operations

I am glad that I did not read Andrea Dworkin's account of her knee surgery before I had mine,  I didn't even get morphine injections.

She said:
"I still don't know what he did to me but I came to the conclusion that the operation was barbaric, involving as it did the sawing out of the arthritis, which meant sawing through bones. It was like being kneecapped, twice, or having one's knees and bones hammered and broken into bits. After the operation I was in a nightmare of narcotics and untouchable pain. There were morphine shots. I asked for them and got them often. Even morphine shots in the upper arm hurt."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/23/features.weekend

Yes.  I was awake and unsedated throughout the op, and it did involve violent hammering, sawing, and the smell of burning bone.     Have no idea what happened during my emergency shoulder replacement, except that at some stage somebody who was looking at a screen said to somebody else "It won't WORK" - because i kept hearing those words, exact intonation, in my left ear for a few days after the op, just as i was trying to go to sleep.  I heard words in my right ear too, but not those, and not consistent,   The words are connected with no pain or fear, so I  was properly out - thank God, and my young anaethesist.  They (the voices) just kept jolting me awake when i was desperately trying fo sleep.

sadly i did not sleep through again last night,  it was the usual 3 a.m. wake up.