Reading This Could Make You Feel Sick
The story begins in 1959 when I came down with a case of tuberculosis, and out of a family of 13, I was the only one to have had it. All my family were tested and luckily all were negative.
In September of '59, I landed in a sanatorium and was told I would be there for three or four months. Ha, and I believed them. After taking the cure for six months, they told me I needed an operation and, not knowing what that entailed, I readily agreed as I would be discharged in another six months.
But before the operation, there were some procedures I had to go through, and the one I'll never forget went this way.
On a Sunday morning, a nurse came and gave me a needle. I asked what it was and she said meperidine, 50mg. Okay, I had never heard of it and at the time I was reading a book and never paid any attention to it as I had never heard of it before and the procedure I was about to have was
called a bronchoscopy, a real nasty piece of work if there ever was one.
I was brought up to the operating room and sat on a chair and made to stick out my tongue,
which they wrapped in a gauze of some type so that I could grab my tongue and hold it
out while they used this very large Q-tip to coat my throat with something to deaden it. Talk about an ass kicker that was, but nothing compared to what was to follow. After the Q-tip work was done, I was slid to the end of the operating table with my head going past the end of the table. Here the fun begins, but first some background. The needle I mentioned earlier was supposed to relax me (get sedated), which did nothing.
Now, try to imagine a 1/2 inch pipe about 16 inches long. Yep, they were going to shove that
son of a bitch down my throat, so with my head hanging over the end of the table they proceeded to do that, and shoving instruments down the pipe to have a look-see, and another to take a snip out of my lung for biopsy. Now really, I can't really tell you how mad I was at all this 'cause when it was over I was so mad I shunned the OR garb and got dressed, left the building, and went visiting other patients. About an hour or so later, this nurse found me and dragged my ass back to the main hospital where I was met by a doctor and a couple of nurses, who proceeded to bawl the living shit out of me, as I was supposed to be sedated but nobody told me that and the doctor said he had a good mind not to operate on me. If I only knew, and after a while, he said to me "you really don't know what is happening, do you?" and when I said no, he sort of let the matter drop, but not the charge nurses, they hounded the hell out of me and I was just as mean as they were.
So now the six months are up and it's time for surgery and I was scared shitless, wondering if I would make it through. One of the nurses on the surgical floor said not to worry because we use Demerol. Now if you remember the earlier needle - meperidine 50mg, well needless to say I did not know Demerol was the same drug. So we go ahead with the surgery and when I woke up, well I just can't describe the pain. For a whole month, I actually prayed for death. Only now I'm getting 100mg and I could hardly feel any relief, and was forced to do exercises every day. Man, the pain, but after 30 days I started coming back to life.
Now it's important to remember this little tidbit, namely, meperidine and Demerol are the same drug, remember that. So now we move on to 1978 when I had spinal surgery twice, the first one went smoothly, a discectomy, and then came number two, which put me off surgeons for what I thought was for life. This second surgery was cutting off three laminae, called a triple laminectomy, and when I awoke from this in incredible pain the OR doctors gave me a shot of 50mg of Demerol. Remember the earlier shot of meperidine which did nothing, well I went into a rage so they gave me another 50mg IV which worked but that was a one-time-only deal.
Next, I was to be taken back to my original hospital in an ambulance, and every bump in the road brought screams of agony and when we got back to my hospital the paramedics got into a fight with the nurses, they didn't want to lift me into bed until I was sedated, but no dice, as I was already sedated with that *&^%^&* Demerol, and there were about five patients waiting to go to surgery and I didn't want to scare the hell out of them so I told the paramedics to put me in bed, they gave me a tongue depressor to put in my mouth to bite on so I wouldn't scream. Now this is still early in the morning and all I could think of was killing that damn surgeon. Oh, for a gun. This kept up all day and around eight that night one of the charge nurses came into our room and asked, "How are we all tonight?" Man, did I tell her in no uncertain terms and an hour later she reappeared with a needle which she jabbed me with and man, talk about relief. I don't know how she did this, as I had specifically asked my doctor not to give me Demerol, but he was the doctor and they're always right, right? Bullshit. From that day on I swore I'd never go near a surgeon again, but that was not to be.
When in 2002 I had a heart attack, 10 days in ICU and then to see another surgeon about the large aneurysm, which I had to wait a year for and then the big screw-up which led to 3 more operations and waking up with an ileostomy put me in a pretty vile mood even today as something went wrong and my spine got damaged and my left leg is in constant pain, to the point where if it goes out, I can't move, just wait it out so I can get a few more feet and then try to get into the house and then to bed with the help of Dilaudid, 2 every hour until I get six into me and then relief, but for two years now I can't get an answer as to what the hell happened, and no expectations for an answer because of the shape my spine is in.
Enough babbling for now, and after venting I feel a bit better, thanks to those who read this. Ed
