Have you ever had surgery...?

[spicytuna]

Originally Posted by Suki

Tiny scars from appendectomies are very cute and sexy. Robin, reading your experience kinda made me wish I had to have mine removed. Surgery went swell, you got a cute scar, anesthesia put you to sleep in no time and you got to get high on morphine x) Did you get giggly too?

I'm curious as to what defines a cute scar.

I've got this huge scar which looks like a centipede crawling down my arm. It's around 20cm long with maybe 50 uniformly placed "legs" from the staples which were used to close it. Is that cute?

Imagine the looks on the face of the Japanese commuters when I'd ride the Yamanote-sen and hold onto the hanging straps with that arm with the scar in plain view.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by Suki

Geez, Nyororin! Thank God I read other not-so-horrifying stories from the other users, cause after reading yours I wasn't sure I wanted to keep reading anyone else's experience. I swear I got the shivers as I was reading it. Especially the part of being aware when being cut and the whole pulling sensation. You described it so well I could almost feel it in my flesh.

In some of the other responses to me - I think people are missing that it did not hurt. The cut felt icy cold (I am assuming that the cold sensation was the icy air hitting my moist innards...), and I did feel pulling... But it wasn`t painful.
To be quite honest, the two most painful events of the whole thing were the attempts to get an IV in - nothing, absolutely NOTHING can compare to that, and at this point I would rather risk death than choose to have them attempt to put one in again. I was terrified of IVs before, now I can`t even look at one without shaking, crying, and feeling like I`m going to throw up. It`s a real confirmed phobia now... - and the catheter. The catheter was just a sharp stab of pain that jerked me awake. I don`t think it hurt that much in reality, but was a very unpleasant way to be brought back to a scary reality.

Me too. Losing consciousness is terrifying enough, but being half-awake through the whole thing? Geez! Must've been hell for you, Nyororin

It would have been worse had any pain gotten through. It didn`t actually hurt, and the scariest part was thinking that I might wake up enough to feel the pain. I didn`t (at least until I really woke up afterward), but it was still horrible to feel things and be able to run a scenario through my mind of "oh crap, they must be doing this now... I do NOT want to wake up at this point!!! Please do not wake up any more!!"

As for the problem with getting an IV, that really sucks. I used to be terrified of needles but that is something one gets used to.

I`m not really all that scared of needles. Having blood taken isn`t that bad, but I guess I am somewhat lucky on that one as the normal veins they take from in the crook of your arm don`t work well for me. On the left, I don`t even have one there, and the right is very small. As it`s obvious from looking, the doctors will listen to me and use an infant gauge needle to take from there or the back of my hand.
But when it comes to an IV, they will never ever listen to me that it isn`t easy to get one in and just assume I`m scared of needles - or that I had a single bad experience with an unskilled doctor. And of course, they have 20+ years of experience getting one in, blah blah blah.... And then half an hour later they give up and tell me that I must have the problem I TOLD them I had before we started, and that I will need to sign waivers because they couldn`t get one in and didn`t want me suing them later for it.

If I`d been feeling better and not in such a state of horror to begin with, I probably could have relaxed and maybe even kind of enjoyed the experience (well, enjoy is a stretch, but maybe used it as a fascinating learning experience...?) It isn`t all that often that you have that kind of surgery without being in direct danger of dying. (I wasn`t - my son was.)

I didn`t find the pain all that bad after waking up. I had a HUGE stitched and taped gash running from just below my belly button down to my pubic bone, but it I didn`t try to cough, sneeze, or sit up without someone`s support it didn`t hurt much. I could actually walk around (albeit slowly and carefully) without much pain at all if someone helped me up.
And this was without pain killers - they make me feel like complete and total crap. I made the choice to feel alright with occasional sharp pains than feel like crap with slightly dulled pain. I was also pretty amazed when they took the stitches out and there was no pain at all.

It healed well enough that unless I were to point it out, it`s almost invisible. For the longest time the scar and the area immediately to the left and right of it had no feeling at all, but that eventually came back. Now it sort of throbs every month at that time if I press it.

[Suki]

Originally Posted by spicytuna

I'm curious as to what defines a cute scar.

Bacisally just about any well-healed tiny scar. But I'm all for the big ones too.

Originally Posted by spicytuna

I've got this huge scar which looks like a centipede crawling down my arm. It's around 20cm long with maybe 50 uniformly placed "legs" from the staples which were used to close it. Is that cute?

Imagine the looks on the face of the Japanese commuters when I'd ride the Yamanote-sen and hold onto the hanging straps with that arm with the scar in plain view.

