Adventures In Painkilling

[I have been told I should warn people who are facing the prospect of cardiothoracic surgery themselves and/or who are squeamish about the miraculous, life-saving but ultimately still pretty barbaric and gruesome world of modern medicine, NOT TO READ ANY FURTHER. You have, then, been warned.]

It happens sometimes, and it happened to me--I emerged from the anaesthesia, not quite completely sedated. I was rapidly becoming ever more aware of my surroundings, and yet still completely unable to move even the smallest of muscles, not even my eyelids. I wasn't sure what to make of this at first--was I dead? Was I in hell? Had I not survived my operation and I was somehow just not figuring out how to get out of this useless corpse of a body?

After awhile, rational thought returned, and as I listened to the beep! beep! beep! of the heart monitor and the hiss of the ventilator, I realized I couldn't be dead if they still had me on life support. My suspicions were confirmed when a nurse came in, stuck me with a needle, and drew some blood. I couldn't see her, of course, but by now I was feeling every touch sensation, but still not able to blink, or otherwise signal to anybody that I was waking up. With my increasing awareness, the distant hiss of the ventilator had moved closer--right down my throat, in fact, and every two seconds when the machine hissed, I felt what can only be described as a kick to the ribs--from the inside.

And my ribs! Open heart surgery requires they saw you open up the middle and pry you apart. I felt like I had been crushed by a Mack truck and stapled back together. Each nauseating kick from the weather balloon inside me felt like it was going to splay me wide open again. And every few minutes, fluid would back up my esophagus and collect in the back of my throat. Unable to swallow, talk, or cough, the only way anyone became aware of this was a sickening gurgling sound from the ventilator hose, and involuntary gag reflexes from me. Then a nurse would come in, stick another hose in my mouth and vacuum it all out.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Hisss. KICK! Gurgle. Beep! Beep! Beep!... Eventually, one eyelid fluttered open and I was able to see a clock--it was 5:00 PM.

Then 6. Then 7. Then 8. Then 9:00 PM. Somebody had turned on the Lakers game in my room. I don't know if it's because they figured I was still out cold, or maybe if I wasn't, I'd like to listen, but of course they had no way of knowing that I hate televised sports and they could not possibly have chosen a more annoying irritant to blast into my room. It was apparently a very exciting game, since there gathered a very noisy gaggle of clucking ICU staff around my doorway, cheering at the TV and gossiping loudly when the commercials were on.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Hisss. KICK! (oooph!) Kobe shoots! He scores! YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!! Dawn takes grease, out of your way! KICK! (oooph!) Beep! Beep! Beep! Did you hear about Doris? Beep! Beep! Beep! I know, can you believe it? KICK! (oooph! ow!) Oh my GOD, NO!!! The crowd goes WILD! Gurgle. Cough. Beep! Beep! Beep! KICK! (ooph! ow!) BEEF! IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER!!! Beep! Beep! Beep! All the while, the painful throbbing around the front of my ribs growing more insistent by the minute.

Eventually, the Lakers and their noisy fans went away, and I was left alone in my room with the rhythmic Beep! Beep! Beep! and the ventilator and my throbbing chest which, absent the ESPN Sports Desk operating out of my room, all seemed weirdly tranquil now. I didn't actually sleep, but I did fall into sort of a half-waking trance, as I started to count the beeps and the kicks to my ribs.

I don't know what time it was, early morning--when I discovered I could wiggle my hands, and I found they were taped around padded wooden blocks and tied to the bed rails. I knew immediately what that was for and it's a damn good idea they were there--otherwise I'd have yanked that dreadful hose out of my throat myself in seconds. So instead I just started to bang the wooden blocks on the sides of my bed. A nurse comes in and says, as if I were a misbehaving toddler: "Not yet, honey, you need to settle down--you're not awake yet!" Sigh. ARRRGH!!! "Bitch, you have NO IDEA..."

I began to get my muscle control back, and this was not the blessed relief I had been fantasizing about--the fluid backing up in my throat was now making me cough harder, the hose seemed to be getting bigger by the minute, and sometimes while I was still coughing, the ventilator would pump downward against the cough coming up, which was every bit as unpleasant as it sounds. The machine would honk and beep in protest and a nurse would appear in my doorway.

Eventually, and it must have been 6 AM by now, about 13 hours since I realized I wasn't dead, a nurse who heard me in the midst of an all-out power struggle with that damnable ventilator, came into my room and said, "OK, I'm going to put the vent on standby--we have to leave it in for a little while until we're sure you can breathe on your own. If you stop breathing, the machine will give you a little 'reminder.'" I had been in the hospital two weeks already and was no longer amused by the fiendishly cruel gift for understatement possessed by everyone in the medical profession...

Breathing with what feels like 2,000 lbs of ventilation equipment inside you is an odd sensation--it feels not unlike sucking on an underwater snorkel--you can't use your nose, and your mouth is blocked, and even though you ARE moving your own lungs and air is coming in and out, it's not coming in and out of YOU, but you can hear it coming in and out of the machine next to the bed. I couldn't decide if it was better or worse than the thing DEMANDING you breathe when IT wanted you to...

I was, of course, determined to pass the test, so even though I was (finally!) starting to get groggy again, I forced myself awake. One, two, BREATHE. One, two, BREATHE.

[to be continued]