Surgery Without Anethesia---- Part 2

Alrighty, this is part 2 of this post.

So Sal and I got to the hospital the day of the surgery, I signed off a buttload of paperwork, got nekid and slipped into a designer hospital gown, the designer being Soupy Sales, and waited in pre-op for the deed. Various techs and nurses came and did the usual monitoring stuff, drawing blood, taking my blood pressure,temperature etc... then the surgeon came in to talk to me one last time before I went to the O.R.

He asked me if I was ready and was still wanting to do it with out being put under and I said "yup". Sally asked how "comfortable" I would be... repeating a word that he'd used. I don't really know what happened right then but he sorta flipped a little bit and said "I'm your surgeon, I'm not your anesthesiologist... I can't be both. You're going to be wide awake. I'll give you a local at the incision site, this will be like what you get when you go to the dentist, that's as comfortable as I can make you. You WILL feel it, A LOT. If you don't think you can go through with this, lets just get the anesthesiologist in here right now."

So I'm a little stunned. I wasn't quite prepared mentally for this little turn of events. Sally was kinda white looking.

I'm pretty hard core. I'm not gloating or boasting... I can endure quite a bit if I've got my mind set. I looked at Sal then to the surgeon and said "Let's get to it."

Then the anesthetist walks in with a clipboard full of papers to have me sign and I told him he wasn't in this show. He was the one with the stunned look now, evidently no one had told him up til now about this. Incredible eh? He asked if I was sure and I said "yup". He said "How about you go ahead and sign my release papers and I'll wait outside the O.R. and if it get's real hairy for you all they have to do is wave me in and I'll put you out." I agreed, signed.. and he left.... evidently to tell everyone in the hospital what was getting ready to go down up in the O.R.

They wheel me in to the O.R., slide me over onto the operating table. The doc comes in with an entourage and asks me if it's okay if the operation is "observed" and I said "it's cool with me". They 5 point restrain me down to the table. This is where it starts getting real weird.

Sitting behind me is an OR nurse that is like my best friend in the world right now. She's talking to me, reassuring me and telling me that she's going to be monitoring my vitals. On one side of the table is the surgeon and his OR nurse, on the other side is another doc. Before the put they drape up below my chin that blocks my view of the whole mess, I saw about 5 student docs standing at the foot of the operating table. Over to my left is a quite young student nurse, observing also.

He tells me he's going to start and how it's going to play out in stages of the operation. He says that he's going to tell me what he's doing as he does it. To keep the flinch factor down he said he was going to say when he was cutting and when he was poking and when he was pulling stitches etc... so I could prepare myself mentally at each step.

He says that after he get's so deep in me, I'm probably going to be feeling quite a bit of it because the local only goes so far.

Hoo boy.

The local burns pretty good, like it always does and then he get's going. I actually don't feel the first cut... I have the sensation of something being drug across my belly and that's it. He's talking to me, the nurse behind me is talking to me and asking me to take some slow deep breaths.

Then... then it I started to feel it. I told him that I was feeling it pretty good, and he said he was hurrying but he had about 20 minutes left. Did I want the anesthetist? "No." The OR was dead quiet except for the 3 of us talking.

It started getting real REAL intense. As intense as anything that I've done. I was feeling everything. 150 percent of everything. I could feel every cut, I could feel the sensation of him poking into my guts. Everything.

The student nurse to my left started crying.

Yeah... that's comforting.

He did the repair and started sewing me up in layers. I felt every single stitch... there was no local left and absolutely none that deep into my stomach. He told me that he had about 3 minutes left and he'd be done.

And then it was over. They took off the restraints, cleaned me up around my stomach, covered me up with fresh sheets and just like that it was over. 2 of the student docs that were observing walked up beside me and one said "You are the toughest sonofabitch I've ever seen in my entire life." while the other one stood there nodding.

Because there's no anesthesia to wear off I don't make a stop at post op, I go right back to the pre-op room.

Sally comes in the room and asks me how it was... and I lost it for a few minutes. The shock and horror of the whole thing was overwhelming, I held it as long as humanly possible. When my wife looked at me and asked me that... it was like my emotional trigger. She held me while I got over that episode.

A doc and a student doc that had nothing to do with my surgery stepped into the room and said "Can we ask you a couple of questions?" and I nodded. The doc said "You're pretty much the talk of the hospital today, my student here wants to know what it was like."

I looked at the kid and said "Pure fucking hell." "As bad as you can imagine. That was what it was like. I felt everything, was aware of everything." And they left.


After awhile Sally helped me get my clothes on, they wheeled me out to the car and we went home. Another emotional period or two getting there. Sal just listened.

Then. Then the nightmares started. Everytime I went to sleep I had complete and vivid flashbacks of it. As real as it gets. After about a week of it I got a script for sleeping pills but they kept coming for several weeks and then.... just stopped. Just like that.




In retrospect, I would never do it again. I felt that I had to do it at the time because of the whole money thing. I could save my family the additional debt just by toughing it out. Well, I did... but I would never ever do it again. It's just too much physically and emotionally.


On the bright side, when anyone starts telling their "horrible surgery" story... I can always top it on the horror scale.


That's all folks.





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