Are you facing surgery in the next couple of days or weeks? What you do beforehand, how you plan for it, even what you eat can help determine how quickly you recover. At a meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists last month, researchers reported that eating potatoes before an operation could theoretically lengthen the time anesthetic drugs remain in your body. While it's too soon to conclude that you should avoid spuds altogether, there are plenty of other dos and don'ts to keep in mind.
At the top of the anesthesiologists' list: give your doctors as much detail as...