Spinal, general or BOTH?

During my appt my MD said he would reccomment to the Anesthisiologist that I have a spinal, since I have woken up prior to my meds kicking in in my prior OPS. (Very Scary!) This has only happenned to me two out of five times. Regardless, it was scary to wake up, whiile they are pulling out your breathing tube etc. and the pain was unbearable! I remember waking up to my own screams, and my face was soaked in tears! Anyway, I thought when he said that that I would just have a spinal block and general at the same time. It did not occur to me, till I read another post, that I actually have a choice in the matter. But here is the thing, I cannot take morphine,which I hear is what they use in the spinal block. Narcotics make me VIOLENTLY sick. They only thing I am allowed to have is demeral with phenergen. So I am not sure if the spinal works with anything else. My MD said he would talk to the anesthisiologist and ask. But he said in the mean time to consider these choices:
!) Spinal with sedation via IV. (not general, you are still awake and breathing on your own, without recollection of what is happenning to you) With this I can choose level of sedation as well. Of couse I would choose, put my butt into a deep sleep level! The benefit of this is that I can know whether the spinal will work before I am sedated, so I would defitnetly wake up Pain free!
2) General anesthesia with epidural, so that I can wake up pain free. If epidural does not work well, I will still wake up in pain, and since epidural is not put on till after general there is no way of knowing until I awake.(Maybe I could ask if they could do it before hand?) hmm, thats a thought. Also, I have had two pregnancys and they had to put epidural in more then once, and both times, I still felt quite a bit of pain,not sure if that is common during child birth though and if it is different for surgery.
3) Just general and risk waking up before I am suppose to. (YIKES) terribly scared of that happenning again. I would like to wake up in the recovery room this time, and not in the operating room!

I am not scared of any of these, but I would like your advice and words of wisdom!

Dear Leekalhalk, I am having my hyster on tues 29 July and i am having a spinal and .. some sedation i had a long meeting with the anaesthetist and he discussed all the options as i am allergic to general anaethesia and narcotic pain meds !!!!!! I am having the spinal for the surgery as i am having a A&P repair and mesh (its about two to three hours ) with some light sedation to spare me some embarrassment and he sayes its too long to be wide awake as you start to get restless and uncomfortable Not a good idea when there is a man with a scapel down there!!!he will then do an epidural(yes they are different) for pain relief for approx 12 hours so i dont need the heavy duty pain stuff >I have to say i came away from the visit much happier as i have had a couple of horrible experiences iin the past. i hope this helps i will let you know how things go ,you have a bit of time to sort things out (better sooner than closer as you should be happier with your plan)

I'm glad to read these posts! I asked my doctor if I could have just an epidural since general anethesia makes me terribly nauseous and I've never recovered well from it. I've had epidurals before for other procedures and they worked fabulously.

I'm gonna put these questions and some of y'all's suggestions/questions/observations in my book to ask my anesthetist when I see him/her for my pre-op meeting!!

I did general but was offered both. I didnt want an epidural - didn't want to be awake. BUT, afterwards I was in tremendous pain (in the OR recovery) - it was horrible. If I had done an epidural that wouldn't have happened! So maybe and epidural is the way to go after all.

Any type of medication can be put in the epidural. I was given a 24 hour morphine epidural with sedation. I was so scared that I think I talked the anesthesiologist into giving me too much medication. They say I woke up pain free, but it wore off during the night and I had a dilaudid pump...unfortunately too much narcotics for my system and I was nautious and dizzy and still had some pain. I would suggest the epidural but let them know as much as you don't want pain, you also don't want to be "overdrugged".By the second day I was fine the my recovery has been very easy! You will be fine.

You can ask for medication to help with the nausea before they put you under. I requested this, and it worked great. I had a general and a spinal for pain as I am allergic to so many meds. The spinal did not prevent movement of my legs. Good luck to you!

I'm having a TAH/BSO on September 8th. I have chosen to do the spinal after having many conversations with women who have gone before me. The deciding factor for me was no icky feeling from general and no pain for up to 24 hours with the spinal. Good luck in making your decision.

I did the morphine epidural and general and felt great the day of my surgery. My anestheologist ordered a pain pill for me to take at bedtime the night of my surgery and he said I would stay ahead of the pain and feel really good the next day. I wish I could tell you if that would work or not but I cannot because the nurse refused to give me the pain pill and told me to just use the morphine pump. The epidural did make all the difference for me because they didn't have to give me alot of medicine to knock me out so I wasn't sick or really groggy that day.