Author: ellamerriwether

After years of suffering from ear and sinus infections, loss of hearing, dizziness, and tinnitus, speaking to multiple doctors, and having multiple pointless procedures, I finally had surgery to alleviate my pain and improve my immune system. They put me under for the surgery, which I never thought to question. I didn’t want to experience any more pain than I was already expecting for recovery and I didn’t want to have a memory of being cut open. But of course, I never really had a choice—this was an invasive procedure. Anesthesia has become so common-place that no one bats an eye at it’s use: Cavity? Local anesthetic. Stitches for a deep cut? Local anesthetic. Wisdom teeth removed? General anesthetic. Sinus surgery? General anesthetic. It is automatic. Except for me, it isn’t always the miracle drug-cocktail it is peddled as.

Every time I have to get a local anesthetic, I tense up because I know I have a delayed reaction to it. Typically, the doctor is finishing up their procedure or sometimes I am getting back in my car by the time the numbness finally kicks in. Then, when I have been given general anesthesia, I have lost multiple-hours post-surgery and when I came out of this most recent surgery, I was uncontrollably sobbing for no reason. Each time, without a doubt, no matter the reaction, the nurses tell me that it is a normal side-effect for girls or women my age. However, I always feel as if they are just trying to appease me, to calm my anxiety. I can’t help but wonder how much of what I experience is just me, how much is because I am a woman, and how much falls under medical mismanagement?

After an initial search, I found that the risk of side effects is augmented for females under general anesthesia. Girls are more likely to have PONV (Post-Operative Nausea and Vomiting), more likely to experience intense confusion, and more likely to wake tearful and crying. However, I struggled to find any mention as to why these problems were happening. Countless women on message boards across the internet are asking “why was I crying when I woke up from surgery?” but no one seems to have a complete answer. Some suggested hormonal imbalances post-puberty, but then why aren’t all women experiencing this? And more importantly, why were these reactions not discussed pre-operatively with patients. Given the lack of current work on the issue, I decided to see if the stories of the past could help inform me about our present situation.

Drug use to reduce pain is dated back to 4000 BCE amongst the Sumerian artifacts depicting the use of opium poppy. Throughout the ensuing five thousand years, different herbal and alcoholic mixtures were tested to produce some unconscious or semi-conscious state for medical procedures. Then in the mid-19th century, women were often being given chloroform for pain in childbirth. It became such a popular procedure that Queen Victoria herself was administered chloroform for the births of both Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice.

As greater understanding of germs and patients’ rights came about, doctors began to use needles or tubes rather than cloth rags soaked in an herbal/alcohol mixture and to monitor their patients heart and respiratory rates before, during, and after surgery. By the mid-20th century anesthetic-use was booming, particularly in the obstetrics field. One of the most prominent, and controversial, uses of anesthetics was for “twilight sleep” births. Women would be given morphine and scopolamine so that they felt less pain and had no memory of the labor. In reality, this procedure often left the mother struggling for consciousness, many thrashing around in pain or in an attempt to subvert the oncoming “sleep”. Due to their memory loss, these women’s qualms were actively being silenced in the name of birthing efficiency. But then, by the mid-1980s, doctors had “perfected” the art of general anesthesia we know today.

All of these innovations were driven by the desire to reduce pain and suffering, but I still kept wondering how pain’s inherently subjective-experience was, and is, taken into account? We tend to err on the side of not feeling anything, rather than risk feeling any discomfort at all. However, this is operating under the assumption that pain is believed to be real. Even though anesthetics are common-place, many women still need to convince their doctor of the problem in the first place, and then when she has complications from the procedure, whether it is the anesthetic or the surgery itself, she is told that what she is experiencing is normal. According to Hoffman and Tarzian (2001), “nurses gave less pain medication to women aged 25 to 54” than to men. Women are also less likely to be given narcotics and more likely to receive sedatives in the hospital because their agitation is more typically associated with anxiety than pain.

With all of this in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if my discomfort pre- and post-surgery was seen as anxiety rather than pain. It would explain why it took multiple years for my symptoms and pain levels to be taken seriously, and then why, even once I convinced a doctor and got the surgery, I was still left alone in the recovery room crying and sent home with an extremely low dosage of pain medications given the severity of my recovery. This is evident by the few mentions of female-driven innovation, outside of obstetrics, in anesthetic history. The Queen Victoria anecdote is a perfect example; it took her being the highest ruler in the land to receive pain medications for her labor. Furthermore, due to our patriarchal-based history, women’s ailments were treated not because of their suffering as much as to reduce the strain that their suffering put on their husbands or fathers. From the treatment of hysteria to the use of “twilight sleep” births in the early twentieth-century, women have been and are consistently being silenced by medicine, rather than listened to, diagnosed, and treated as men unfailingly are.