Comment by throwanem

I wouldn't necessarily conclude that they were conscious, either, and this quite specifically includes me, on those occasions in surgical recovery suites when I've begun to converse before I began to track. Consciousness and speech production are no more necessarily linked than consciousness and muscle tone, and while no doubt the version of 'me' carrying on those conversations I didn't remember would claim to be conscious at the time, I'm not sure how much that actually signifies.

After all, if they didn't swaddle me in a sheet on my way under, my body might've decided it was tired of all this privation - NPO after midnight for a procedure at 11am, I was suffering - and started trying to take a poke at somebody and get itself up off the operating table. In such a case, would I be to blame? Stage 2 of general anesthesia begins with loss of consciousness, and involves "excitement, delirium, increased muscle tone, [and] involuntary movement of the extremities." [1] Which tracks with my experience; after all, the last thing I remember was mumbling "oh, here we go" into the oxygen mask, as the propofol took effect so they could intubate me for the procedure proper.

Whose fault then would it be if, thirty seconds later, the body "I" habitually inhabit, and of which "I" am an epiphenomenon, punched my doctor in the nuts?

[1] https://quizlet.com/148829890/the-four-stages-of-general-ane...