By that Fall something was obviously wrong in my other bottom cheek. And I feared it was another mass of infection. The other wound still had not healed and I was faced with the possibility that I would have to undergo yet another surgery.
My surgeon, bless his heart, didn't want to just jump in and rip me open if we could avoid it. He knew I was not healing well from the first one. So I had a MRI, which showed a mass of something but didn't tell him much except there was infection.
He decided I should have a drainage procedure and see if I could avoid the knife.
I went to the hospital and the nurses explained what would happen. I would be given a twilight sleep. I wouldn't be totally put out but hopefully enough that I didn't feel much of anything. The doctor would ultrasound the area while sticking a huge ass needle into my well...my ass and drain the mass.
I undressed and put on the over sided, snaps missing on part of the sleeves- gown and tried to keep as modest and decent as possible. What was the point; I'm not sure since this crowd of medical professions would be not only seeing my entire bottom, but touching it and messing with it and robbing me of any shred of personal space I had left.
I was managing okay, tightly holding onto Hero Hottie's hand, trying to absorb his strength as he stood next to the bed I was sitting on.
And then the nurse frowned as she spoke.
Hero Hottie would not be allowed in the room during the procedure.
"What?" I asked, wanting to cry. I needed him with me. At this point in my illness, even though we were barely a couple in any sense of the word, he was the only person who was keeping me from losing it every time I went to the hospital for tests, or blood work, or MRI's. I needed him to hold my hand through this.
"I'm sorry. He can't be in here. But I'll be here with you the whole time." She was nice and kindly but she wasn't Hero Hottie.
I tried to argue and had it been the 'Me of Now', than he would have remained in the room or I would have walked out. But the 'Me of Then' was still timid and prone to obey doctors because they obviously know best. Right?
I took a deep, shuddering breath and blinked back the tears as he left the room. I was surrounded by strangers and strange beeping machines. It was a bit chilly in the room. I had an IV put in, prepping me for the twilight medicine. And I was completely alone.
The nurses and there was four or five of them were busy laying out tools; sharp, pointy tools; and long syringes. They were bustling around, like they weren't even aware that I was in the room but I was the whole point they were there.
I felt like that part in the movie, where the girl is standing in the middle of a busy scene and the camera has focused in on her while the people moving around her are just a blur.
The doctor came in. Introduced himself, explained the procedure and started fiddling with his ultrasound machine.
The nurse helped me lay on my stomach and slowly injected the twilight sleep into my IV.
But it didn't work as well as they assumed it would. I was still breathing and awake; I just couldn't move any part of my body and I wasn't coherent enough to verbalize but I was still conscious-ish. I felt the coldness of the ultrasound wand start to move up and down the lump, causing pain as he pressed it into the skin, trying to find the right location for the syringe.
I started crying; that I could do.
Then he plunged the syringe into me.
I screamed. The sound echoed in my ears, roaring through my body, vibrating my head. I tried to speak. Tried to voice my thoughts. The twilight sleep wasn't working. The pain was hellish and I could feel every single part of it.
I was trapped inside my own body, unable to escape what was going on.
And he just kept taking the syringe out and plunging it back in. Time and time again.
Every time I screamed.
At first I started to question if the screams were even leaving my lips, or if they too were trapped inside me, since no one would stop the procedure. Surely, they would stop if I was in so much pain. Wouldn't they?
But then I realized, as the nurses around me moved faster, and their voices started to argue with each other...As someone injected my IV with more and more twilight sleep, under the doctor's orders... I realized my screams were very real. And they filled the room.
Loudly. Uncontrollably. In ways I never even cried out during the last hard pushes of childbirth.
A nurse grabbed my hand. It was warm and welcoming and for a second I could calm down, focused on the human contact. Trying to stay focus on that space where our hands connected, forming a bond of support and caring.
And then he plunged the syringe in again.
I screamed with something that seem to rise from the depths of my being, the horrible sound filling the room and then the harsh voice of the doctor as he demanded the nurses to do something. I felt the hot or cold, I'm not sure of the temperature, of liquid being injected into my IV. I could feel it seep into my veins and then blackness took over.
The next thing I knew I was weeping and unable to form a coherent thought in my brain. A bright light glared at me from the ceiling and Hero Hottie was next to the bed. A nurse was talking to me. Over and over again. She wouldn't stop talking. She wouldn't leave me alone.
Just kept calling my name. Talking to me.
I stared at the nurse and Hero Hottie. My brain wouldn't work. It was foggy.
The nurse gave me something to drink. Juice, I think.
"Here, honey. Drink this."
What? Drink what? I almost didn't even know what the word 'drink' meant.
She kept talking. Taking my blood pressure. Coaxing me to respond. Demanding me to keep my eyes open.
Where the hell was I? Who was I?
Why did she keep jabbering at me?
Finally a breeze blew through my brain. I blinked, staring at Hero Hottie. It was like waking up from a nightmare. My heart felt funny. My thoughts tumbled together like a puzzle shaken inside its box.
But I was beginning to remember everything.
Hell. In a hospital room. Pain.
What the hell had happened?
"Are you okay?" the nurse asked, staring at me. "You had me a bit worried."
I nodded slowly. Hero Hottie looked pale.
Then the nurse frowned. "They didn't do that right. They should never have given you so much twilight sleep. Your blood pressure was...dangerously low." She muttered a few more things about everything that had gone wrong with the procedure. How the doctor had ordered way too much drug, that it wasn't proper procedure, that he should have stopped when I was freaking out. That he couldn't even find the right spot in my bottom and just kept digging around with the syringe hoping to find it.
Apparently, the procedure had not gone as planned. The twilight sleep had not worked on the pain and the doctor just kept ordering more and more until I passed out. Then my blood pressure had dropped dangerously low. It could have been a disaster.
When I was able to get dressed and my blood pressure finally returned to normal, Hero Hottie helped me to the car. I was shaky from the ordeal. Emotionally devastated by the procedure.
Not only had it felt like I had been tortured and unable to defend myself. I had been almost killed by a doctor not following proper hospital procedures on the usage of the drug.
When the bill came from the doctor, almost $1500, I stared at it and started crying. I had to pay for what happened to me?
No. And I felt a bit of my old spark and fire in me. Just a bit. I would not pay for what happened. So I sat down and wrote.
I wrote a nice, long letter about how I was treated, about how I was still somewhat conscious and screaming bloody murder and the doctor didn't stop. I wrote how he ordered more and more twilight sleep until it was too much and he caused my blood pressure to drop dangerously low.
I wrote how it took forever for me to return to the land of the living and how worried the nurse had been.
I threw in some legalise, questioning if he wasn't following hospital procedure than how liable he might be for everything that went wrong. How he could have killed me. I hinted that perhaps his actions bordered on malpractice.
I wrote simply the truth of what had happened and asked why I needed to pay the bill for this.
Two weeks later I received a cleverly worded document that didn't admit to anything or could be mistaken as such if I should take it to a legal professional but said I was no longer responsible for this bill and don't worry about it.
That actually made me mad. Because it confirmed everything. Doctors don't just erase bills. To me, it means he was in the wrong and he could have killed me.
He also never drained the infection. I don't know why he couldn't find it; I could trace the entire, huge lump under the skin with my fingers but even with an ultrasound machine he failed to make contact with it.
Soon after that, I went back into surgery and woke up with a huge section of my bottom gone and another wound that would need packed twice a day with gauze. That would make two different wounds needing cleaned and packed with cotton gauze twice a day. The second wound was even larger than the first one and needed even more gauze than the first one originally needed.
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