Waking up from anesthesia often feels like a spell is slowly being lifted so that you have time to accustom yourself to the world. In this hazy process, people often tend to say or do things that they wouldn’t otherwise, which can lead to some pretty interesting stories.
The doctors, nurses, and patients in this list are sharing all those weird and funny post-anesthesia experiences that most of us don’t know about. It goes to show how powerful its effect can be and what tricks it can play on the mind; you might be surprised.
More info: Reddit
#1
Told to me by my wife confirmed by the nurse – I was in bed hospital room, waiting for surgery, they already gave me meds to calm me BUT they knocked me out
2 nurses come in to move me to a gurney’ but they were small and I’m big they can’t move me over, my wife came over and poked me in the ribs saying your snoring rollover, and I rolled right onto the gurney.
Image source: 1shroud, DC Studio
#2
I’m an anesthesia student currently doing my clinical rotations and I had an old guy wake up and the first thing he asked was “do I still have my balls?” and I told him “yep, both of them” and he said “both? Aw you guys are great”.
Image source: hotsauce126, freepik
#3
Not a doctor or nurse. When my sister was 16, she had back surgery to repair a ruptured disc in her lower back. Apparently, the meds that they gave her before she was put under gave her low enough inhibitions that instead of counting backward from 10, she started belting out the lyrics to Roxanne. The OR staff later told my mom that not only were they amazed that someone that young knew the lyrics, that the way that she started singing was one of the funniest things they had seen in an OR.
Image source: MountainDewAndSmokes, DC Studio
#4
When my husband woke up from having his wisdom teeth surgically removed his nurse was a rather large lady. (like 350+) He looked her dead in the eyes and said “You’re too beautiful to be a nurse, you should have been a model. Why don’t you just come home with me and my wife?” (yes he was propositioning a 3 way with a 50 year old 350 pound nurse) Most awkward moment of my life.
#5
I once had a patient start totally trashing her sister, telling me how she has always been the black sheep of the family, is a s*****g and wants to bang her husband. She’s just going off, and sitting in the doorway was the sister, the only one there to support her after surgery. You could tell it was crushing for her. This was probably an hour after the patient left PACU, conscious but still pretty whacked out.
Image source: noporesforlife, EyeEm
#6
I was the patient, but I had to get 5 teeth pulled.
The nurse was helping my mom shuffle me to the car. I turned to thank her, but couldn’t get my mouth to work, so I bowed and doffed an imaginary cap.
*M’anesthesia*.
Image source: Hines_Ward, prostooleh
#7
Went straight from the ER to surgery to put a plate in my badly broken arm, so I hadn’t been on a ward etc prior to the operation. Came out of surgery and recovery and was being pushed in a hospital bed to a ward. We turned in to a ward and it was full of elderly people, I was in my early twenties, I turned to the hospital porter pushing me and shouted “Sorry we seem to have taken a wrong turn, we’re in the morgue”.
Image source: sdevine89, freepik
#8
I had to get hardware installed in my leg for a nasty bone break at an overseas base. A few days later, my buddy and I were having lunch on base. A group of women came in and sat down at the table next to us and we struck up a conversation.
One of them asked what I had gotten done. (I was in a huge cast and on crutches.)
I tell her the procedure. She gets a funny look on her face and asked when it was done.
I tell her the date.
She immediately starts laughing and tells her friends, “This is the guy!”
Now they’re all howling with laughter.
It took a while to tell the story because they’re in tears from laughing.
Apparently, when I was coming out of sedation, I grabbed a Corpsman’s a*s and hung on for dear life. (The woman I was I was currently talking to at the restaurant.)
I just wanted to crawl into a hole when I heard the story.
TL;DR- Grabbed a girl’s a*s in the OR, got named ‘a**man’ by the staff, and became the talk of the hospital for a while.
Edit- My top comment is how I perved on some poor woman when I was out of my gourd on d***s.
Wonderful.
