Back surgery is major surgery. If you have suffered an injury — in a workplace accident, for instance, or a car accident — you may have emergency surgery to try to preserve mobility and feeling. If you have a degenerative condition or some other such health condition, it may feel less like an emergency, but it is still crucial to get the proper care.
For any major surgery, one thing that people always ask is if they are going to be “put under” or not. They want to know if they will be given general anesthesia for the procedure so that they are essentially in a medically-induced coma the entire time.
You may be, as this is one of the most common types of anesthesia used for back surgery. This is not just to prevent you from feeling pain. The surgeon may also need you to lie very still for this highly-technical procedure, and this is the best way to do it.
However, some patients just get spinal anesthesia instead. This removes all feeling in the area being operated on, but you technically are awake. Even if you do not feel pain, you may have some sensations, such as a tugging sensation. This can still feel very strange to patients who have not been through it before, but they don’t have some of the risks associated with general anesthesia.
No matter which type of medications you get, having back surgery can massively impact your life for years to come. You may need extensive rehab and physical therapy. Even then, your life may not return to normal and you may not be able to return to work when you’re done. If you are disabled on account of the injury or the surgery, you need to know about all of the legal options you have.