Doctorweblog. About Health & Medicine

The anesthetist will then begin your anesthetic, and will remain with you throughout the whole operation to make sure you are asleep and that the function of your heart and lungs is satisfactory. Once the anesthetic has been injected into the tube in your hand or arm, you will fall asleep within seconds. The drug which makes you go to sleep may sting a little as it enters the vein from the cannula, but this feeling does not last long.

Several different types of drugs will be given to you during your operation:

1 induction agents to bring on sleep;

2 maintenance agents to keep you asleep;

3 analgesics to stop you feeling pain after the operation;

4 anti-emetics to help stop you feeling sick after the operation.

If local anesthetic is injected into the wound during surgery, you will have little or no pain for a few hours after you wake up.

After your operation

When your operation is over, the anesthetist will stop giving you the drugs that were keeping you asleep and you will probably be taken to a recovery room or step-down ward.

The recovery room

The nurses in the recovery room are specially trained to care for patients coming round from anesthetics after an operation. You will stay in this room, still watched over by monitoring equipment, until you are fully awake and ready to be returned to your own ward.

If you are in pain when you wake up, tell a nurse in the recovery room as you can be given an injection or tablets to relieve it.

The step-down ward

If you are going home on the same day as your operation, you may be taken to a step-down ward. The nurses on this ward will make sure that you are fit to go home and that your journey will be safe and pain free. They will also want to be sure that you have a responsible adult to care for you once you are at home, and should give you advice about how to manage your recovery over the next few days.

Back on the ward

If you are not going home the same day, you will be taken back to your own ward, where the anesthetist may visit you before you leave. This visit is to ensure that you are having adequate pain relief and have no ill-effects from your operation. Do tell the anesthetist if you have any concerns or questions.

Side-effects of the anesthetic

There are side-effects which can occur after anesthesia, but these do not normally last longer than a couple of days. A sore throat is quite common, and is caused by the dry gases breathed while you are asleep, or by the tube which may have been put down your throat to help you breathe during your operation.

If you feel unwell, or have pain anywhere other than at the site of your wound, do tell the anesthetist – or a nurse on your ward – so that the reasons for it can be discovered.

Pain relief

The house surgeon and nurses on your ward will be able to give you analgesics to control any pain. However, if these drugs are not enough, do tell the anesthetist or ward staff, which may be able to give you something more effective.

The amount of pain suffered after a breast operation varies from person to person. Some women have pain or slight discomfort for only 12 to 24 hours and will not need any pain-killing injections after this. Others may need injections for up to 3 days after their operation.

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Unfortunately, we know very little about the characteristics of women with endometriosis as no comprehensive research has been undertaken to study this issue. But the findings of several minor and non-comprehensive studies are outlined below.

Age

Endometriosis usually only affects women during their menstruating years. It does not occur before the onset of menstruation and it is rarely found in women following the menopause.

Traditionally, endometriosis was said to be a condition of women in their 30s and 40s. Since the introduction of laparoscopy the majority of gynaecologists now believe that endometriosis most commonly affects women in their late 20s and early 30s. Furthermore, most gynaecologists believe that endometriosis is rare in teenagers and uncommon in women under the age of 25. But this belief is also beginning to be questioned.

Research by the Endometriosis Association shows that most of the women with endometriosis were diagnosed in their late 20s and early 30s. In fact, 55% were diagnosed between the ages of 25 and 34. The average time from the onset of symptoms to diagnosis was 6.8 years and 43% of the women believed that they had first experienced their symptoms before the age of 20.

The study also revealed that the women who reported their symptoms to a doctor before the age of 20 took an average of 8.8 years to get a diagnosis. In contrast, those who were aged 30 to 34 when they first reported their symptoms took an average of only 1.4 years to get a diagnosis.

It would therefore seem that women with symptoms of endometriosis are being diagnosed when they reach their late 20s and early 30s because that is when their doctors consider endometriosis as a possible diagnosis for their symptoms — despite the fact that they may have reported their symptoms for many years previously.

Consequently, the Endometriosis Association believes that endometriosis is probably more common in teenagers and young women under the age of 25 than is generally acknowledged.

This belief is supported by several studies which have investigated the incidence of endometriosis in teenagers with chronic pelvic pain. These studies have found that approximately half of the teenagers investigated for chronic pelvic pain had endometriosis. It also appears that endometriosis is being diagnosed more frequently in teenagers as more of them are given the benefit of a laparoscopy.

