[rickydroll]

Oh yeah, I've had two cath lab visits. In both of them, I woke up in the middle of the process, conscious enough to recognize that the black-and-white image on the screen was me with a wire in my heart and little puffs of dye.

The first time it happened, I was fascinated watching the process. I thought I asked them a question about what I was seeing. I probably was just mumbling. The second time, I had a bright white ball of nuclear fire in my chest, and in my mind's eye, my ribs were slumping under the heat. I tried to tell them about the burning sensation, and I apologized for complaining (one should always be polite to the doctor running a wire through one's arteries and into one's heart).

In both cases, after I tried to speak, the room went black again.

As I relate the story, I can see how, for some people, it would be nightmare fuel. But for me it was this abstract "hey, that's cool."

[talwyn]

I'm in the UK and was intentionally kept conscious during angioplasty and stent placement. Mind you, it was an emergency heart-attack kind of appointment! The experience was very cool and I recall that the wire-wriggling cardiologist wore a sectional lead suit (rapidly firing X-ray machine) and to my drug-addled brain, reminded me of the armored gorillas in the Planet of the Apes movies.