Are You Ready |
| Several weeks ago I was strong and healthy, but I was having difficulty breathing. One set of doctors insisted that I begin using inhalers. The inhalers helped so I thought the problem was over with. That just meant I had to pause more often in my chopping wood and hauling logs to make an outbuilding. But it was time for my annual and I was shocked when my doctors (the same ones who had insisted time and again last year there was nothing wrong with my heart when I told them there was) had suddenly changed their minds. "You have got to have an angiogram and while we are in there we will want to put in stents if it is as bad as we think it is." Muttering and mumbling, I scheduled for the rush job, put it off a week, then went on in, still mumbling and grumbling about doctors that couldn't be convinced something was wrong with their tests, then couldn't be convinced nothing was wrong. The experience was exciting, watching the television show the inside of my heart and when the practicing doctor said it was time to back out and everything had gone well I asked, "Can I get a copy of the pretty pictures?" "Sure," he responded and brought them up. "Now let me show you the blockages here.."This blockage is 95% complete -- I swallowed hard. "Wait a minute, why are you backing out instead of putting in stents, then? The doctor smiled condescendingly. "Your heart is in perfect shape, but the blockages are so bad we can't try playing around with stents. We will go in for open heart surgery and do at least a triple bypass." "How soon?" IMMEDIATELY! Me that never believes the first doctor, after looking this one in the eye for just one full second -- I didn't even think about arguing with him. |
How do you know which doctor to ask to perform your open heart surgery? Actually that is pretty much determined for most of us by your choice of insurance company: Which doctor will your company pay for without question? THAT'S the one you want working on your heart. Your company is playing the odds and right now those are your best odds too. Incidentally, the time to pick out your best insurance carrier has done come and gone. You have done made your choice and now it is time to live with it.
If you are just hee picking up information for a friend you might want to pause and wonder if the insurance carrier was picked out from the list of advertisers on the latest game shows they watch. This selection process is called survival of the flittest.
| "Immediately" meant they wanted it to happen just as fast as they could brief me and prep me. My final heart doctor was picked out and he began briefing me for the next day's operation. Basically, they snip out the bypass veins from somewhere else in your body, then they rip your heart open and stitch the veins into your heart. "It is a piece of cake. There is really only a 2% chance of anything going wrong." I'm convinced this briefing is given just so you can show off your inside knowledge with your friends and neighbors. Minutes after the doctor finished, the anesthesiologist tucked into me with his briefing. I thought sure I understood him because I had observed several people go through this type of operation. It looks awful, but after three or four times, I felt sure I knew what to expect. What he described wasn't radically different from what I'd seen. Now, what list do you choose your anesthesiologist from? Starting from push and coming to shove you'll end up picking the one your heart specialist trusts with your life. But if money was no object and knowing what I now know, I'd go reviewing a long list of anesthesiologists whom friends in similar circumstances were happy with AFTER THE EVENT, and then I would use the doctor my anesthesiologist preferred to share the responsibility for my life with. That's right, I'd choose my anesthesiologist first. |
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Interactive RecoveryWith your heart surgeon you are trusting to a process pretty much out of your control. If something goes wrong in there the staff will not wake you up to ask what their next step should be. With your anesthesiologist it is interactive from spot one to the last great windup. I know I'm not a good example, but it does make a point.. If my anesthesiologist is a stranger it takes twice as much drug to take me under. If I don't trust him when we meet just minutes before the operation then it takes three times as much to take me under. You probably won't be affected as much as I am as I tend to secure my hatches first, and send out cutsie invitations later -- but you will be affected, one way or the other. Even if nothing happens but you get this warm, toasty feeling that your mind and body are in good hands your recovery room stay will be an interactive visit. |
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| Since it was a one way 170 mile trip for members of my Branch to come give me a blessing we called upon the priesthood from a local unit to come bless me and the doctor's staff so that everything went well. I was in the Lord's hands, said the blessing, and everything would be fine. Then the blessing went on to say that I needed to take special care to remain calm in the recovery room and that if I did so my healing would continue rapidly. After hearing those words of comfort, I know now that I should have went right back to the anesthesiologist and asked him to explain the recovery process to me again and in more detail so I could spot what I had missed -- but I didn't. I went in trusting to chance and my inane ability to wing it. All I know is that before the operation commenced the anesthesiologist laced me up real good in the operating room and patiently explained why he did each step. My right hand was laced to a curved pad so that the IV wouldn't be disturbed, no matter what. Half past my elbow the whole arm was laced to the side of the table with my palm down. My left hand was laced up palm down also, all the way back past the elbow. Like I said, I really wasn't paying that much attention. I was trying to get a look and a feel for the operating room from the bottom up. There was supposed to be a count, I'm