Hi all,
I hope this evening finds you well in spirit, if not pain free.
As many of you know, my ortho doctor decided not to give me any post-op pain
meds, feeling that I could get by wwith what I had at home. I have a very high
drug tolerance, and a very low pain threshhold, and even though I take some of
the strongest opioids, if I have a new pain problem come up, or get into a bad
Lupus/Spondylitis flare, my nine pain meds can’t fight the battle…
An old doctor friend of mine Doctor Dominique, who is in my group and who has
agreed to take over my primary care, gave me some Norco. She gave me 100, and
she guessed, with me taking 12 a day, 2 every 4 hours, that I’d run out pretty
quickly. She hoped that my post-op pain would be somewhat diminished after the
first week and I’d be able to get by.
Saturday, I called her and told her just how bad it was. My knee was swollen up
to the size of a soccer ball, I couldn’t walk on it and nothing, and I do mean
nothing, was doing any good. She commiserated with me, and told me as she was
on her way out to Quebec, where she is from and also has a practice, (she
rotates), to go to ER if I needed.
I, not wanting to bother anyone, just suffered. Sunday passed in the same sort
of haze, but today, the pain was even worse and my blood pressure, which tends
to skyrocket when I’m in severe pain, was in the stroke out region…
Reluctantly, I called in an ambulance crew.
Now, it’s always been embarrassing to me, when a medic like me, and I’m a good
medic if I do say so myself, (my colleagues agree), has to call for a rig. My
friends were available and were going to take me but they were a few miles away,
so they sent a fire truck to sit with me and monitor my BP…
This was part of the same fire crew that had given me a hard time last time
about my service dog. I did have them written up. I apologized, and they both
agreed that they’d deserved the write-up.
As senior medic in our corps, I have some clout.
So, finally, the ambulance got there and Dewey and I were whisked away to the
hospital. I decided to go to the same hospital which had performed the surgery,
seeing as how they would have all my records and everything.
We get there, and they put me in the waiting room. I raise holy H*** . I say,
“No way are you sticking me in this waiting room to wait for hours when I could
have a blood clot.” My friend Jeff, one of the medics who brought me in, went
over to the desk and the nurse said to bring me to triage.
After giving me the third degree on why I took nine schedule II meds and why
they were not working for me, and why I didn’t have most of my injectables, (I
am given a supply of injectables, if I use them as I normally do, I don’t run
out early, but if I use them as prescribed, I run out a day or two early). I
don’t ask for early refills. I explained that the reason I was out of my
Fentanyl and Demerol injections was that I am due to get them on wednesday, and
I had permission from my pain doc to up my dose if I needed because of surgery.
Finally, Dewey and I are taken into a room and another nurse comes in. She,
too, gives me the third degree. Then she rips the bandages off my incisions,
(nice of her), and says, “They’re not draining, your leg is bruised but not that
swollen).
I said, “Oh yeah, watch this!” and I hopped off the stretcher. As soon as I
did, my knee began to swell, within a few minutes, it was the size of a
softball, that being the swelling. She said, “Oh my God, I guess you are in
pain, you poor thing. I’ll go get Doctor J.”
She leaves and I wait a while. By this time, I’m slipping out of consciousness
and a man, who I assumed was the doctor, comes in and said he had some pain
patches for me, where did I want them. I said, “pain patches? What kind?”
Imagine a drunken slur and you’ve got it about right.
He said, “Fentanyl, you take fentanyl.”
I mumbled that I did but by injection. He explained that they didn’t have
fentanyl injection in the ER. So, I got two 75 mcg patches on my right arm.
Then he taped them down. He warned me that they may take a few hours to really
kick in. I told him I was a paramedic and wasn’t stupid. Thank God, he took it
with good humor.
Then, the doctor comes in, and he talks about giving me something for pain. I
explained that I had already been given Fentanyl patches, and then he said he
wanted to do an ultrasound of my leg to make sure there was no blood clot.
There wasn’t.
After that, they let me go home. It was obvious that I was still in pain, and I
didn’t know this until I got home, but the doc had given Rod, who had come to
get me, some Fentanyl for breakthrough pain called actiq, which is a losenge on
a stick… Rod had two of them, since the doc told him it could be several
hours before the patch began to work…
Everyone there was so impressed with Dewey and how well he behaved. He made me
proud. I can’t wait until my Dobermann in training, Demon, can be the same way.
So, that’s my story, and…I’m sticking to it, or rather, it’s sticking to me!
–
Dodge
Tags: Blood Clot, Fentanyl, Hospital, Post-Op Pain, Service Dog, Surgery
