> Eventually, when all your savings are burned through, when you might need to sell your house, you really wonder if that's what they wanted and if all that was worth it.

I will never accept a country where things like this happen routinely as civilised.

> For me, the decision is clear: when I'm not able to make my own decisions turn everything off and let me die.

And what if you might be able to make decisions again tomorrow. Or the day after? Or in two weeks time.. ? These things are never all that 'clear'.

What you and your wife and indeed child went through was immense enough to be fair I think it is understandable to be destabalized.

Neither of us knows. That's the difficult bit in topics like these. None of us is psychic and can tell what'll happen next. Will he be happy and healthy? Or will he have anger issues, meltdowns or exhibit destructive behavior to himself and surrounding loved ones due to neurological damage? We always hope for the best. I hope the boy recovers well. But there are no guarantees in life.

I really recommend the book "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. It helped me process the drawn out and unpleasant death of my grandfather and look at end of life care in a different light. There's an important difference between extending life and providing quality of life that a lot of patients and doctors both misunderstand.

The book is written from the author's own experience as a doctor but also includes his experience with his own father's death from cancer.

When Breath Becomes Air was a great book that seems relevant here

I wish you strength in dealing with your situation. Neurological problems are really hard to deal with, especially when you come to realize it really is what it is and have to let go of futile hope.

I'm not sure what you mean. I've been under general anesthesia a few times and not had any negative consequences. My dad has had multiple brain surgeries, and he's fully functional. Most people I know have been under at least once.

I think before you blame anaesthesia it's worth wondering what else happened to you on the table, or whether something else might be causing you the problems. A lot of other things happen during a surgery that can screw you up pretty badly. I'm pretty sure I was dropped off a table once.

I think if there was such a side-effect with such a commonly-used tool, someone would have noticed by now.

Would you be willing to share more details, instead of this rather vague claim? I've had three at least 2 hour long operations last year. I kind of wondered if I'd notice any aftereffects, but apparently didn't. Even waking up was pretty uneventful, consciousness just coming back like a light bulb being turned on again.

So either I am an exception, or your "everyone I know" needs qualification. In any case, I'd be very interested in what aftereffects you noticed, maybe that helps me reflect.

Anesthesiologist here: what you are referring to exists, but is rare and is not related to general anesthesia (equally likely in operations performed while patients are awake with regional anesthesia or under general anesthesia). It is more people with pre-existing cognitive dysfunction that are elderly do not handle the inflammatory milieu generated by surgery. You can Google “postoperative cognitive dysfunction” for more information.

Any phenomenon more widespread than the above is simply not supported by scientific studies to date.

I’m honestly a bit disappointed to find this comment on hacker news, as I feel the level of discourse here is usually higher. I wish you all the best and hope you recover from whatever you’re experiencing, but this is frankly fearmongering.

Could you elaborate on specific effects?

Evidence?

Oh yes, I'm in agreement with you there

Exacerbated by astonishing overuse for anything from a 2-minute endoscopy to a 15-minute hand surgery. The pursuit of “comfort” at the cost of fractional lobotomy.

Please don't put words in my mouth

Traumatic brain injury.

If a patient has "sequelae of hypoxic ischemic changes" in their brain like in this case, that means a significant amount of their brain cells have died. The surviving brain cells may or may not be able to take over some of the function of the dead ones, but I'm not aware of any current or future technology that can significantly improve the chances of a positive outcome here.

Then again, I agree with you on principle: if such a patient is brought into the ER, the Hippocratic Oath compels doctors to do everything they can to save them. And since ECMO is widely available (thanks Covid, I guess), they can really do a lot, even if the patient's heart is stopped for extended periods of time. If, like in this case, the patient's heart starts beating again, there's "only" the recovery of brain function to worry about. But there are also patients whose brain is working, but their heart doesn't anymore, so they only live as long as they're connected to the ECMO machine (until they hopefully eventually can get a heart transplant), which presents a whole new set of ethical questions...

> Treatment progresses it never stops or moves backwards.

Unless the episode gets buried at the bottom of the medical file. Unless treatment is "completed" because no more progress can made. Unless insurance doesn't cover it anymore. Unless one bad doctor discourages the patient from ever seeking out another doctor again. Unless the patient himself has only dim awareness, if any, of the fact that this happened and impacts their behavior on a daily basis.

Unless it really can't be fixed, no matter how hard everyone insists that in this day and age it should

Unless they're "Lost to follow-up".

Unless Unless Unless ...