Topic: Touching on a Medical Procedure

Sed-a-give

One hundred. Yup. One hundred. Including dry-heaves. I'd reached the stage beyond anything remaining in my stomach. I actually tasted bile. Bile is bitter and viscous; not the best after-dinner flavor. I think that's where I became concerned. After a few days of vomiting with increased frequency, it was the bile that got to my ten-year-old brain.

Not sure if it was the number or the bile, but that night I earned a ride to the hospital. Something was odd. First, I couldn't tell if my parents believed me. For days I got the feeling they just thought I was ducking school. The next came from the intake nurse: she didn't weigh me. Not that I was svelte at 10, but it came to be important later.

Hooked up to IVs. The doctor comes in. I describe pain honestly, in the way I learned. Coming from a family that was half medical, I knew the terminology: "Pain in the right lower quadrant." The doctor's eyes narrowed. Ever see a person blink internally? That's what that was. He didn't believe it. Then came the test. I once knew the name of the response when the lower right quadrant was percussed. Intense pain, right knee comes up fast.  To his credit, I might have simply learned something and decided to lie. But I hadn't.

Blood work came back: high white blood count. The surgeon finally admitted they wanted to go in and see if anything was wrong with my appendix. Surgery scheduled.

All manners of thoughts race and whirl. Death is the most prevalent. My brothers had not been there to see me. They would not come, even after my surgery. I still don't know why. On a bed, being wheeled into pre-op. They gave me the sedative but it was taking time.  My mind focused on one thought: I didn't want to see the instruments. I'd read of the thrill executioners would take in revealing the hooks, knives, and other flencing objects to their quarries. Somehow that did not appeal. 

Shifted over to the table. I feel the doctors' concern over moving so corpulent a child. Maybe they did feel that way. That's not really what matters. I felt it.

Count backwards from...

Now we come to the importance of that weigh-in. Anesthesiologists need exact measurements in order to keep the patient under for enough time. Remove the exact, add in an approximation. Factor in some wonkiness in resistances to drugs, and, well:

Searing pain. The feeling of grogginess. Restraints... no, people holding me down. Being rolled into post op as I struggle. I must have ripped out my IV, I felt someone sticking my hand with a needle. I writhed. Eventually, after more than half a dozen tries, the needle stuck long enough for the plunger to be plunged.

Eventually they moved away from me. 

Is he out yet?

Somewhere a doctor and a nurse conversed. They were concerned or amazed the drugs had not yet kicked in. Eventually they did.

Later the surgeons told my parents that I thought I woke up during surgery. He was sporting a black eye.

For the next half a year I presented with classic PTSD symptoms. I would occasionally dream of see men in blue plastic holding someone down. I feared they were raping a shrieking girl. It was months, probably a year before I realized I was seeing me.

I've never recovered memories of the immediate moments following the sedatives wearing off. I'm pretty certain I don't want to.

Sed-a-give! Give him a sed-a-give!

Whenever Eyegore tries to solve the charades in Young Frankenstein, I'm amused for two reasons. The first is the show, of course. The second is the idea of a team of doctors and nurses trying to hold down a partially gutted 10 year old who came out swinging.