A Science Guy’s Almanac #20. Year 2. March 21, 2016
A ruptured Spinal Disk and Giant Snowflakes – Part 4
Disclaimer.
I’ve never written out this story before. I have no defensible estimate of how many words it will end up. Therefore, there will be no snowflakes again this week. However, I’m almost positive that there’s a possibility that I might get to the snowflakes two weeks from now.
What’s here today is funny. I’d read on anyway. But, I’m not you.
I remember regaining consciousness after the surgery. Originally scheduled for something like four hours, the operation ended up taking over five hours. When I did re-enter the world of the awake, I wasn’t really “with it.”
Because my surgery ran long, there were folk in the Recovery Room that would not have been there an hour and a half earlier. Ultimately, there was a plethora of patients and a paltry amount of providers of care. (That is weakly alliterative. Try reading it aloud. Emphasize plethora, patients, paltry, and providers as you read. That makes it sound much more alliterative.)
The first time I woke up, my focus was on my very dry mouth. Sodium pentothal does that. I guess 5+ hours of sodium pentothal creates Sahara Desert conditions in the oral cavity. I croaked some unintelligible sounds, the best I could do to indicate my parched condition. For that, I received a pat on my crew-cut and an “It’ll be alright” from one of the Recovery Room nurses.
I dropped back out of consciousness.
When I awoke the next time, I was determined to get some water… Until I realized something terrible had happened during surgery!
The reason for this occurrence isn’t important. It is sufficient that you know that both my arms were strapped to boards during my surgery and IV needles were inserted in both arms as well. The normal procedure is to remove the boards early in the Recovery Room stay. My boards were not removed. As a result, the second time I woke up, both my arms were asleep.
After realizing I was awake and while preparing to call for the water truck, it struck me. The doctor had amputated both my arms during surgery!
Before you dismiss that thought as ravings caused by drug-induced lunacy, realize that my sensory systems were operating far below normal because of the painkiller I was on after the back surgery. In addition, I had no idea where I was. Add to that that I had no sensation of any kind in either arm, and you should have a better picture of my situation. My priority changed from wanting water to making sure that someone retrieved my severed arms before they were sent down the trash chute.
“Aaa ut rms fff,” I croaked… Repeatedly.
“It’ll be okay,” was the nurse’s response, along with another pat on my pate. Once again I descended into the realm of the unconscious.
The third time I woke up, I was determined to get someone to understand my plight. After all, I’d had both arms surgically removed when I was supposed to have had a ruptured spinal disk repaired. I worked up a mouthful of spit, which was about 1/8 teaspoon of saliva, and swallowed.
“Wa… er,” I managed to semi-articulate.
There must be some protocol in Recovery Rooms about when someone gets water. I think it’s when you can finally make a noise that sounds something like the word water. I say that because I don’t remember having to ask a second time before…
“Here you are,” a nurse said. She placed one hand behind my neck, lifted my head, and placed a single ice chip on my dehydrated tongue. It melted faster than homemade ice-cream in a bowl in the sun at the 4th of July picnic.
I passed out again.
When I got a nurse’s attention the next time I awoke, things happened rapidly.
- There was some accusatory discussion of who was responsible for my arm boards still being attached before they were removed.
- I got water to sip through a bendy straw.
- I was shipped out of the Recovery Room.
I have to comment on #3 above. Remember, my day started before 7:00 AM with the not quite strong enough pre-anesthesia shot. By the time I was leaving the Recovery Room, it was close to 3:30 PM. At that hospital, 3:30 PM was when the day shift left and the evening shift took over.
I was on a gurney. A nurse and a male orderly were ordered to take me up my room on the 5th Floor.
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| Gurney circa 1968. Read on to find out why I was glad it had a foot board! |
Gurneys are not easy to steer. It’s common for the person at the front of the moving gurney—the foot of the bed—to be nothing much more than the propulsion device. (S)He pulls the gurney through the hallways. Steering was relegated to the person at the back of the gurney—the head of the bed. In this case, the orderly should have been at the head of the bed with the nurse in the steering position.
However, since it was time to go home, the quicker I got delivered to my room, the faster the orderly would be able to leave. He took the head of the bed. Having limited if any experience at the foot of a moving gurney, the nurse protested. The orderly prevailed. He began to push the gurney.
It was immediately obvious to me, as passenger on this rolling bed, that the nurse lacked precision control of the gurney from her position in the leading end of the gurney. Everyone in the Recovery Room became aware of that within seconds.
As we neared the double doors to the Recovery Room, the nurse darted away from the gurney to push the automatic door-opening button. That left… no one steering.
The gurney hit the doorframe at full speed. I slid down the bed with my feet clanging against the rail at the foot of the device. Remember, I’ve just had hours of back surgery.
The silence was immediate but short-lived. The Head Nurse of the Recovery Room spotted the departure from standard protocol. She informed the orderly that he and she would be having some one-on-one time before he left for the day. I sanitized that directive a bit. Okay, more than a bit.
After rearranging the driver and propeller, we made it to the elevator, up to the 5th Floor, and to my room without further mishap.
I was larger and heavier than most of the 5th Floor patients. After one feeble attempt to slide me off the gurney, there was a “y’all come” call for help in moving me from the gurney to my bed. Within minutes, five nurses and the orderly had arranged themselves three on a side.
Moving a patient from a gurney to a bed requires the two beds be placed side-by-side against one another. Half the movers reach across the patient’s in-room-bed and grab the sheet on the closest side of the gurney. The other half of the moving crew stands next to the gurney and grab the other side of the sheet.
After the obligatory, “One. Two. Three!” the movers on the in-room-bed side lift the sheet and pull the patient toward them. Meanwhile, the movers on the gurney-side lift and reach across the gurney as the patient rides the sheet onto the in-room-bed. That’s the theory.
5/6 of the movers were tall enough to perform the requisite actions. Mover #6 was a nurse who might have been 5’ tall if she measured her height in the morning in her nursing shoes. She was stationed on the gurney-side of the tableau and was responsible for the corner of the sheet closest to my right ankle.
Understand that the nurse in question was not on the in-room-bed side because the couldn’t reach across the bed, grab the sheet, lift and pull. She lacked the vertical dimension required for that. If you think about it, after the patient is moved, the people on the gurney-side end up in the starting position of the people on the in-room-bed side.
I’ll wait while you visualize…
…
…
Okay, if you don’t have that visualization by now, you might never get it.
As I was pulled off the gurney, about halfway on to my in-room-bed, the vertically-challenged nurse lost her corner of the sheet. I kind of bounced into my final resting position.
Next Almanac post will have another episode with the short nurse very near the beginning.
Oh, yeah. I GUARANTEE snowflakes in Part 5!
Next Almanac post: A ruptured Spinal Disk and Giant Snowflakes – Part 5
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