Hospitals = Hell

[Pi]

So, basically, I dropped off the map for about a month because of my anemia. I'm not even sure if anyone will still remember me.
I've been in and out of hospitals constantly, and I'm finallyfinallyfinallyfinally home.
So! To get me a good laugh, anyone care to share their hospital horror stories/funny moments?

[Clover]

Well.. I have osteochondroma, which means I have bone tumors that have to be removed when they appear. The tumors are biopsied to check for malignancies. It also means I have to go in for semi-regular bloodwork to check for white blood cell discrepancies, x rays to make sure tumors haven't spread, and the occasional MRI.

But I've had surgeries on my hands--which basically involve cutting open the hand, severing tendon, breaking the finger and shaving the tumour out of the joint, shaving the underlying 'root' of the osteochondroma so there's a less chance of it growing back, setting the bone, reattaching the tendon, and sutering everything back together.
Naturally, this leaves your hand a little tender.

The first time I went in for the surgery, I was put under general anaesthetic using morphine. It turns out I have an allergy to morphine, hereto unrecognized-- my body is extremely succeptible to it. It was a two and a half hour operation, and I was asleep an hour and a half longer then they expected me to be.

The second/third time I had surgery [it was a double hand surgery, on my left and right hands simultaneously], they used dopamine to put me under, and everything went out alright.
I was up a little earlier then they'd anticipated, but they were done the surgery already, so it didn't matter.

HOWEVER, since dopamine is like, Morphine Lite, the effects wore off considerably sooner--- read, while I was still at the hospital, and naturally, having had rather invasive surgery on my hands, I was in an extreme amount of pain.
Sitting in the recovery room in tears, and my surgeon entered the room and said, "Clover, we have two options. One, I can give you Tylenol 3 and it'll dull the pain slightly, or we can give you local anaesthetic. However, the local anaesthetic is injected, and its going to hurt when I administer it."

And of course, being out of my mind with the pain, I said, "Give me the strongest thing you've got, it can't be worse then this."
So the good doctor whips out a syringe, fills it with the anaesthetic, and proceeds to ask the nurses to hold me down.
I don't know what I was expecting--- I suppose I figured she'd stick the needle into my vein or something-- but I wasn't expecting her to stick the needle into my swollen, broken hands.
Because she did.
Into my fingers the size of sausage, and right into the tendon and muscle that had been severed not a half-hour before.

You know that screaming-in-pain thing that happens in movies, where people just scream outloud? I thought that was contrived and false, but no. It happens.
I didn't even realize it, but I was screaming and shrieking and -begging-, "please, please, make it stop, take it out, please please you're HURTING me, Mommy make them STOP"...
My mother was in hysterics, my girlfriend [who had been allowed in to basically keep me calm, and keep my mother sane] was in tears--- even the other people in the out-patient room were wincing and some were crying.

And then they did the other hand, and I don't remember that one, because I passed out from the pain.
The next thing I remember, I was in the car, going home.
Apparently, I was CONCIOUS and walking to make it to the car, but I have no memory of the half-hour time interval between the first needle, and being checked out to leave.

Even to this day, my hands are extremely tender, and I've lost a considerable amount of muscle dexterity--actually why I can't have a career as a violinist.

So yeah. Boo hospitals.
except that I want to work in one. XD

[Joe Shmoe]

Well, I've had my wisdom teeth removed recently - that was fairly painless until the drugs wore off while he was resurfacing the bone.
That was pretty event less during healing - other then biting off the knots to my stitches and having my gums recede a bit. This was the second time I had been on painkillers, it was hydrocodone, which makes me like to sleep a whole lot.

And I was in the hospital for a week from a community acquired - Methicillin-Resistant Staph.
That blew chunks man. My elbow was the size of a fucking grapefruit.
5 cultures, 54 needles, 3 antibiotics, and 2 hospital rooms later - I was discharged.
I think this was the first time that I was put on painkillers, and I want to say that this was also a "codone" ending drug, again, make me sleep like a bear.

