I feel like we do a crappy job sometimes of telling patients what to expect or differences in things like sedation vs general anesthesia. Sedation is just 'makes you sleepy' but you can wake from that sleep.

General anesthesia you're out, and you stay out until the doc pushes the drugs to wake you up.

I think the vast majority of stories about waking up in the middle of surgery involve the kinds of surgery where that's semi-expected. Like, we're typically not going to give general anesthesia for something like a toenail ablation or other more minor stuff. People wake up during those - usually we have a drape over them, so thay can't see the the actual surgical site, but they often need to be oriented - "Hey Mr. Jones, you're at the hospital for your toe surgery remember? You've been asleep for about 15 mins - we've got a couple left to go, then we'll get some dressings on and you'll be good to go!" ...completely normal. They won't actually feel what we're doing because of a nerve block or local anesthetic.

But, ^that after a few rounds of telephone game becomes some horror story about waking up in the middle of a big open abdominal surgery, feeling all the cuts but not being able to speak or move. Can that shit actually happen? Probably, idk... our physiology is super finicky and there's always the chance you're the next one-in-a-billion unlucky bastard with a previously unheard of weird response to one of the meds they use for general, but I suspect most of these tales are, again, telephone-game type deviations from something completely different, or just pure bullshit from square one.