traumatic medical stuff

I've heard some stories of some pretty traumatic medical stuff.  People that weren't properly sedated for an endoscopy, someone that had a nose bleed and had to have her nose packed and the doctor actually broke bones in her nose, having to go to the ER due to an impacted bowel and get enemas... lots of stuff.  And I'm guessing how traumatic those things would be depends on the person, but it can be really traumatic.

And I've had some traumatic medical stuff of my own.  About three years ago I was in the hospital for several weeks with severe pneumonia and was on a respirator for a little while, and I think they kept me pretty sedated during that time, but I have a few memories and it was traumatic because I couldn't speak and at one point they had my hands in restraints because I guess I was trying to pull the tube out of my throat (I don't remember trying to pull it out, but that's what I told later).

And it occurs to me that most of the time, everyone seems to expect you to just say "Oh, that was an unpleasant experience" and then move on.  And maybe some people do just that, but it's not always that easy.  So how do you deal with that kind of trauma?

I had heart surgery about 14 or so years ago. It was an ablation and they don't put you under general for it. i woke up twice during that surgery and it made me very anxious for the other times i've needed sedation/anesthesia. i also started feeling pain again during my first c-section.

For the longest time I didn't say anything about it, but once i started letting everyone know that these experiences happened to me, the doctors have taken extra care that it doesn't happen again. I was really really worried during my egd, but let them know of my concerns.

it is a hard one when you no longer have your best friend"food " to run to!!!! when i had brain surgery 2yrs. ago i had to be awake enough for them to know that the right nerves were being "HIT:  i KNOW there was a boatload of versed on board, it was still a freaky thought, they are feeding wires into my brain and i am somewhat awake, i remember very little thank god,  i was in the hospital  for a week and then had it placed permanently so was dejavue all over again, sooo i journaled      a lot 

That would be scary to me too, having to be awake for that.

 When I think about my EGD experience, I get a bit anxious. So I really try to redirect my thoughts - distraction, thinking of more productive topics.... I know I have a really strong will when it comes to dominion over my own thoughts. I'd probably be a really rich therapist if I knew how to teach that to others.

I had the same experience with my C-section.  I actually felt them cutting...but was powerless to move or speak...It was horrible!. 

I had emergancy surgery in December.  They took out 12 inched of black, dead bowel.  It ruptured in the surgeons hands just as he had it out of my body.  I was in bad shape. I was in the hospital for 7 days and the recovery has been difficult. 

My husband and I just had a discussion about it again today.  I think it helps to talk about it.  I think your fears are justified and, somehow, going over the details of what happened to you helps to relieve the stress caused by the trauma.  When I hear my husband talk about his side of the event... it makes me understand that I was not alone in my fear.   His fear...although very different from my own ...is equally relevant.  That day is burned in both of our memories...but our ability to talk about it has brought us so much closer.  We don't talk about it often...usually when we have a reminder of just how fragile life can be...yesterday a friend of ours passed away from an aortic aneurysm....it really makes you think...

ohhh myyyyy, hence the name Rocky?? hope you are recovering  & sorry for your loss,

I am almost pathologically frightened of going to our local hospital. I know I shouldn't be and it's probably a measure of my own, and my hubby's reluctance to GO to the ER in the first place. But I think he's been to the ER twice in the 9 years since the hospital was built, and I've been twice. In his case he was admitted both times, and I was admitted once in the two times I went. On average they keep us if we go there. I don't like to be hospitalized. And our three hospitalizations have always been three to five days in duration... NOT short.

By far my two most unpleasant hospitalizations were my most recent, and my first one ever. The first time I was hospitalized I had emergency surgery, and  I remember waking from the surgery in literal screaming agony... the recovery room nurse told me to shut up, repeatedly, and I was so confused and lost, never having had surgery before, but all I could do is scream out my agony (the surgery had gone wrong, I needed another procedure which is why I woke up in agony). My most recent experience was a tiny little exclusive rich hospital in Scottsdale, and regardless of their high reputation, I was horribly mistreated. When I woke from surgery I was again in extreme pain. The first recovery room nurse I had was great, but then she went off shift and another took her place and proceeded to mostly ignore me, chastise me for not shifting my position, refused to spend any time at my side. I remember hearing another recovery nurse with her patient and telling that patient to take deep breaths and etc. So I listened to HER advice to HER patient, and wished that I wasn't being utterly ignored. When she finally paid attention to me she stripped my blanket from me, leaving me lying NAKED in front of ANYONE because I wasn't in a private room, and in fact there was a long wide hospital hallway stretching a long ways at the foot of my bed and I saw at least five of six people looking at me lying naked as a jaybird in my bed. When they finally got me a hospital bed, the nurse was apalled that in the orthopedic/spine ward she was stuck caring for someone who had drastically different needs from most of her patients. She wasn't used to people with a surgical incision inches from their anus. She was, unprincipaled, and my first few minutes with her were dreadful, because I was in agony, and she tried to talk to me from behind me, and got in a snit because I asked her to please talk to my face and not my butt, and also I insisted that she conduct a conversation in a sensible manner, that is to say I wanted her to not interrupt me as I was speaking (I was trying to ask questions and she was impatient). I was in agony and she refused me any and all pain medicine and didn't want to take the time to have an intelligable conversation because she had other patients and I didn't deserve her time I guess. The several times I soiled the hospital bed (and consequently my new incision) she refused to help me to get clean, and I was in a panic because one possible horrible side effect of a ****ygectomy is incontinence, and I was freaking out and all I got was this horrible attitude and refusal to help me out.

Time was the ONLY way to get over either of these hospitalizations, and overall it has left me frightened of being hospitalized and unwilling to submit myself to anything that might result in hospitalization. Though now I've got something going on neurologically and hubby and I both agree that if I had the deck again, we're calling 911... which shows how worried I am about my recent collapse.... fear of what might be causing it is greater than my fear of hospitalization.

Holy crap! Pun intended....

I'm shocked that you were treated sp poorly! No wonder you have an aversion to hospitals. Did you report the *****I mean nurse?

I did. I was absolutely floored by her behavior. Especially when I found that she was withholding pain medicine deliberately and contravening the doctor's orders. the ****yx is a very nervy area of the body, and while the actions they take to prevent pain usually work and leave the patient pain free for up to three days, for whatever reason my epidural didn't take, and I was in utter agony. I was taking teh absolute maximum pain meds after my surgery enough to worry the doc because of the tylenol.  was courting liver failure with the levels of tylenol and the doc had to alter up the dosing to get the same meds but without as much tylenol.

I understand that if you are in the spine part of that hospital that you're used to dealing with lumbar or cervical surgical sights instead of a surgical sight next to the anus-- ****ygectomy is exceedinly rare. But to refuse to help a patient who has just soiled her surgical sight when that particular surgery has a one-in-four surgical wound infection rate that sometimes results in the need for a colostomy the complications can be so bad... that was uncalled for. Then they gave me a male nurse who was just as bad. He didn't want me hooked up to the compression thingie because he didn't want to have to come every time I needed to go to the bathroom. I admire nurses, I think nurses are saints, and they are right up there on the top of selfless professions, but BAD nurses don't belong.

And I'm not even going to go into my hospitalization for the RNY and the nurse who thought it was morally wrong to take pain meds so refused them to me, or the hospital worker who thought RNY was a sin, and everyone who got it was always back in the hospital dying according to her.