The Story, The Horror, Monkeys, and Patient Controlled Pain Medication

So, a week has gone by and I wanted to get this out of the way as I feel it's getting to that point of "If that bitch makes one more lung joke or reference....'"

I still ask myself if it really happened & probably will for a while.

8:30 p.m., after my day had gone extremely well. I kicked it with George & Jon, got a good news phone call from a dear friend, had an excellent dinner, was excited for the return home of my mother the very next day, after she had been in Florida for three weeks....

And out of nowhere I'm in the car with Jon driving me to the hospital.

Sure, I've gotten chest pains before, even endured the pain of Pleurisy swelling up my lungs a few times in my life after bouts of Chronic Bronchitis.

Something was very different. Something was urgent & telling me I couldn't lie down on my side till it went away, not this time. Something had pretty much paralyzed the entire upper right side of my body, front to back.

The triage nurse wastes no time & I hurriedly follow her to X-Ray.

The technician is a raging bitch until she realizes she sees something on there that she shouldn't.

I overhear the conversation - "What are they talking about? I have what? Where?

A sudden flip of the switch to sympathy & she walks me back to an ER room with a sharp, blunt look of "This is gonna be a long night for you, kid."

Fast forwarding through being informed my lung had spontaneously collapsed (For no reason apparent to them) & the explanation of a possible chest tube procedure, the surgeon comes in & decides to give me an IV, a few mg's of Dilauted & keep me overnight for observation.

"What? I have to stay here?"

My inner child at that moment.

Half an hour to an hour & the X-Ray machine enters the room & this time I'm flying high on pharmaceuticals while they're taking the X-Rays from the bed.

"It's getting bigger. The doctor is coming back, we're gonna do the chest tube."

` "The fuckin' wha again?"

I still didn't quite get what was about to go down here.
Wtf had even happened between my relaxing night & ending up where & how I was.

I saw myself at home the next day dancing around like Mary fucking Poppins, blowing air bubbles out of some lil straw sticking out of my clavicle through a pinhole.

I pretty much didn't realize wtf was going on until the doctor barged in, rolled me over, shot up the side of my breast/underneath my armpit with two bottles of Novocaine, cut me, and plunged a tube 2 in. in diameter of what seemed like PVC piping into my chest cavity, rubbing against my lung with. every. breath.

With a giant box attached to it monitoring my every breath, compressing the air & fluids that need to be drained from my pleural (lung) cavity.

Very similar, my level of shock & the way I felt violated.

The PAIN (After the procedure). Holy shit, the pain this would be for however long this tube would be in was now a new reality I couldn't handle. Because of my Endometriosis, I have a high tolerance to pain meds & "Shit, they're gonna have to kill me.", I thought.

After yet more Dilauted & my new shocking reality along with the discombobulation of what just happened combined with the strong meds, I am taken up to Med/Surg. And in not knowing how I would ever get through the unbearable discomfort, I often wondered why they didn't bar the windows on this unit?

A few different times during my stay, I had to battle the logic in simply getting up & throwing myself out of it.

"Pain. Baaaadd. Bye-Bye", would occasionally run through my head.

These sweet, sweet nurses, lots of them my age & where I once wanted to be, but now on the other side; the patient.

They heard my pleas, they called my doctors, they tried Morphine, more Dilauted, Torodol, Ultram, and it escalated & escalated as I waited for the doctor to come in & say "Okay, let's get this thing out & get you home."

After an entire day waiting in hell, the doctor finally arrived.
First he had heard me cursing to dear Jon  (My ex who slept in a recliner beside me in Med/Surg & refused to leave my side the entire time I was in there, God love him) about how long I had been there with this unbearable tube stuck through me already & that the doctor had forgotten me (This was really the intolerable pain speaking), so when he came in he first made it clear he didn't wanna get beat up by a psycho chick with a tube in her chest.

"Now, I don't wanna see you in Shaws sometime down the road & have you throwing bananas at me.
Okay, well just not COCONUTS!"

"Hey, there's the asshole! The doctor guy. Go round up some pineapples."

"I like him."