Image source: heat_it_and_beat_it, pressmaster
#9
I was the patient. I’d had all four wisdom teeth out at once, and I woke up earlier than expected in recovery – early enough that they hadn’t taken out the wadding at the back of my mouth meant to absorb the blood. So I woke up, immediately felt like I was choking, and panicked. I leapt off the bed, and a bunch of nurses came to restrain me. Still out of it, I fought them and definitely gave one of them a good punch before they got me back on the bed. I passed out again straight away.
Still feel bad about it. Poor nurse.
Image source: MmmStrawberryCake, EyeEm
#10
I was the patient but I think this qualifies. Colonoscopy. In this big lounge chair still half asleep in recovery, I half rollover and let rip the biggest fart in history. The devil himself created this one. I open half an eye at the nurse, ask “was that me?”, jaw on the ground she nods and I go back to sleep!
Image source: bobsuselesshat, EyeEm
#11
My bff had a vasectomy and when he was first given the d***s three nurses walked in that were rather attractive. He looks up with his wife in the room and says ” If I would of know there was going to be hot women in here, I would of worn my big d**k.”.
Image source: TacoCamacho13, goodn8
#12
I had a patient pet an invisible kitty that was named after me. The next day, was completely with it and was wondering what happened to that kitty.
Image source: indietorch, fxquadro
#13
Nurse here. This really big, hairy turkish guy, whom I’ve never met before, told me how much he loved me and that he wanted to kiss me. I’m male btw.
#14
(NOT A Doc or Nurse) When I got my wisdom teeth out, they strapped my arm down for the IV anesthetic.
Apparently, before passing out, I looked up at the white haired German Dentist and said in my best Connery, “Goldfinger, do you expect me to talk?”.
The dentist didn’t reply, but he did tell me after surgery that it was one of the funniest things anyone asked him in a “haze”.
Image source: Werepuffin, Activision
#15
Not the doctor or the nurse
I had a lot of ear infections when I was younger, and my final time (I was about 7) I woke up to the Rugrats on a tv in the room (I hated the Rugrats at the time). Cue the following conversation:
Me: “Why are the Rugrats on?”
Doctor: “You woke up earlier and said you wanted us to put on the Rugrats. We asked why, and you said that you hated the Rugrats and wanted to watch it so you could be angry.”
Me: “Why did I want to be angry?”
Doctor: “You said you wanted to be angry because you don’t like being so happy all the time.”
Edit: Obligatory “Wow, one of my most upvoted comments is about my early-life angst, only behind my five-word comment that referenced a trebuchet. Reddit works in mysterious ways.” Ty.
Image source: Soundswipe, Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers
#16
I shadowed a surgery once with this guy who woke up saying, “give it to me straight doc, will I ever play the piano again?” All of us were cracking up and he then goes, “oh, wait.. I don’t know how to play the piano.”.
Image source: anon, rawpixel.com
#17
Not a doctor, A friend was in a car crash, pretty bad he was in a coma for 2 months, he had a female doctor
for 2 months until he came out of his coma every time his doctor was checking on he would reach up and grab her breast, guessing he heard her voice.
when we told him about he did not believe us, so he asked her and she confirmed it, said she never stopped him because it seemed to keep him calm.
Image source: 1shroud, wavebreakmedia_micro
#18
I’m not a doctor nurse, but I heard about this after my wisdom teeth surgery. I apparently was still on anesthesia, and when they wheeled me out I had both arms stuck out and was making plane noises. They asked me what I was doing and I told them I was becoming my final form of a plane. Still do not know why I was doing it.
Image source: Piercingforce, EyeEm
#19
My first memory when waking up from shoulder surgery was a somewhat-panicked nurse rummaging through the blankets at the bottom of my bed repeatedly muttering “where are his legs, where are his legs.” I always cross my legs when I sit/lay down and apparently I must have done this as I was initially coming off the anesthesia. It freaked me out for a second, but then I processed what was going on. The nurse seemed relieved when I mumbled “they’re right here” and nearly kicked her in the face when I extended my legs.
