I Wanna Be (Consciously) Sedated

[Every once in a while, we have to go something that blows. Something we’re not prepared for. Something, that at least, makes a good story…]

I took my off clothes slowly, placing them in the plastic hospital bag and eyeing the hospital johnny with intense trepidation. Intense, fearful, trepidation. I was in the hospital for a biopsy – a biopsy that had been scheduled the day before – so there really hadn’t been any time to prepare for what was about to happen. And when it comes to hospitals, I need to prepare.

After clothing myself in a paper thin gown and crawling underneath a paper thin blanket, I made small talk with a nurse as she prepared vials for the blood she was about to take, and an IV she was about to shove into my arm. Apparently, when you get a biopsy of something hanging around your rib, lots of things are included; vials of your blood, IVs, a few needles of Novocain, “conscious sedation”, and some kind of giant, hand-cranked needle to do the actual biopsying.

The hand-cranked needle was the thing I was least happy about.

I sat underneath the blanket and wiggled my feet, squinting as the nurse flicked the inside of my elbow, the same place that had been flicked only a few days before, and squinted even more as she stuck the needle in. “Looks like someone already got you right here!” she said cheerily, and I nodded as I bit my tongue, wondering if she knew how painful it was to puncture an already bruised patch of skin.

Once the IV was taped securely to my arm, I began the always taxing process of sitting and waiting. People in scrubs padded in and out of the room, my parents stood over the bed and made some strange jokes, and my nurse checked my blood pressure, pulse, and asked me thousands of questions – including if I was in “spiritual distress” (a question I considered answering yes to, because, isn’t every twenty-something in spiritual distress?).

Upon first meeting the nurse, I had hinted about an over-sensitivity to hospitals, so an hour before the biopsy was to take place, she asked me if I wanted something “to calm me down”. I declined, even though I didn’t really want to, because most of the reason I get schizo around hospitals is because I hate the idea of putting something my body that changes the way I feel without my consent. A few bad experiences as a little kid have created a full blown phobia that everything around me in a hospital is designed to put me to sleep or make me woozy.

I know. It’s strange. I fully admit to the strangeness. But it’s the truth.

After fifty minutes of staring at the ceiling, trying not to move my IV-infused arm, and getting the nurse to talk about anything and everything (so that I could concentrate on her chatter and forget about my rapid heartbeat), the doctor came in to tell me all the possible ways sh*t could go wrong. As he talked, I couldn’t help but notice two things; A) he was attractive, and B ) he possibly had frosted blonde highlights.

A doctor with frosted blond highlights cutting into my bone with a giant needle? Should I worry?

The doctor finished his speech and they wheeled me into the CT room, prepped me (by putting an awkward breathing thing up my noise), told a few inside jokes between them (I know, it was weird), and then sent me into my second cat scan of the week.

After I came out of the giant machine, the nurse started that “conscious sedation” I’d heard so much about. If there was any part of this afternoon that could be called not bad, “conscious sedation” was it. That sh*t turned me into a zen master. As soon as it hit my system, everything was cool. Super cool. All I kept saying was “I feel so strange”, over and over, and hardly noticed when the Novocain needles went in. I did feel the hand-cranked biopsy needle, but that feeling I won’t even try to describe. It wasn’t scream-out-loud painful, but you certainly wouldn’t want to eat ice cream while it was happening.

The whole thing took around forty-five minutes (although I hear the “conscious sedation” f*cks with your memory), and after groggily talking with a prep nurse about his uncle’s restaurant in NYC that I used to pass walking to school every day, I was wheeled up to a recovery room. I sat in a hospital bed, ate some raisin bran, and thought about how my upcoming surgery was going to sort of be like this – only suckier.

[photo from jupiterimages]