Being an anesthesiologist seems like a pretty interesting job . Sure, there are probably a lot of heartbreaking moments , but there are also probably a lot of times when patients are just plain odd or hilarious .
The anesthesiologists (and people who’ve witnessed others being put under) of Reddit took the time to share some of the hilarious things people have said .
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Well now, you didn’t have to take the question so literally!
“I ask a patient after surgery how he feels. He opens his eyes, stares me dead-on and says ‘with my fingers.’ Then he goes right back to sleep.”
Amazing.
An interesting (and one sided) conversation.
“My boyfriend at the time had just gotten his wisdom teeth removed, on the ride home with his mouth full of gauze, he gets a call on his cell phone.”
“He answered it and just starts talking away.”
“Whoever it was on the other side could not possibly understand a word he was saying with all the gauze in his mouth. But man, he had a lot to talk about and they apparently didn’t hang up….”
“After about 5 minutes of this unintelligible phone conversation he looks at me and says ‘Ooo ithh a robot’ and gives me the phone.”
“I put it to my ear, and the whole time its been the Walgreens pharmacy automated notice simply stating his prescription is ready for pickup, playing on repeat.”
Make sure you have your priorities in order.
“After an operation on a patients neck, he woke up and yelled ‘AHHHH’ then grabbed his junk with both hands and was like ‘oh thank God it’s still there’ then immediately passed out again.”
Almost got to the punchline.
“I’m an anesthesiologist. The best story was a 40-some year old woman for appendectomy, said while I’m giving the Propofol to induce anesthesia. She said ‘oh I don’t remember it tasting like that before’ (slurred).”
“I said ‘what does it taste like?’ since Propofol doesn’t usually elicit a taste reaction.”
“She almost yelled ‘DEEEZ NUTS,’ and was promptly under anesthesia thereafter. There have been other stories, but this one has the entire OR staff rolling laughing for minutes after she was under.”
Got Lincoln on the brain.
“My husband had to undergo a colonoscopy and when he came around he started aggressively grilling the staff about Abraham Lincoln. He isn’t a historian or anything, he works as a business analyst and knows next to nothing about Abraham Lincoln.”
The message was pure purr-fection.
“I have no recollection of this but according to my mom, when she met me in the recovery room after wisdom tooth extraction I was very eager to tell her something but my mouth was full of gauze.”
“So they gave me a pen and I wrote something on the surgical bib.”
“Hours later, when I was back in reality she asked me ‘what was with the meow meows, my son?’ I had no idea what she was talking about so she showed me the bib.
“It said, ‘Meow meow meow meow Meow meow meow meow Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow.’ The meow mix theme.”
This kid knows what she wants.
“A little girl was going under and she was holding her mother’s hand.
“She reached out for my hand with her other and as she was going out she joined mine with her mother’s and said, ‘You would be a nice daddy.’ I probably went beetroot red as I blushed.”
Math? At a time like this?
“Not the anesthesiologist, but as a surgery tech working next to them:
“Patient, woozily: Doc, will I still be able to integrate after this?
Gas passer: Integrate? Like what?
Patient: Like the sum of f(x) from a to b when…
Gas passer: pushes more milk of amnesia.”
I’ve heard from the grapevine that the Packers suck.
“Anesthesiologist here. For better or for worse, I’m a big Green Bay Packers fan, so I wear a scrub cap with the Packers name/colors on it.
“I was doing a pre-op evaluation on a kid who was a big New Orleans Saints fan, and when I walked into the room, his first words to me were ‘Packers Suck.’ I laughed and continued to prepare him and his family for his redo open heart surgery procedure.”
“Fast forward to surgery a couple days later, and his mom had come back to the OR as he was going to sleep.”
“Given the fact this was a 3 or 4 time redo sternotomy (going into the chest again), he had a higher risk of major complications from the surgery.”
“I started to push some meds to have him go to sleep while his mom was holding his hand…”
“…and as he drifted off, he said ‘Wait, I have to tell my mom something!’ She got emotional saying how much she loved him, and we were all waiting to hear what he had to say so urgently.
“I paused giving him the medication, but he was already well on his way to being under, and as he drifted off to sleep, he said ‘Packers suck.'”
Sometimes you just get that gut feeling.
“When coming out of it I was REALLY angry my fiancé was trying to steal my ice cream. I didn’t have any ice cream but I was convinced he was trying to steal it.”
Not the worst way to go under, I guess.
“I gave a patient an IV dose of ketamine for a pain procedure. He proceeded to tell the room that everyone had turned into cartoon characters and then he announced he was melting into a wall of butter. Still my finest achievement as a physician…”
Talk about a backseat surgeon.
“Am patient’s relative rather than anesthesiologist – but as he started going under, patient (hydraulics engineer) started trying to tell the doctor what type of pump they should install to fix the busted blood vessel in his brain.”
Just give it a minute. Or ten.
“Was recently under for abdominal surgery. My partner of 17 years who I dearly love was the first face I remember seeing when coming out of anesthesia… I looked at him & said ‘who the [expletive] are you & why are you staring at me?’ He’s still laughing…”
Ah yes, the “special juice.”
“A four year child comes into the OT to be inducted for a broken arm. The anesthetist decides to use sevoflurane (sleepy gas) to put the kid to sleep.
“After one breath the kid turns to us and goes ‘ahhhh so this is what mummy’s special juice is like’ to which he then promptly blacks out, with all of us in hysterics, and mum, who was there in OT for induction, red faced.”
