You may know, Alert Reader, that I spent some time in the hospital a while back. Leading up to my admittance, I suffered from nerve pain that was unrelenting, unpredictable, and unbearable. I had sought help from a new medical provider, and thankfully, she listened. She knew better than I when she prescribed the Vicodin. I very nearly turned it down, not wanting to become someone who goes to the doctor just to load up on pain pills. (For the record, it had been so long since I had been to the doctor, that my previous provider sold the business, started a new clinic, moved to Arizona, and then retired.) As I awaited my insurance company's approval for an upcoming MRI, the pain got worse. I was tempted to try one of my ten Vicodin. I learned that one Vicodin by itself was of no use to me. I discovered that two Vicodin barely took the "edge" off of the pain. I would not try for three. After receiving the MRI results and realizing that I would have to wait for a couple of weeks before meeting the neurosurgeon, I asked for more Vicodin. During those weeks, I counted the days and the pills over and over, saving and scrimping to ensure that I made the pills last until my appointment. It was becoming harder and harder to sit in a chair, and riding in the car for any amount of time was torture. In my standard driving position, my right hand was between my shoulder blades and my elbow pointed at the sky. The neurosurgeon understood my plight, and after reviewing my MRI and planning my surgery, I was given a prescription for Oxycodone. Every day I counted the pills and my remaining days. When I realized that I was going to come up short, I limited my pills sometimes to just one or two a day. Dear Reader, I am telling you all of this so that you know how I nursed and preserved those pills so carefully. It never crossed my mind to ask for more, I knew I had to grit my teeth and bear it until the surgery date.
Fast forward to my arrival in Pre-Op. I sat quietly, in my curtained space, dressed in nothing but my gown and slippers. The poor man next to me whispered about the coil in his brain popping. An older woman across from me hunkered under her covers and tried to sleep. We all were hungry, thirsty, in pain and eager to get on with our procedures. A new patient arrived and things picked up. Her daughter was a Loud Talker. Her voice cut through from behind the privacy of the curtain and extolled the virtues of her kid's school's online grade book. It was so wonderful that she could check on her son's attendance and grades with the click of a button. Her conversation was not limited to such mundane topics. I learned that her mother, the patient, was hard of hearing and had lost her hearing aids. We all heard that the daughter was leaving her mother with an iPad so that she would be able to watch Netflix in her hospital room, and that the mother was hoping to watch romance movies, much to the daughter's vocal disgust. What caught my attention was when the nurse, who must have drawn the short straw, was bound by her duty to review the list of medications that the woman was taking. Although I could not see through the curtain, I was sure that there were at least three pages when the nurse said, "OK, I will go through this list one at a time." She then proceeded to ask the patient when the last time each medication was taken and how big the dose was. As the patient was hard of hearing, we all heard the laundry list. I so wanted to write it all down, because it was as if she had watched every TV commercial for medication and then gone to her doctor for it. It was when the nurse said, "Oxycodone?" that my ears perked up. Apparently everyone's ears perked up, because I heard the Brain Coil's wife hiss behind the curtain, "Oxycodone!!!" The patient replied "three". The nurse asked when were these taken. The patient responded, "oh... 9:30". Based on my last month's experience, I expected that she would add to this by saying, "and 1:30 and 4:30". When I realized that she would not be adding to her times, it hit me. She obviously had not been scrimping and saving, if she had taken three pills at a time. In my discomfort (I had not been allowed any pain pill that morning), I felt more than a little annoyed at the woman, who seemed to have had a full dispensary at her disposal.
My next stop was a second Pre-Op room. In this space, my IV was started, I was covered with a heated air mattress called a Bair Hug, and I was flat on my back. As my surgery had been postponed for two hours, I was hungrier, thirstier and in more pain than ever. I could hear the woman across from me, chatting to the doctor about how he looked just like her Norwegian nephew. I could hear the woman to my left, talking about her unfortunate experiences after surgery a month ago. She was quite graphic about how she had been throwing up ever since. A nurse came along to inquire about my medications. Had I taken my 1/2 tablet of beta blocker that morning? Yes, I had. Had I taken anything else? No. With nothing else to say to me, the nurse moved on to the perpetual vomiter. She, too, must have had a huge list of medications, for the nurse spent a long while with her. It was when she asked about oxycodone that I became interested. My neighbor stated that she had taken twelve. Did you read that? TWELVE! The nurse asked when this was, and the woman could not even remember. There I lay, flat as a board under that hot air mattress, aching with pain and in a fury. How was it that I was the only one who had been parsimonious with my painkillers and managed my meds? I knew exactly how many I took, when I took them, and how many were left at any given time.
I thank you for your indignation on my behalf, Dear Reader. Please dial it down with the knowledge that after my 4 p.m. surgery and spending the night in the ICU, things began to look up. I was discharged before 11 a.m. without ever graduating to a real room. Within two days I was walking laps and within the week I was back to 2+ miles per day. Without painkillers. I wonder if my Pre-Op roommates can say that?
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