Image source: iwasnevergivenaname2
#20
Came out of anesthetic and the lead nurse decides it’s time to tell me all about post op care. She says, “Now this is going to be a pain in the a*s…” and I said, “If that’s the case, then you guys performed the wrong procedure!” It was a nose operation.
The assistant nurse started laughing. Lead nurse not so amused.
#21
A patient woke up from his wisdom tooth removal *begging* the doctor to let him be David Bowie. The doctor actually asked how that was supposed to happen, and the answer was that “it would be fantastic.”.
#22
When I was 14 I had eye surgery, coming out of anesthesia the nurses asked me if I could remember my name. I slurred
” my name…. is Worcestershire sauce. No..wait, that’s not a cool name. My name… is Shark!”.
Image source: TaxonomyAnomaly, Kelsey Todd
#23
After waking up from my wisdom tooth surgery, I remember asking my mom “I didn’t fart, did I? I had a bunch of gas before the surgery and now it’s gone, I hope I didn’t fart in front of the cute nurse.”
Cute nurse is behind me during the whole speech. WELP.
Image source: Noobsauce9001, gpointstudio
#24
I was working in the pediatric ER and sedating a “skater” kid 14 or 15. We are talking more a wanna be suburban kid rather than a punk, kinda kid that obviously joined a frat in college. His mom is there in the room as he starts waking up once we had his wrist set and in the cast. His mom is typical well to do suburban mom who spends lots of time at yoga and PTA meetings i.e. Not trashy at all and family was likely from a well to do part of town.
My buddy who is fairly hairy on his arms etc reached across his upper chest to grab an IV line. Kid was half asleep, raised his head up with his eyes still closed and licked my buddies arm with this exaggerated lick like it was and ice cream cone. Kid flops his head back onto the pillow and his mom just looks mortified in the 2-3 seconds that pass before he slurs out “Mannnn, I shore doo love to lick some p***y”
His mom immediately turned bright red and walked out of the room and we all busted out laughing except the guy who got licked. The ER doc was this young petite girl and she said she peed herself a little she was laughing so hard.
For months we would give that guy lick motions in the air when we passed him in the hall and putting Rolling Stones stickers on his locker etc. I still give him c**p about that from time to time. My favorite is to catch him chatting or something standing at the desk and to lean over and sniff his forearm and ask if he has been fishing.
#25
I had surgery on my wrist and came out of anesthesia screaming “my balls hurt”. The doctor came in and asked what was wrong. I said “my balls hurt”. He replied “dude you had wrist surgery. No one touched your balls.”.
Image source: tecnoladave, syda_productions
#26
I’m not the medical professional in this story: My husband had emergency surgery a few years ago and when he woke up, he was just…different. I can’t explain it. He recognized who I was, but his personality was completely different and the way he spoke to me was completely different. It’s sort of like in movies where people wake up in someone else’s body. It freaked me the f**k out.
36 hours later, it was like he just woke up and was himself again. The weird part is, he had no memory of the past 36 hours. He remembers being sick and he remembers the emergency room, but after that, nothing. A lot of people came to visit him in that time period too. A bunch of family and everyone from the office and he has no memory of any of them. The only thing I can think is that whatever medication that was used in the anesthesia that gorked him finally worked its way out of his system.
Image source: Hysterymystery, Wavebreak Media
#27
So I’m an ER tech, and we have this regular that comes in all the time. She’s an old black lady who has a lot of health issues, including dementia. This time, I’m actually not entirely sure why she was coming in, but whatever it was, she needed to be intubated. So we sedated her, put the tube in and did what we needed. When everything was finished, we called EMS to pick her up and take her back home. When they arrived, the nurse and I went in to prep her to leave.
The lady is just starting to wake up from sedation, so, with the EMTs standing in the room, we take out her foley catheter. Then, she q***fs. The nurse and I smirk at each other, but this is fairly common and not the funny part. The funny part is that the noise seemed to surprise her, and apparently remind her what was going on, because she gasps and then looks over to the EMTs and says in an attempt at a s**y voice: “You boys eva seen a black coochie befoe?”
