cover image Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness

Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness

Kate Cole-Adams. Counterpoint, $28 (400p) ISBN 978-1-61902-950-7

Australian journalist and novelist Cole-Adams (Walking to the Moon) mingles her own experiences under anesthesia with those of other patients and doctors, producing a personal work that is a mix of agony and insight. Anesthesiologists, she writes, routinely overestimate the amount of “anesthetic cocktail” needed to sedate a patient, but a strong dose still does not prevent “one or two per thousand” patients from waking up during surgery. Cole-Adams relates patients’ experiences of pain and paralysis; she also chats with psychologists as they prepare patients for surgery and, later, work with patients who have difficulty getting back to health after surgery. A medical history of anesthesia is worked through the text. Cole-Adams considers surgical-room banter and its effects on patients; she refers to a strange incident in which a patient became suicidal after surgery, revealing under hypnosis that she heard the surgeon say she was fat. The limitations of hypnosis, the complexities of memory, and the difference between the conscious and unconscious minds are questions that persist throughout this book. Cole-Adams weaves her own mounting personal problems throughout the text. Readers may react to this work similarly to the psychiatrist who told Cole-Adams, “I’m not certain whether you’re trying to sort yourself out, or whether you’re trying to sort out other things.” [em]Agent: Jenny Darling, Jenny Darling & Associates (Aus.). (Dec.) [/em]