sure, as I went under. I never heard the first number. One second some bright lights flashed into my eyes, and the next instant I was in a different place and a different time. I remember the anesthesiologist was there on my left, but there was an "I've got you now," sneer on his face." I didn't even think about it; I just knew beyond a doubt that I'd been captured and immediately I went into escape mode. I yanked my right arm loose from its bondings and began trying to use it to get the rest of me up. There was no lever and no traction to get the pads off of it. Therefore I yanked my left arm up to use it to free my right arm. As it came loose I glimpsed the horrified expression on the face of the anesthesiologist. He was ready to chuck it all and leave me to my own devices. I can understand his reaction from his point of view now. Here is this poor old dude that could barely totter -- even if he had told that whopper of being able to run ten miles, ripping his arms loose from surgical bindings, and we are not talking muscle-bulging bicep flexing here. No sir, we are talking straight, back of the arm raises that looked effortless done by a man whose chest has been ripped completely apart and jacked open just minutes before. After a second he began explaining to me where I was and that everything was under control. "You've just been through open heart surgery and now you're waking up. I'll make sure you keep breathing, but you have got to let me pin your arms down again so you won't tear anything loose. He was very persuasive. He succeeded in getting my mind back to the right time and the right place; I let him bind my arms down again and secure them even better than before. But then I noticed there was more than one tube down my throat. There were three, and one of them was rattling around loose. If I was unable to let him know about it, that tube would kill me. Silly as that idea was, I was sure of it I began trying to talk, and that was useless. So once again I yanked my left arm loose. That first time he might have been hallucinating. This time he was in full control of his faculties. When his eyes ceased to bulge and began to focus on me again I made scribbling motions with my left hand. He understood, after a few seconds. He brought a tablet and laid it down on the bed beside my hand. Then he brought a pen and laid it down on the bed beside the tablet. Wisely, he did not bring his hand anywhere close to mine, but very carefully stayed out of my reach. I couldn't see what my writing was producing, and I'm right handed besides. Nor did I know how much paper I had. What I tried to write was, "One tube loose in throat." After it was obvious I had quit trying to write anything else the anesthesiologist shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't read anything you've written." He picked it up and held it in front of my face. "Can you?" Knowing what I meant, I could have guessed what was scribbled there from what I wrote, but it was too much to ask for that great a leap of ratiocination on his part. I wept a few tears and shook my head. As he began to lace my hand down again my mind marched through all the steps to getting out of there, snatching my arms loose again, getting the IVs loose and yanking those tubes out of my throat. Knowing full well I'd never get everything right and almost certainly I would kill myself in the attempt, I gritted my teeth and resolved myself for the worst. As my blessing had said, it was up to me to calm myself.I've been through this type of crisis too many times in my life, praying desperately for divine intervention and knowing my biggest battle was forcing my body to rely on prayer as the ONLY answer available. Oh Lord, O God, my own hand can kill me here, help me hold it back. |
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With my breath clamped off with an iron grasp I began asking myself some serious quality control questions. Did I trust THIS anesthesiologist? Was this anesthesiologist able to feel the promptings of the Holy Ghost, and was he then amenable to the will of the Lord? It was way, way too late to be asking myself these questions, yes, and too late for you too. The time to make sure you have an anesthesiologist you will trust when the whole ball of wax comes unglued is long before the whole ball of wax comes unglued. |
the end
a p.s. It would really help patients in recovery to have a closed circuit picture of themselves on a screen they could see, showing that all is well. Some means of communication would have been welcomed as a godsend. Even an attempt at two way communication would have been appreciated.
Another p.s. Two nights later the anesthesiologist came in as my nurse was taking over. Evidently he had been telling her about me because she wanted to know if I'd been a Marine when I was in the Service. "No, I was in the Army. But I admired the Marines. Like the time this whole unit of Marines rebelled in Korea. They were trying to bury Marines under the flag of the U.N. and this unit had rebelled. They sent in a Marine General to put down the rebellion and he sided with them. "Marines fight for their country and they have a right to have the American Flag flying over them when they die."
"But you were Special Forces in the Army, weren't you?" asked the anesthesiologist.
I had to laugh at his eagerness. "Just a soldier, sorry." As his smile faded I added. "I never fought in a war, but I was a soldier and I was a good one. I still am."
"But the way you came out of there -- you were like a tiger, ripping those strappings off you like they were nothing!"
"Yes," I responded. "Because of our eternal heritage there are no limits to what the human body can do, and sometimes I forget to remember the limits we put on ourselves."
Lin Stone is a author, writer, photographer,
and works closely with Browzer Books
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NOW is the time to share this information with every neighbor and form a neighborhood group that can help each other. Anarchy and riots could break out and law enforcement agencies may be operating sporadically if at all as we have witnessed in New Orleans.