Who doesn’t want step-by-step instructions for using music during surgery? So you’ve just found out that you need to have surgery? It’s always a shock to find that you need surgery and people are filled with apprehension, if not fear. The biggest fear of course is always: what if I don’t wake up? Statistics tell us that the vast majority of people do wake up after surgery but the risk is there. One of the biggest unknown factors is anesthesia and how a patient will react and respond. There’s been a lot in the news recently about “anesthesia awareness” and people who say they felt every part of the surgery and heard all the conversations, but were simply paralyzed by the anesthesia and could not let anyone know.
Of course this is terrifying but it happens so very rarely that it doesn’t justify cancelling the surgery or even losing sleep. The thing is, more anesthesia is definitely not the solution. What you want is actually the least amount of anesthesia that will sedate you and keep you comfortable during the procedure. This might be a regional anesthesia and it might be a local anesthesia. It doesn’t have to be a general anesthesia.
One of the things that can help lessen the amount of anesthesia that you need is the addition of music to the procedure. There is ample research now showing that listening to calm, soothing music before, during and after the procedure can decrease the amount of anesthesia needed, in addition to decreasing pain meds requirements afterwards and anxiety meds before. So how do you make that happen?
- One of the first things you want to do is start thinking about the kind of music that relaxes, calms and soothes you.
- If you have a playlist of this music that you’ve created you can put it on your iPod or an Ipod shuffle.
- The next thing is to tell your surgeon that you’d like to take some soothing, relaxing music into the procedure with you.
- If the doctor says you’ll be asleep and won’t hear it, you can assure him that you just want to have it playing subconsciously and you also want to make sure you don’t hear any of the surgical sounds or conversations. (Certain procedures require sawing, drilling, hammering, etc.)
- If necessary you can purcahse a new MP3 player to avoid introducing any germs into the operating room.
- OR, you can use the Surgical Serenity Headphones which are pre-programmed with the ideal slow, steady, soothing music for surgery. These are being used at hospitals across the U.S. and have not been to any patient by a surgeon or anesthesiologist.
- If you take your own iPod, you might want to have 3 separate tracks for pre-surgery, surgery and recovery. Ideally, the music for surgery is the slowest tempo and is purely instrumental. The music for the recovery room should be a little more up-tempo and can have words or lyrics that are very positive. The headphones are already programmed with music for all three phases of the procedure.
If you have any questions at all about the procedures and how to best start them for youself, feel free to contact me through this blog and I will get back to you!
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