麻醉药帮助我们理解什么是意识_BEC初级作文

麻醉药帮助我们理解什么是意识

More than a decade ago, a 43-year-old woman went to a surgeon for a hysterectomy. She was put under, and everything seemed to be going according to plan, until, for a horrible interval, her anesthesia stopped working. She couldn't open her eyes or move her fingers. She tried to breathe, but even that most basic reflex didn't seem to work; a tube was lodged in her throat. She was awake and aware on the operating table, but frozen and unable to tell anyone what was happening.

十多年前的一天，外科医生们正在对一名43岁的女性进行子宫切除术。患者在麻醉下失去了意识，所有的一切似乎都按部就班有条不紊——直到她身上的麻醉突然失效了一段时间，她无法睁开眼睛，无法动一动手指。她试图呼吸，可即使是这样最基本的反射也不能正常进行；一根管子卡在她的喉咙里。她的神智清醒着，知道自己正在手术台上，只是一动也不能动，不能向任何人诉说发生了多么可怕的事情。

Studies of anesthesia awareness are full of such horror stories, because administering anesthesia is a tightrope walk. Too much can kill. But too little can leave a patient aware of the procedure and unable to communicate that awareness. For every 1,000 people who undergo general anesthesia, there will be one or two who are not as unconscious as they seem — people who remember their doctors talking, and who are aware of the surgeon's knife, even while their bodies remain catatonic and passive. For the unlucky 0.13 percent for whom anesthesia goes awry, there's not really a good preventive. That's because successful anesthetization requires complete unconsciousness, and consciousness isn't something we can measure.