In general anesthesia, you are unconscious and have no awareness. In regional
anesthesia, the anesthesiologist makes an injection near a cluster of nerves to numb the area of your body that requires surgery. During minimal sedation, you will feel relaxed, and you may be awake. You can understand and answer questions and will be able to follow the physician's instructions. When receiving moderate sedation, you will feel drowsy and may even sleep through much of the procedure, but will be easily awakened when spoken to. During deep sedation, you will sleep through the procedure with little or no memory of the procedure room. While you receive sedation during surgery, your vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen level, will be watched closely in order to avoid sudden changes. You may also receive supplemental oxygen during the surgery. Spinal and epidural blocks are forms of anesthesia that temporarily interrupt sensation from the trunk and legs by injection of local anesthetic medication in which contains the spinal cord and spinal nerves. There are four types of pain relief after surgery: I.V., oral medications, local anesthesia, and regional blocks. You can combine both epidural and spinal anesthesia for some patients. The two commonly used types of medications are opioids and local anesthetics. In normal doses, narcotics may cause constipation, itching, nausea, retching, or drowsiness. Local anesthetics may cause some numbness or, heaviness. There will be some difficulty with weight bearing on the blocked leg afterwards, and patients should take care not to fall. A regional block helps with pain relief and can last for several hours and depending on the anesthesiologist you can go home with a regional block catheter on your back. Most of the time anesthesiologists dont let them take the regional block catheter home because they might have trouble taking it out or they might injury themselves in the process. This source was very informational and self explanatory. This source talked about things from blocks to epidural anesthesia to spinal anesthesia and to different types of medicine that anesthesiologists and CRNAs use during and after a surgery.