Mmmh sexy. I'd sure be staring if our paths were to meet in a train.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

In some of the other responses to me - I think people are missing that it did not hurt. The cut felt icy cold (I am assuming that the cold sensation was the icy air hitting my moist innards...), and I did feel pulling... But it wasn`t painful.

Well, of course it didn't. You were sedated. But still, I can take the pain and be ok with it, but being aware of what they are doing to you? That's a whole different story. It's not the actual cutting through your flesh that hurts but the idea of it being done to you, you know? If I accidentally got my consciousness back while in the OR I'd freak out. Or I'd have to be very drugged up not to, anyway. I'd want to just be put to sleep, wake up and have absolutely no memory of what happened in the OR while I was being operated on.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

it was still horrible to feel things and be able to run a scenario through my mind of "oh crap, they must be doing this now... I do NOT want to wake up at this point!!! Please do not wake up any more!!"

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Being afraid of waking up before it's all over, and like feel how your insides are being manipulated... must be the weirdest feeling ever.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

and at this point I would rather risk death than choose to have them attempt to put one in again.

That bad? Damn. Yours must be very thin veins for you to have had such dreadful experience, cause I have extremely fragile veins too but I just ask them to use the tiny IV lines they use for babies and it hardly hurts at all, and they take like 5 seconds to get one in.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Having blood taken isn`t that bad, but I guess I am somewhat lucky on that one as the normal veins they take from in the crook of your arm don`t work well for me. On the left, I don`t even have one there, and the right is very small. As it`s obvious from looking, the doctors will listen to me and use an infant gauge needle to take from there or the back of my hand.
But when it comes to an IV, they will never ever listen to me that it isn`t easy to get one in and just assume I`m scared of needles - or that I had a single bad experience with an unskilled doctor. And of course, they have 20+ years of experience getting one in, blah blah blah.... And then half an hour later they give up and tell me that I must have the problem I TOLD them I had before we started, and that I will need to sign waivers because they couldn`t get one in and didn`t want me suing them later for it.

Hahaha I've so been through all of it before. Well, not anymore, but it used to be like that all the freaking time. Now they are able to take it from the crook of my arm, but some years ago they had to get it from the hand, so I'd just ask them to try my hand in the first place and they'd insist on trying the arm first, and I'd be like "It's no use, you're not gonna be able to hit the vain cause I happen to have not only thin veins but slippery too", and they'd just laugh and say they'd done it millions of times and knew how to do it right, so I'd just be like "Okay, go right ahead" and they'd screw up badly and act all surprised and go "Wow you do have some pretty slippery veins there"... yeah, like I didn't tell you, asshole ¬¬ So yeah, you're not alone on this.

[WingsToDiscovery]

I had to have two major surgeries near my chest and on my shoulder during my senior year of high school. It was really just the result of too much sports abuse over the years. Neither surgery really hurt post op, surprisingly. The worst part was simply that it ended my future college lacrosse career, which I had already planned on attending the clinic* for.
The doctors said the best I could ever hope for was to be a coach, but I'd never play at a competitive level.
It's really weird though when you're faced with two extraordinary paths in life, and you can step back and look at how different they are and who you would have become if you'd taken the other route. On one hand, I could be finishing up college, playing lacrosse and could have been scouted by a pro team. But now, I'm living in Japan and pursuing a totally different goal, one that I had never even considered during my senior year. It's funny how things work sometimes.
*= a clinic is another word for a training camp usually for those who've already made a team

[dogsbody70]

Umm, hysterectomy---------- sickness afterwards was the worst.


warning" If ever YOU (FEMALE) have one of these-- remember not to overdo things afterwards otherwise you end up having to go in again for certain REPAIRS!!!!LOL.

[TalnSG]

Originally Posted by spicytuna

Of course by this time, your mind is in survival mode so you aren't thinking about the trivial things... like being naked in front of a team of medics, the type of instruments that they'll be using on you, etc. You're just glad that you're in a place which will lead to better things.

Yikes!!!
Yeah, by that time adrenalin and endorphins must have almost replaced the blood circulating. Having been in that "survival" mode for less painful reasons, I will agree that the mind works completely differently then.

I remember laughing at someone trying to help me once until they started laughing, though I knew I was bleeding out. Not what I would consider a rational reaction, but since it calm them down enough to really help me and probably save my life, I guess it was what was needed.

[TalnSG]

Originally Posted by Suki

Does it ever happen that you're in the OR, cut open wide, and suddenly you go back to consciousness? I know you can wake up and be slightly aware of things (like it was with Nyororin), but what I mean is not like being dizzy and hearing things here and there, I mean like totally coming back from your sleep and being able to feel the pain from the cut. Can this happen?