When he ever uttered the words "Probably tomorrow or the next day", the look of horror on my face was too much for even him to bare. He started stroking my forehead & hair & joking with me to console me, just the like the ER nurse downstairs who tightly held my hand & comforted me through the whole tube procedure. I didn't even cry for my mother as I normally would. I had angels by my side the whole time. I owe those angels so much thanks, I can't even describe it.

(Except for my nurse, Lindsay, whom regardless of being a sweetheart, almost ripped out my tube, stole me an assload of scrubs from the washroom, ripped the giant vat of hand sanitizer off the wall to give to me, stated she had a cardiac problem with an average pulse rate of 120, and is probably too much of a danger for the nursing field. Not to mention that this whole time the girl across the hall is pushing the call button EVERY. FIVE. MINUTES for three days & treating the nurses like shit, and Jon is sitting there on his laptop attempting to hack the bitch on the hospital network, while I'm in so much pain, I can't even scream.)

I was angry that whole day but I gave into the fact that this was only to save my life & I had no choice.

They had a choice, though - To help me manage the pain or watch me tumble out their unit window.
This is when they decided I was a special lil case & brought in an Anesthesiologist to discuss PCA.

Some of you are probably wondering what that is. Well, I'll tell ya because this is where it starts getting good.
Patient. Controlled. Analgesia....
Let me repeat - Patient. Controlled. Analgesia
Their way of shutting up patients yelling for more Morphine every hour. Or really, just their last resort for patients in such excruciating pain that hardly anything will make a dent in it.

So the Anesthesiologist gave me options...
- Morphine (Peppermint)
- Dilauted (Wintergreen)
- Fentanyl (Or Watermelon)

The Dilauted made me too sick & dizzy, the Morphine didn't make a dent, but the big fucking F & I were familiar. It was prescribed to me in duragesic form at the pain clinic.

Now, I'm no idiot & I'm cautious with myself. I'm a medical buff for fucksakes, so I was scared shitless & figured they were out of their ever-lovin' minds when they told me I could press the button to deliver the medicine through my veins every 6 minutes & that the machine itself would lock me out after so many pushes of the button over a period of time to keep any risk of overdose down.

Shit, I was about to take a ride down the motherflippin' euphoria rainbow, and possibly so hard that they have to take your vitals every half hour at the start of the insanity. "The Rainbow Ride" as I'm calling it.

"SOMEBODY KILL ME OR I'LL DO IT MY G'DAMN SELF! WTF is going on here?!"

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Then the liquid pain candy machine makes its way into the room.
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You okay, man? You mellow?
Yeah, you're alright! Pain's easin' up.

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.
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And then the moment hits where you realize it's actually possible to overdo it with things you're convinced you have under control.
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Listen, that dinosaur was supposed to be a unicorn & sometimes you draw things a lil weird & then realize they'd look better with guns, wearing diapers & don't fucking judge me, K.

But it worked. I got sleep that night after I had finally learned not to be afraid to keep pressing that button if I needed it like the nurse told me.

The tube came out the next morning, with the biggest sigh of relief, but they kinda had to pry the pump from my hands, and I'm hitting it as much as I can *Beep Beep* "Patient Lockout" as they were getting ready to take it away.

 I floated across the unit that afternoon, in my gown, with my monkey, and went around to the nurses station like it was fn' Cheers & everybody should know my name.
"They're starting me on Percocet now, and where the fuck is Norm, guys?"

And here I am, home, a week later, and sore as HELL!!
And guessing it'll be another week or so before I feel pretty normal again, but I'm getting there. Lots of trouble sleeping with the discomfort.

And there were many comical moments during that stay, but I couldn't exactly write a novel about it here, so I just included all the key moments.

Now, where's that pain medicine button again?
Aww.......... Shit.................

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On a few side notes: I would like to bring up the Blog Of War.
(No, I'm not a participant, but rather an observer of the contest.)

Mr. B over at BlackLOG has been advertising it & was searching for more interested participants.
I'm not sure if I'm already passed the deadline for mentioning it at this point, but if you're interested, please go visit BlackLOG for the details. This blogger is so talented with his style of comical writing, I'd love to see a few people go head to head.. ;~}

And lastly, I have a new Facebook account especially for my blogging buddies, so if you intermingle the two & have such an account, Friend me on that shit. It's fun over there, and inappropriate 90% of the time, I promise.

Hope you all had a great weekend, and things should be back to normal here before you know it.