Surgery stories

[awatt]

Just had surgery the other day and it was a trip, not like last surgery I had about 25 years ago to remove tonsils. I was in by 6am and out by high noon. I was put under, the Doc cut my neck open, removed a growth (lovely), glued me up, and sent me home. Glue! Not stitches, but glue! And then percocet, which I only needed for one day. Within 24 hours, back to "normal". I was amazed at the process, sort of like being on a conveyor belt moving from waiting room, to prep room, to discharge, etc. and probably most significant factor throughout was hearing from every nurse and health care person, "Oh, your doctor is one of the best in the country if not the world"! Faith in my savior... I know not all surgeries turn out so well but was a truly unique, unusual experience so got me wondering about surgery as a strange kind of modern religious experience. Maybe it's just me....

[PigSooie]

Surgery is cool. There are many great therapies out there, and they are only getting better.

 

Luckily, I only get to operate on dead people.

[Wendy]

And on behalf of all living people ... whew!

 

 

:beer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AWATT - glad it went so smoothly ... hope there's no more worries!

[Tweedling]

Surgery has come a long way in the last 15/20 years. I've had my appendix removed and my descending colon removed and I've had an intramedullary nail placed in my tibia......twice. I am in the OR everyday with my job and after all this I believe the anesthesia a patient goes through plays a big part in their experience as a whole. For instance, I cried during "A Baby Story" and VH1 "Behind The Music- Blind Melon" right after 2 of my surgeries.

 

Cool thread.

[froggie]

i remember when i got my tonsils out in 1990. i woke up midway through sugery. a bunch of guys with metal implements down my throat and there was a tray of blood beside me. still being drugged up at the time and not thinking straight, i grabbed the tray and started drinking it, out of fear.

 

they swiftly gave me another jab in the arse and i was asleep again. a few seconds terror, though!

[tellya]

2 epidurals+ fentanyl+ pitocin+ percocet+ vicodin, + the magic ketamine= one veryhappy new mama

[bjorn_skurj]

I got drunk the other night and removed a small growth from the side of my head with a pair of scissors. As Peter Garbriel says, "DIY"

[sweetheart-mine]

I got drunk the other night and removed a small growth from the side of my head with a pair of scissors. As Peter Garbriel says, "DIY"

[VenusStopsTrain2]

Just had surgery the other day and it was a trip, not like last surgery I had about 25 years ago to remove tonsils. I was in by 6am and out by high noon. I was put under, the Doc cut my neck open, removed a growth (lovely), glued me up, and sent me home. Glue! Not stitches, but glue! And then percocet, which I only needed for one day. Within 24 hours, back to "normal". I was amazed at the process, sort of like being on a conveyor belt moving from waiting room, to prep room, to discharge, etc. and probably most significant factor throughout was hearing from every nurse and health care person, "Oh, your doctor is one of the best in the country if not the world"! Faith in my savior... I know not all surgeries turn out so well but was a truly unique, unusual experience so got me wondering about surgery as a strange kind of modern religious experience. Maybe it's just me....

I had surgery on my neck a few years ago from a benign tumor on my right side. The doctor did it in his office with me being awake the whole time...course my neck wasn't cut open largely....but I have a cool scar Was yours a bad growth? I was stitched up and the doctor joked with me that he was going to put his initials on my neck!

[ikol]

One of the most awesome experience of my surgery rotation was getting to hold a beating heart during a bypass operation.

[cryptique]

I had surgery a couple of years ago, and though it was a quick outpatient procedure, they basically hacked out a sizable chunk of tissue in my lower back (or upper booty, really) and left it to heal as an open wound (it's not something they could staple/glue/suture), meaning it had to be continually repacked with gauze (and, because I couldn't easily reach it myself, poor Melissa had to do the honors).

 

Those weeks of healing were extremely unpleasant for both of us.

[jimmyjimmy]

Ruptured my achillies tendon about 8-10 yrs back.

My scar looks kinda like the laces on a football, which is cool by me.

 

Nurses are the swell-est ppl in the world too BTW.

Just needed to throw that out there.

 

And I'm a big fan of drugs. Wonderful wonderful stuff.

[stooka]

Having worked in the operating room over the last 18 yrs, I've come to the conclusion that 98% of the general population look better with their clothes on!

 

As far as stories I have, most of the outlandish ones would be inappropriate to post.

[ikol]

I had surgery a couple of years ago, and though it was a quick outpatient procedure, they basically hacked out a sizable chunk of tissue in my lower back (or upper booty, really) and left it to heal as an open wound (it's not something they could staple/glue/suture), meaning it had to be continually repacked with gauze (and, because I couldn't easily reach it myself, poor Melissa had to do the honors).

 

Those weeks of healing were extremely unpleasant for both of us.

 

I think I had the same surgery about 4 years ago, and it was definitely a pain in the ass!

 

As far as stories I have, most of the outlandish ones would be inappropriate to post.

 

Since when has that stopped anyone from posting?

[stooka]

Yes, I understand that some don't refrain from posting "anything and everything".

[PopTodd]

Glad that all went well, AWATT.

 

My surgery story:

I had brain surgery a couple of years ago. Coming out of the surgery, all drugged up, head in a plaster bandage, my first groggy words to the nurses were:

"Do I look sexy for my wife?"

 

They laughed.

