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Hospital Stories 

By: Decomposed in POPE 5 | Recommend this post (1)
Sun, 19 Jan 20 7:36 AM | 39 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Pope 5 		Msg. 49310 of 62138
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I have a lot of fun hospital stories that haven't yet been shared. Okay, most weren't really all that fun. They were interesting, though.

Along about post-op day 2, it was time to remove one of my catheters. It was the one in my neck, I think, running down the carotid artery to my heart.

At that point, I'd already been weaned from the stronger painkillers and was getting by on plain tylenol. My back was the biggest thing bothering me, and I often felt like my organs were about to slide down and out from where the kidneys sit. It REALLY hurt to lie flat. Lying flat increased the pressure on both my back and chest and left me struggling to breathe. Needless to say, I'd been keeping my flat-lying to a minimum, preferring to sleep partially upright even though that didn't work very well either.

So when the technician told me to lie on my back and then proceeded to tip the bed not just flat but actually downward - so that my feet were higher than my head - I asked her to make it quick. Fortunately, she did, pulling a bloody 18" tube from my neck.

When it was done, I asked why I had to be tipped at that horrible angle.

"It's to lower the chance of an air bubble getting into the artery," she said.

An embolism. "I see," I said. I thought about it a little. "But how can you be sure one didn't get in?" I asked.

"Because we would already know," she said solemnly.

Ah. Okay. And whoh. Message received loud and clear. She was saying that if a bubble had gotten in when she'd pulled that tube just a few seconds earlier, I would already be dead.

Seems to me that that's got to be a fairly high stress job.




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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months

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