I'm posting here for the first time to raise awareness of an issue that has caused me considerable pain over the past five years, and has plagued many other people as well. I, as well as thousands of people around the world, have had surgeries called Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy (ETS), and Endoscopic Lumbar Sympathectomy (ELS), that clamp or sever a series of nerves along the Sympathetic chain, which controls the fight or flight response, among many other things -and thus sever off chunks of the receiving patients' nervous systems. They have caused me and many others severe and debilitating changes, to consciousness and cognition. I feel the members of this forum are especially qualified to understand the contents of this post.

My apologies if this topic does not fit the purpose of the forum. It's just that I have tried for over 5 years to raise awareness without much luck, and know the people on this forum are smart enough to understand quite well the consequences of surgically messing with the nervous system.  I have managed to speak with some high profile people in EA/Rationality communities, and discussed writing a formal paper describing my experiences that they were prepared to disseminate widely. However, not much ever came of it because of my loss of cognitive capacity and coherence, 

I myself have had both ETS and ELS performed, which have totally destroyed my life and caused me torture and suffering beyond description (relevant because members of this forum desire to reduce extreme suffering), modified my consciousness and mental states so much that my internal mind doesn't seem to function or interact with the world coherently (which might be relevant to many people's intellectual interests such as consciousness).  I am 27 years old, and have basically spent close to a decade such that I have only gotten out of bed for 6 hours a day. (referring to the mode, not the mean)

One horrible period after ELS surgery was a period of approximately 2-3 years of continuous suffering, without a single moment of coherence or relief. A period of time took place when the thoughts that arose in my brain weren’t even fully coherent, as the machine that is my nervous system had so many parameters of computation removed, that the machine couldn’t function in its ideal state. My lumbar sympathectomy modified my consciousness and mental states so much that my internal mind doesn't seem to function or interact with the world coherently. As a result of the surgery, I now have lower “Moral Weight”, and lower capacity for conscious experiences. I also have great changes to the nature and type of my qualia.

Here is the Wikipedia page for ETS, which provides valuable information and is a good start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endoscopic_thoracic_sympathectomy . This was one of the few sources of information I could find that described how Sympathectomies affect consciousness. Sympathectomies are banned in Sweden and partially banned in Taiwan, because they recognize the deleterious effects outweigh the possible benefits of reduced sweating for those suffering from excessive sweating. Yet in many countries, such as the United States, the surgeries are less regulated and still performed. Many of the doctors are performing the surgeries despite knowing of their great harms, downplaying the serious negative consequences and ignoring the complaints of many of their patients (including removing negative reviews and comments about their practices from social media), due to financial motivations, and possibly other motivations regarding status.There is a Facebook page of now over 2500 members, the vast majority of whom have suffered as a result of sympathectomies: https://www.facebook.com/groups/334039357095989

Dr. Tommy Nai-Jen Chang, an Assistant Professor in the Division of Reconstructive Microsurgery, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Microsurgery, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Linkou Medical Center, Taiwan, works on peripheral nerve reconstruction for adult and pediatric brachial plexus injury, facial paralysis, and reconstruction of upper and lower extremity defects. Dr. Chang also performs peripheral nerve reconstruction to try to reverse ETS and ELS.  Dr. Chang has, in his work, identified 89 side effects from ELS and ETS.

Side effects that I have suffered from my Sympathectomy surgeries, namely my Lumbar Sympathectomy (ELS) include but are probably not limited to:

• Near-complete loss of capacity for all forms of pleasure and satisfaction, all states of mind above hedonic zero. Examples include sexual pleasure, pleasure from intellectual pursuit, satisfaction from reading a book or learning something new, significant but not complete loss of pleasure from food and drink, ability to love, loss of emotional ability to laugh, loss of capacity for pleasures of friendship, and much more. All capacities for preferable states of mind have been reduced to negligible levels.
• Loss of capacity for many types of suffering, such as emotional suffering, loss of capacity for emotional state of crying, fear, hatred, anger, heartbreak, and frustration - which I think is part of why I feel my capacity to fight back and accomplish goals towards raising awareness towards the surgery have been severely compromised
• Loss of fight or flight response
• Chronic fatigue - To this day, my chronic fatigue is so bad that, on days that I go to work, I only spend about nine and a half hours a day out of bed in a 24-hour period. On days that I don't work, it's only about four hours spent out of bed. Those data points were documented probably 6 months or so before this forum post.
• Difficulties in speech and difficulties putting sentences together and having conversation
• Weight gain and disruptions to my digestive system - At one point I could smell my internal organs failing and it was a period that my digestive system was so out of whack that I could only defecate on a frequency of about once every two or three weeks.
• Decreased ability to create new memories, and destruction of memories from the past
• Loss of reproductive system capabilities (male) - erectile dysfunction, loss of ability to find a woman attractive, loss of sexual arousal, etc.
• Greatly decreased intelligence - slower processing speed, lesser capacity for thought experiment, increased forgetfulness, etc.
• Greatly decreased capacity to appreciate music
• Lower states of consciousness - I feel less awake
• A state of being that is a lot less dense. I also feel less “awake” and my mind has a lot less depth to it.
• Problems with urination
• Decrease in capacity for fear
• Inability to process information properly and coherently
• Fog in my eyeball region
• Loss of hobbies
• Distortions in my perception of time
• Compensatory sweating - sweating in other parts of my body, particularly my back - which now has decreased quite a bit
• Muscle pain, primarily in back, but not sure how much is caused by surgery
• Loss of feelings of alertness
• Changes in my personality - In some sense I feel like I completely lost a personality and I have no personality nowadays after the surgery
• Problems with thermoregulation and overheating - There was one time I had to call an ambulance for myself just while out walking because I was so overheated and my heart was beating so heavily
• Greatly decreased capacity to perform and/or complete tasks
• Muscular tightness in my face region and forehead region
• Loss of ability to get goosebumps on arms
• Possible, but not proven, changes to my heart rate and blood pressure
• Possibly responsible for hair loss, as many other patients have also reported, but of course can’t prove causality,  and am not sure how much, if any, hair loss has been caused by a sympathectomy
• Many other effects, that have been documented in various audio files, video files, and text documents, that anyone may request to see. I made a 17-minute video a few months ago, which documented some things regarding my ELS surgery, which any of you can access upon request, and I may post it here if people are interested.

I went through two to three years of extreme brain fog, where hardly a minute that went by that I didn't think about my ELS surgery.  Even now, over five years later I spend a  majority of my days in head discomfort and pain, never floating above hedonic zero. I often go to sleep in discomfort, and wake up in discomfort, and still don't feel I can simply exist in fully coherent mental states, as is taken for granted by most people. My default state of being nowadays is uncomfortable, without a single second of internal comfort.

Would people be interested in me posting some more text files, audio files and/or videos? I think some things will be found interesting both to those who are interested in consciousness/qualia and to those who wish to reduce extreme suffering.

Thanks for reading.