[JUDE]

Last year my father was experiencing dizziness and near black outs after physical exertion, he went in for a stress check and they determined he had some pretty sever arterial blockage. He went in for an outpatient stint procedure and was done in one day. Pretty impressive. He went back later (approx 6 weeks) for a follow up stress test. Two days later the hospital calls and tells him he needs to come in right away because the results of the follow up stress test showed no improvement so obviously their must have been some complications with the procedure (keep in mind my father was feeling great and experiencing non of the prior symptoms/conditions). In a panic my dad leaves work and goes to the hospital for what was supposed to be an emergency bypass procedure. Upon arrival the doctor comes in to the pre-op room and tells my dad that, sorry but we just discovered that we had your stress test charts switched and we thought your initial test results were from your follow up test, sorry. My father was not impressed.

[RaspberryJam]

2 epidurals+ fentanyl+ pitocin+ percocet+ vicodin, + the magic ketamine= one veryhappy new mama

Your experience with ketamine was a good one???!!! Mine was nightmarish, literally. Same sort of trajectory during labor, then ketamine during a c-section because my blood pressure went way up and I started bleeding a lot. Once I was on the Vitamin K I had horrible real time hallucinations of grotesque things happening behind hospital doors, and I had to work my way up to the roof to regain my sanity, which I thought I may never do. When I finally crawled into conscionceness, I couldn't see because I didn't have my glasses, and I couldn't talk right, so I asked for my "specs", which is a word I would never say. Oh! and when I woke up in the recovery room I thought it was the morgue. Nice. When they had my husband come down, he said something about having a beautiful baby boy, I said, "Don't be ridiculous, I've never even been pregnant!"

 

I'm making jokes, but it was terrifying and life changing. The funny thing is, sometimes I've seen tv shows or movies where something similar is descibed. Like when Tony Soprano was having his near death experience and was going up and down between floors of the hotel, exactly the same sort of thing.

 

Later, I was telling a veteranarian friend about it, she said, "we give that to cats! I can't believe they give that to people!" My anesthesiologist told me it was one molecule away from PCP. I can't believe it is a recreational drug. I have it written in red and circled on my file--NO KETAMINE.

[yermom]

Having worked in the operating room over the last 18 yrs, I've come to the conclusion that 98% of the general population look better with their clothes on!

Aw man, I've always been reasonably comfortable getting naked in medical environments but now I'll be all self conscious knowing the staff is not above judging my nudie appearance as I used to believe they were.

[LouieB]

I am sure no one wants to hear about my two abdominal surgeries, (or my couple kidney ones either...), but needless to say I have a great deal of respect for the medical profession (when they are on their game) and can also tell a story or two about when they are not.

 

Regarding being naked....after awhile you really don't give a shit, because most medical folks have seen it all before.

 

LouieB

[quarter23cd]

I've only had one surgery, though I guess it was a pretty biggie. Correcting a heart defect I was born with. Not the heart itself, but the aorta, actually. I'm pretty sure I remember waking up during the surgery itself, which is freaky. Still don't know if I imagined that or not. I do, however, remember waking up back in the room, with them taking the breathing tube out of me and the nurse and my mom encouraging me to breathe on my own (and the nurse threatening to ram the tube back down my throat because I was breathing too shallowly) and I remember being so tired and so unable to do anything that I remember telling my mom "Just let me go", which kind of gives me chills now to think about. I also remember when I finally did come-to all the way, I puked my guts out.

 

I have a hell of a scar from that surgery.

 

Oh, and I also discovered that morphine is pretty awesome.

 

And, given that I was 14 years old at the time, I had a weird dreamlike sequence where I woke up in the middle of the night one night and the nurse coming to check on my bodily functions--not sure if this was real or imagined--but she was the hottest woman in the universe. In reality, she was probably like 90 years old or something, but thank god for morphine-fueled teenage fantasies!

 

[poppydawn]

Not sure if I was given ketamine during my c-section, but my experience was definitely similar to yours, RaspberryJam. Waking up in the recovery room felt like a living nightmare. One of the nurses was telling another about her date the night before (which was Valentine's Day). Date Nurse was wearing dark glasses and I kept thinking I could see huge blackened eyes behind them.

 

I had an emergency c-section after 32 hours of labor. I was pretty crazed by then from lack of sleep and pain (four epidurals with breakthrough pain). All through the surgery I couldn't breathe. I had a cold and by then my mouth was dry from hours of mouth-breathing. I spent the whole time begging the anasthetiologist for water.

 

The drugs wore off when they were about halfway through with the stitches. They gave me more drugs, and then we had to wait for them to kick in. I could feel air in places never intended to feel air.

 

Big shocker - I developed a staph infection over the next few days in the hospital. It took a month of antibiotics to get it under control. I almost wound up back in the hospital, which was the last place I wanted to be at that point.

 

My incision hurt for well over a year. It still itches fairly often, and it's been nearly five years. My scar's pretty awesome; it's all jagged. There was a spot in the middle that kept reopening, so that looks like something from Doc Frankenstein's lab.

[embiggen]

I've had 4 surgeries in my life and will most likely have another one in the coming months.

 

the MOST fun was when I had knee surgery on my right knee. they gave me mepergans, which are awesome, but I almost overdosed because I took an extra pill, forgetting that I took one an hour earlier. I puked my guts out for an hour. very very lucky. it took a year for my knee to completely recover, but it was worth it.

[austrya]

I've only had my tonsils out and my impacted wisdom teeth out.

[borracho]

i can't remember the name of it, but when i had foot surgery a few years back, before they took me in they had me laying in a leather recliner with a blanket over me in front of a widescreen tv showing ESPN and gave me a Diet Coke... not only was that great, but even better was the IV they stuck in my arm to dispense the stuff that would knock me out and it was so cold going through my veins, but it felt so good... weirdly enough, that was one of the best feelings i've ever had!