A young woman of 28 with rheumatoid arthritis is to have surgery under a general anaesthetic. Her condition has progressed now to a point where her neck is so stiff that she needs to be intubated while awake, as the last time she went under a general, her life was nearly lost due to difficulty with the intubation. The anaesthetist is trying to decide whether to tell the patient, who is already very nervous about the intubation prior to surgery, that she will have to be brought back to full consciousness after her surgery before her tube can be removed. This will be very unpleasant, but also very quickly resolved. The anaesthetist is wondering if it's better for her to not know.
It is proposed that the anaesthetist will not tell the nervous young woman about waking up from surgery still intubated.