The doctor orders more pain medication…I could hear him with my super powered hearing. Addict hearing. Can’t fall asleep otherwise they may not give me anymore. I don’t want to be in any pain when they put the chest tube in.
As they are about to start the procedure they ask Heather to leave and then she pleads her case to stay and I ask if it is possible for her to stay this way should could have gone through all of this with me :). The doctor agrees so long as Heather doesn’t decide to pass out while viewing the insertion of the tube. Something I find amusing since how can one control whether they pass out or not…
The doctor has me turn onto my left side, bend my legs into a V. He probes around counting ribs and then shows the resident where to cut me open. Once he opens me up I hear him commenting on the fact that he can’t get the tube in. The doctors warns him to not remove his finger and thankfully he doesn’t. I can only guess if he removed his finger it would have introduced more air and I would have die or been in even more pain.
Keep pushing. OUCH! I moaned. Push further, harder. OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! This procedure makes dilaudid look like ibuprofen because I can feel the pain. I prayed “Please get it in, Please get it in”
Success.
I was expecting everything to turn back to normal but that hardly happened. It seems they didn’t run a proper inventory check because they didn’t have the right valve to attach my newly installed tube to the suction device. At that point there were several people standing over me discussion how they were going to get this to work with the wrong parts.
I thought about Apollo 13 and how the engineers had to figure out how to get them home with the shit they had on board. I really couldn’t believe I was listening to this all the while thinking what was going to happen if they could get it to work. Finally a nurse demonstrated her idea and they were able to produce a makeshift devices that didn’t leak air in either direction.
Yay for me…