Knee surgery questions?!?

Hello. (:
I badly tore my medial meniscus in my knee. I will be having arthroscopic knee surgery to remove the torn fragments next week. I got my set of rules for the surgery and have a couple questions I am curious about.

Why can I not have anything to eat or drink after midnight before my surgery? My surgery is scheduled for 3:15 pm.

Why can I not have any fingernail polish on?

Why can I not wear any make-up? Just wondering how this would affect the surgery?

Also, it says I should not shave my legs the day before surgery. Is this to prevent accidentally nicking myself? Why would that matter?

Also, will I be intubated during surgery?

How will they put me to sleep? It's general anesthesia. What's it feel like?

Thank you for your help!

Hi, I'm going to try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge. This information comes from my professional training.

1. Eating fills the stomach. In general anesthesia and with a tube in your airway you might throw up and then rebreathe the fluids thus causing irritation and inflammation of your lungs and airways which can lead to pneumonia (infection of the lungs). Even if they are only going to do epidural anesthesia, they have to consider this possibility in the case that you may need general anesthesia for whatever reason.

2. Fingernail polish makes it harder to see capillary refill times and the color of your nails can tell us if you're showing signs of hypovolemia or anemia (due to blood loss)

3. Make up can hide certain signs of hypovolemia and shock, it also makes it more difficult for anesthesiologists to handle your face in the case of needing to intubate you.

4. Shaving causes small cuts on your skin which typically get infected by Staphylococcus aureus, a gram positive cocci (bacteria of the skin) causing "white spots" or folliculitis. This greatly (100X) increases the risk of post-op infection in the surgical wound area.