Race

Traditionally, it was believed that endometriosis was a condition confined almost exclusively to white Caucasian women and that it was rare in Asian, Jewish and black women. Since the introduction of diagnostic laparoscopy it is now realized that endometriosis can affect women of all racial backgrounds.

Whether or not there are any differences in the incidence of endometriosis between various racial groups is not known because it is impossible to determine the incidence of endometriosis in women in general, let alone within particular groups.

Delayed childbearing

Traditionally, it was believed that endometriosis was a condition that affected women who had delayed childbearing and that having children provided some sort of protection against developing the condition. It has now been shown that endometriosis is frequently found in women who have had children.

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An increasing number of people in the West are finding that a spiritual dimension to their lives is invaluable to their physical and mental well-being. Since antiquity humans have felt the need to commune with supernatural beings, and almost every culture has a concept of God. To many, Christians included, an essential part of their God is his ability to heal sickness and even to prevent illness. Examples of miracles abound in historical and religious literature and there is little doubt, given the enormous power of the mind over the body, that such phenomena can be real enough. Current research into parapsychological phenomena makes it all much easier for us to believe in today than it would have been for those living in biblical times, but even so there are still sceptics.

There is little doubt that we are learning in the West that humans are far more remarkable than we previously thought. Telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychokinesis and the ability to heal are so well documented that it is difficult to be sceptical about them any longer. What is interesting is the idea that we all possess such gifts as a part of being human beings but that most of us have lost them. Research in Russia, for example, has found that most people can be taught to dowse and to develop all kinds of parapsychological abilities they never knew they had. Susceptible people can learn such skills in as short a time as a weekend.

It appears that western thinking and behaviour inhibits these intrinsic-or some would say God-given-abilities. A doctor working in a very primitive area of Africa was astonished at how the local people regularly and quite naturally communicated with each other over long distances without speaking. They quickly lost this telepathic ability once they came into regular contact with westerners because, they said, they felt so much in awe of the cars, watches, explosives and so on. These things, they said, seemed to dwarf their ’simple powers’.

Much of the maintenance of good health and even the curing of ill health resides, I believe, in these realms of the mind that are currently called parapsychological. Some, in different parts of the world, attribute them to God or Gods, others to the wondrous nature of mankind. Needless to say I am in no position to say which is correct but I do recognize a higher force of health and ill health than man and his personal behaviour. The healing power of one person upon another is a skill that has been all but lost in many westernized cultures although it is being revived among certain Christian groups, especially in the charismatic wing of the church. Of course for many so-called primitive people the laying on of hands and absent healing are a long-established part of their culture. With the increasing interest in the mystical and the supernatural and with a growth of ‘natural’ medicine in the West I feel sure that all of this side of healing and maintaining health will be of greater importance in the future.

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Maureen Pence lost 45 pounds by drowning her appetite before every meal.

Maureen, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, had resigned herself to being overweight. She liked to eat and dined out often. But when her father, a retired physician, suffered a heart attack, her attitude changed. At age 31, she knew that she had to get serious about slimming down. So she followed the standard weight-loss advice, trying to eat healthier and exercise more. This was easy enough—when she was at home.

Maureen’s job as a production manager for a chemical company required her to eat out frequently with clients. Finding something relatively healthy to order from the menu usually wasn’t a problem. But the portions were huge, and Maureen—well, she was hungry.

Then one day, Maureen drank a full glass of water before she went to a restaurant. She found she wasn’t as ravenous when she ordered, and she didn’t wolf down her meal. In fact, she left some of her food uneaten. Quite by accident, she had discovered a weight-loss trick.

“I started drinking a big glass of water before all my meals and taking sips between bites,” Maureen says. “I was amazed at how full it made me feel.”

Gradually, she was able to lose 45 pounds. Today, at age 36 and 153 pounds, Maureen is a slender and happy size 10.

WINNING ACTION

Start every meal with water. Like Maureen, you can keep your appetite in check by drinking an 8-ounce glass of water before every meal. And make sure the water is ice cold; your body has to burn almost 8 calories to raise the water temperature to 98.6°F. In fact, if you were to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of ice-cold water a day, you’d burn about 62 calories. That adds up to more than a pound’s worth of calories in just 2 months.

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