Appendectomies are done with general anesthesia and you don't wake until they want you to. The wake you by giving drugs to counteract the anesthetic. However, when it involves childbirth that is trickier. They have to be wary of the baby's state and the mother's and they don't commonly use general anesthesia for those cases.

As for feeling the pain of the cut, I doubt it. My abdominal incision was for very different reasons, but I didn't get feeling back along the stitches for at least 24 hours. Then it was more itching as it healed than surface pain, except where one staple had shift and was poking me. Doc fixed that immediately.

For me, getting the IV is the worst part!

[HolyWars]

4x open heart surgery, and I'm 25.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by TalnSG

Appendectomies are done with general anesthesia and you don't wake until they want you to. The wake you by giving drugs to counteract the anesthetic. However, when it involves childbirth that is trickier. They have to be wary of the baby's state and the mother's and they don't commonly use general anesthesia for those cases.

I hear it`s normally a lot different than it was for me - that they`ll even have you stay awake for those bonding moments after the birth, etc. The incision itself is much much smaller, and designed to hit fewer muscles and make it easier to recover. The baby itself is under pressure, so will sort of stretch the skin and pop out of a smaller cut. I hear they don`t even do the vertical incision anymore unless there is a major emergency as it has a long recovery time and much higher risk for complications.
It would be very hard for me to consider my surgery as a c-section, the only part that was the same is that the end result was a baby was taken out. And even that baby was too early to even show...
I would think that it would be much much easier and less horrific if it was a normal scheduled or routine (performed due to some kind of common complication during labor) as 99% of c-sections are. Certainly not the terror of what happened to me.

For me, it felt like I was definitely not the priority. The baby was sick, had a stroke, and it`s heart was almost to the point of stopping. So instead of thinking about me through the procedure, it was "cut the baby out to save it!" - there were definitely no qualms about putting me under general anesthesia.
They tried first via IV, which probably would have been better... Maybe... but failed so used gas only. That may have been the reason I was partially aware through part of it.

As for feeling the pain of the cut, I doubt it. My abdominal incision was for very different reasons, but I didn't get feeling back along the stitches for at least 24 hours. Then it was more itching as it healed than surface pain, except where one staple had shift and was poking me. Doc fixed that immediately.

I was too scared to touch my cut until they were taking the stitches (staples?) out, but I don`t believe it actually hurt like a cut. Everything under and around it hurt, and I couldn`t use ANY of my abdominal muscles. It really sucked to need to clear my throat and be completely unable to do it. My body just would not even let me try.
It also didn`t help that the nurses kept telling me that if I wasn`t careful, the whole thing could just pop open. *shudder*
A quick measure of the scar is... 15cm with a 2cm cut over to the side for a drain tube. I had a tube with a little bottle on the end to drain fluids from inside the wound.
Having the tube in there was just flat out weird. I kept thinking that if I squeezed the bottle by accident while sleeping that I would push air inside of me... Or how much it would hurt if I caught it on something and it ripped out of me. (The tube was stapled on, and the bottle dangled about 20cm below it - I kept it in my robe pocket.)

I forget when they took it out, but I`m pretty sure it was when they took the stitches out. For about a week after that, if I bumped the scab it would leak. The leaking from the scab was supposed to be "healthy" as long as it was clear clean liquid and not blood or infected stuff. So it was kind of interesting in it`s own way. Freaked my husband out though. I`m glad it was in there though - it looks like the most common complication for large incision surgeries is fluid retention inside the wound preventing healing... And needing the incision to be opened again for draining.

I later had a bordeline ectopic pregnancy removed (caused by scarring from the first procedure...), and was put under by needle (couldn`t get the iv in then either, so the doctor was amazing and just went by needle into the arm in the spot where they can usually take blood.)
In that case, I wasn`t cut open - it was by micro camera - so there was no cut to wake me. I also wasn`t in a terrified state, and wasn`t panicking. I went to sleep, then woke up after it was over with no recollection of the time between. I did wake up much more quickly than they had expected and startled the nurse who was doing the cleanup in the OR. I also declined pain killers that time too, and was up and completely ready to go home within 5 minutes. The anesthesia left my system VERY quickly. I`m kind of proud of my incredibly efficient liver - no grogginess whatsoever left behind . I never even had to go to the recovery room - I woke before they moved me, and was able to walk and leave the OR normally. (Then go home almost immediately after.)

So I guess that`s a success story for the anesthesia? But it`s not really major surgery.

[dogsbody70]

Just think-- what about the time before there was anaesthetics. Its hardly thinkable.


I am glad I was not around in those times.

There have been so many advances in surgery-- its incredible really.