Everyone in the room had to take a second to attempt to regain composure, but the EMTs ended up having to leave the room and the nurse is crouching on the ground trying not to die. I, since I still have the foley in my hands, don’t have this freedom, and am forced to try to keep my sides from launching in to orbit.
It’s since become a running joke around the ER.
Image source: nbw2518, The Yuri Arcurs Collection
#28
Wish I was earlier to this one. My fiancee recently had her tonsils removed. Her mother and I were there when she woke up. After a few minutes she told her mother “Now that I’ve got my tonsils out, I can fit more of his d**k in my mouth!”
It was awkward.
Image source: LordWhiskey, dimaberlin
#29
Once I woke up asking if the ends justify the means. Once I went under while reminding all the women in the room that the room is very cold and they shouldn’t judge.
Image source: Channel250, freepik
#30
When I got my wisdom teeth out, I apparently called my middle-eastern surgeon a “sly Arabian tooth thief” after coming to. That was fun to learn about when I regained mental clarity.
Image source: guyfrancois
#31
Not a professional, medical or otherwise, but on the way home from the dentist I was gone and something in my mind remembered metal gear solid and I started yelling LIQUIIIID a la snake
apparently I almost caused my mom to crash the car and it quickly became annoying very fast as one could imagine.
Image source: morticiansmith
#32
I woke up from knee surgery and demanded a Vodka & Coke with no ice.
Also for some reason I when I woke up I was freezing cold and shivering, one of the nurses hooked me up to some heater which blew warm air under the covers from the bottom of the bed. I then likened myself to Marilyn Monroe, I’m a 6ft 2 athletic guy!
Image source: tallyblade
#33
Patient checking in. I was 18 and just had my appendix removed, my mum was at my bedside. I wake up in more pain from the operation than the appendicitis and even worse my b**s are itchy. I’m wearing a hospital gown & I’m out of it so I put my hand on my stomach and run it down to my skin so I can scratch my b**s. Obviously not wearing underwear and my hand runs down an excess of smooth skin, then suddenly I’m touching my goods. I rummage around and come to the conclusion that someone has shaved my p**s. No one told me this would happen. I was livid, its’ the height of visiting hours and I’m shouting in my broad Scottish accent ” Aww Mum, they’ve shaved my p***s, I’m no happy about this I want my hair back, that’s no right, no one told me about this, Get my p***s”
My mother was mortified and she’s trying to get me to calm down while laughing and trying avoid a scene. They grew back in about 4 weeks so it was no biggy but at the time it was a serious issue.
Image source: Funkmaster_Flash, drobotdean
#34
Not a hospital staff but my great grandfather had surgery one time and I was in the room when he woke up. He was a WWII veteran and was convinced that he was in a N**i POW camp. He recognized me and told me I had to help him escape by k*****g the guards (nurses) because he knew I knew how to k**l people (I was 16, obviously a trained k***r). When the nurse came in he was calm and kept motioning with his head at her to me and finally looked at me and said “K**l her…NOW!”. She always came back with another male nurse after that.
Image source: HuntAllTheThings
#35
My father in law was in a car accident that shattered his face, several vertebrae, and his pelvis. This isn’t so much a story about what he said, but what he did. He was in a coma for three weeks, and had to be heavily restrained when coming out of it. He was a marine in Vietnam, he was captured and escaped, and he still hated being restrained.
My wife went to visit hom on a Sunday, and the doctors told her that tomorrow he was going to be the first patient to use a new, $30,000 restraint system that would cause him less discomfort. On Monday afternoon she visited again, and he was in the same restraints as before. My wife asked, and the nurse explained that he destroyed it restraint system. It lasted less than an hour. It wasn’t salvageable.
Image source: GreenStrong
#36
Not a doc, but a few years ago I had my gallbladder removed. Two stories from that ordeal.
