for me. It was:
- Empowering. It once again reminded me of my ability to hold steady physically and emotionally when I really need to.
- Interesting. So that's what oral surgery is like! It was probably my only chance to watch an oral surgery from the table's perspective. What a shame it would have been to waste such an opportunity!
- Confirming. All my years of Buddhist meditation practice are paying off. I can simply pay attention to intense sensations without allowing my mind to fall into mental concepts about 'this is terrible!' No, it was simply 'a very warm pool of liquid pouring across my cheek' when the local anesthetic was injected, for example.
- Affirming of my preparations. I did a lot of advance work, asking various folks what sensations I might expect and then doing things like listening to drills and round saws and chicken bones cracking, and training my mind to think, 'Oh, good!' My fairly extensive preparation paid off during surgery. There were not too many surprises.
- And reassuring. I'm not left with any demons to scare me ('What were those terrible things that were done to me while I wasn't paying attention that, according to every oral surgeon and most everyone else I talked to, are 'too horrific to experience consciously'?'). I know that nothing terrible happened. No forgotten demons, no worries about occluded memories. What a relief! (Parts of the surgery were rather intense, but nothing I couldn't handle at the time.) And having the details easily available in my memory has made it much easier to counsel about it afterwards.