And I've gotten a needle in my eye. It was stuck to a piece of elastic, I tugged the elastic, needle shoots into eye, I pull it out, go to the hospital, go to eye doctor, and get put on dilating drops for 2 weeks. Eyesight wasn't disturbed at all.

Then there are minor things - removing embedded thorn from ball of foot, embedded garnet shard from index finger, ECT. But the above are the only drastic ones. I've never broken a bone or anything like that.

[child-of-fae]

clover, i'd really really hate to be you. you poor thing.

uhm, i find absolutely no humor ion this one incident, but hen iwas at the doctor's my mom found out how terrified i am of needles. i was shaking and crying and she and my sister were laughing. everyone else laughed when they heard.

i only hate needles when a doctor or a dentist has it. i even had my teeth drilled without novacaine i was so scared.

[limbowoman]

...don't ask me about how much i hate hospitals... *pets Pi* You poor thing... and I do remember you... I always liked your icon...

[bubbles]

I have shit lungs! =D

Glad you're better, Pi! I totally didn't forget about you. =o

[Pi]

Well, aren't we a bunch of healthy little people!
And I'm glad to hear people still remember me. Yay non-forgotten-ness!

The hospitals around where I live know nothing. Really. I went in for abdominal pain, and ended up being told I had a UTI, a kidney infection, a bleeding ulcer, and anemia.
Turns out, the doctors don't know shit, I had something shoved in (quite literally) every orifice on my body, and I'm only anemic? Supposedly I'm so anemic (7.9 on a scale of 14 or something?) that they thought I had internal bleeding because of a car wreck I had a few weeks ago. Now the doctors won't tell us anything, because they're trying to avoid malpractice suits. :x

[limbowoman]

You can get malpractice suits from things like that..? Damn, i should be rich...

[Pi]

The doctors did a lot of things on me that they really shouldn't have. Unnecessary pain I had to go through, basically. I was hurting more from what the doctors did to me, than from the abdominal pain I originally went in for. They also kept losing samples and withheld information from us.

[Aindel]

Ugh, that's so evil of them.
I've only had one hospital experience of my own, and that was to have my tonsils out. So nothing bad there. I refuse to go in them anymore, though. My dad's been in twice for heart problems and I can't even bring myself to visit him. I feel sick when I go in there, lightheaded, naueseous and stuff.

[limbowoman]

...that means I should be even more rich than I originally thought...

[Clover]

Ooh, that's unfortunate, what with the unneccessary pain.

See, I don't mind hospitals, or doctors. I don't LIKE them, but the only wing I will actually refuse to go into is the geriatric wing--- but thats because my grandpa recently passed away in one.
I don't like the smell or the feeling: its very cold and clammy.

But hospitals in general, I don't mind.

[Dragon Bait]

The only thing that happened to me is that they had to do testing to see what was wrong with me and they had to stick 20 needles, 10 in one arm and 10 in the other well they did the test wrong and had to redo it on my back.

[Aindel]

Allergy testing is like that. I had 11 in my right and 10 in my left. But that was just at a specialist's office, not the hospital.

[Trey]

yeah, I'm never going to tested for allergies...*shivers*

I don't hate hospitals either, I just see them as another building.


When I was seven I thought it'd be fun to play on my mom's excercise bike, and I cut my leg open on a rusty screw. It cut down to a vein, like, I could litterally SEE the vein, barely missed. My mom put a bandaid on it to hold the skin together and rushed me to the hospital. It took three grown men to hold my leg down, and I almost kicked a nurse in the face with the other leg. I'm sure the other kids in the waiting room were terrified, because that's probably the loudest I've ever screamed. Two needles, and 7 stitches... that's two needles going into my skin to numb my leg, and a needle going in my skin, out the fleshy underside, then back in the other flesh, and out the skin SEVEN TIMES. for someone who's got a serious phobia of needles... I can see why my step dad and two step brothers had to hold me down. It didn't even heal small, because he couldn't do a fabulous job with me kicking around. I went to look at the screw later, and the skin was hanging off of it.

Other than that I've been pretty damn lucky.


And welcome back Pi! We missed you!