1) Going into surgery, I was being given anesthesia. During this I apparently looked at the tech and asked him to remove the mask from my face so I could scratch my nose. He said “No” and I passed out halfway through my response of “awwww”.
2) Still very out of it, getting ready to be discharged after a day if recovery (it was very bad and I was on a lot of meds). I stood up to change and could feel the incision just below my navel open. I looked down and my hand was red and there was a growing red spot on the gown. I look up and see the color drain from my mother’s face. To which I respond “it’s cool, I got this…”, get back in the bed, hit the call button and say “I don’t mean to bother you, but one of my incisions appears to have reopened. I’m not in pain, but there is a fair bit of blood. If you could have someone stop by when they are free that would be awesome.” Not 15 seconds later a nurse comes flying into the room, looks, says “Holy c**p! Be right back with supplies” and flys out of the room before returning and fixing the problem. When asked why I wasn’t panicking, I simply responded “I figured I’m already in the right place for this sort of thing…”.
Image source: gold7598
#37
I got my wisdom teeth out last month and was curiously subdued, my wife informed me, at least at the office. She loaded me up in the car and away we went.
About halfway home, she called my mother to let her know that the surgery went well and I remained stonily quiet. After she got off the phone, I demanded that my wife call my mother back. When she did so I told her:
“Mom. You have lots of dogs. And they need lots of love.” Then I made the ‘cut the call’ motion to my wife.
When we arrived home, I was brought up short by my wife’s pillow case, which has a sloth on it. I asked out loud “Honey, there’s a f****n’ Sloth in here. How did we catch one? They’re so fast!”
Then she tried to take my jeans off of me so I could go to sleep and I yelled “Whoa there missy!” when she grabbed for the fly.
All in all, a pretty great morning.
Image source: Solias
#38
I have a nice sister of a friend story.
She was getting her wisdom teeth removed, and after they took them out, they just sewed up the holes they were in. Now, she came out of anesthesia, but she was still groggy and like, suuuuper high. While they were in the car going home, she reached into her mouth, touched the stumps and got blood on her fingers, and then reached up and gave her the “double football stripe” look, pulled her blanket over her head, and said: “I’m a WARRIOR!”
The friend who told me this was laughing for a good 5 minutes after she told me this. Just thought I might share.
Edit: well, I got nothing better to do, so let’s share the story about the other sister when she got her wisdom teeth removed. This one’s not quite as funny, but here goes. Some backstory – her family is from French Canada and she lived there until 6 years old.
She vividly remembers waking up from surgery, sobbing. When questioned why she was crying, she explained in French that she missed her homeland of Canada and wanted the snow. Then she stopped crying and started apologizing. She is the most Canadian person I know.
Image source: Armvis
#39
Three times. The first time when I was five, tonsil surgery. My family is from Norway, and my grandmother always kept a pewter model of a longboat on her mantle. Just to explain why a five year old would wake up screaming, “Get me back to the longboat!” and then apparently, to quote my mother “go all Linda Blaire” on the doctors when they came in to try to give me antibiotics. That was nearly 25 years ago and my family still likes to joke about me managing to shriek my head off and throw punches after having just come out of throat surgery.
By age 13, I’d tamed down some, and apparently only muttered angrily at everyone while waking up.
Age 26, all the fight had gone out of me, and I just cried whenever a nurse asked me a question, “How is your pain?” “Not bad, I’m so sorry…” “Don’t be sorry, can you sit up for me?” [Uncontrollable sobbing] “OK then, let’s get you some apple juice.” [Fully disconsolate].
Edit because I can’t count.
Image source: dal_segno
#40
Friend of mine woke up and asked all the nurses to smoke a bowl with him.
Image source: Accipiter290
#41
Got told the story
When I was 8, i got a knee surgery. While on anesthesia, the travel between my hospital room and the OR I tough i was in a Formula One car. So I would make all the noise, telling people to faster, make the sound of the tires too. The guys told my mom it was the funniest transfert they ever had. Everybody was laughing including people in the hallway.
Image source: anon
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