Sam learned, when he broke his wrist in Davis, CA at a soccer tournament on May 22, that he and ketamine do not get along.  They used it to reset his wrist and his experience recovering from it was rough.

“Ketamine (Ketalar) is a dissociative anesthetic. Doctors use it to induce general anesthesia in medical procedures that do not require muscle relaxation (Medical News Today). 

General anesthesia denotes a sleep-like state, while dissociative (Ketamine) refers to the effect of feeling disconnected.

Ketamine can produce hallucinations similarly to other drugs such as LSD and PCP. Hallucinations are distorted perceptions of sounds and sights.” (Medical News Today)

His first experience was not good and then, because the OR was already booked, and because Sam needed a lumbar puncture to see if there was leukemia in his cerebral spinal fluid, our attending decided to do the procedure using ketamine, which doesn’t require an anesthesiologist. His recovery was rough once again — it’s the *only* thing that he has complained about during this entire journey so that says something.

The only down moment I’ve seen him have, after the obvious one when he heard he had leukemia for the first time, was when he said to John “If I have to have ketamine with my lumbar punctures and they are happening 2x/week in this protocol, I don’t think I can do this.”