October 24, 2005

• My Worst Experience

  
  

   

  
  

  It’s taken me several days to get up my nerve.  We’ll see if I can manage to get through the telling of something that still scares me to think about.

  
  

   

  
  

  It was 1998 and I was still married.  I had had my first mastectomy just months before, and back then they were still putting in the expander at the same time they took the breast.  That’s if you chose reconstruction, which I did.  I came home from the hospital and instead of a breast I had a plastic balloon in my chest and every week I’d go to the doctor for a fill-up.  They’d inject so many CCs of saline into the balloon, slowly stretching out the taut skin.  Believe me, this was painful.  I’d have to lie on my back the first couple nights with pillows on my side so I wouldn’t roll.  Finally, after weeks of these fill-ups, I was a C cup.  All that remained was to get this balloon out and put the real implant in.  We scheduled the surgery and my husband decided he’d just remain at the hospital, this being an in-and-out day surgery.

  
  

   

  
  

  I was really excited to get my implant and be done with all of it.  I didn’t need chemo and all I could think of was that I would finally be able to fill out those bellydance costumes.  I’d had a lot of surgery over the years and wasn’t at all worried about the anesthetic.  My plastic surgeon did most of the breast jobs at this hospital and I knew he did good work.

  
  

  At 7:30 they wheeled me into surgery and when I came to it was 9:30.  I know because I was lying in a hallway and the clock was above me, across the hall. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Something wasn’t right.  I’d never woken up in a hallway before.  I was supposed to be in my room.  Something else wasn’t right, things were spinning.  It was an intolerable sensation but I couldn’t talk to explain.  I was fully conscious but my mouth didn’t work.  And I found being conscious something I wasn’t going to be able to handle. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Do you remember when you were a little kid and you rode on the – It wasn’t the merry-go-round because there were no painted horses or zebras.  But you stood and hung onto the bar and someone bigger pushed it.  It was a round metal platform and if you stood out, close to the edge, it was thrilling.  That is until someone’s big brother decided to scare my little friend and me.  I was going so fast I almost fell off.  But what I remember most was the feeling like I’d lost my balance and couldn’t get it back; that I was spinning out of control, unable to get my bearings.

  
  

   

  
  

  I looked at the clock.  Something had woken me again.  It said 10:00.  My doctor was standing over me.  He leaned in and put his hand on my leg.  This was not good.  This made it worse. 

  
  

             
              “Don’t touch me.”

  
  

              “Are you okay?”

  
  

              “No.”

  
  

              “What’s the matter?”

  
  

              “Can’t talk.”

  
  

   

  
  

  He left me alone after that.  But just that much contact – It was like he and the hospital surroundings were moving at one speed and I was in another dimension whirling out of control at a another speed and his touch accentuated my awareness of the distance between the two.  I couldn’t cry out for help.  I had to get back to sleep.  I desperately wanted to leave my body.  

  
  

   

  
  

  I had taken a drumming class the week before and learned a new rhythm.  For some reason I started playing the rhythm over and over in my mind.  This seemed to help keep the panic at bay.  I had the feeling that I was dangerously close to losing my mind; that it would whirl out of control at this same dangerous pace, the one I couldn’t keep up with.  Over and over I said the words Dum, Dum, teck-a-teck, Dum, teck-a-teck.  It’s pronounced doom.

  
  

   

  
  

  The next time I came to it was 11:30.  The really horrible part was that I knew it typically took me five hours to come out of an anesthetic.  A nurse was trying to rouse me and I pretended to go back to sleep but I was overwhelmed with nausea.  I didn’t dare throw up.  It would be like the doctor touching me.  Then the nurse would be trying to deal with me.  No, I had to get back to my safe place.  I had three more hours to go.  Tears started rolling down my cheeks.  I had to get myself together.  Just one more hour.  If I could make it to 12:30 I would be more than half-way there. 

  
  

   

  
  

  I shouldn’t have let up on the drumming.  I knew if I didn’t stay on top of it my mind would fall back into what was happening.  I had to keep myself distracted and go to that other place.  I could make it last a whole hour and not be conscious.  The next time a nurse bothered me it was 1:30.  I only had one more hour to go but the nausea was still bad.  I took a chance and opened my eyes when she talked to me.

  
  

   

  
  

  Big mistake.  More tears.

  
  

             

  
  

              “Prudy, are you feeling better?”

  
  

              “Nauseous.”

  
  

              “Can I give you something for it?”

  
  

              “Can’t move.”

  
  

              “You could use a straw.”

  
  

              “Okay.”

  
  

             

  
  

  I knew it was a gamble but the spinning wasn’t as bad as the nausea at this point so I went for it.  As long as I didn’t move or talk or think.  She put it in my mouth and held the straw and I swallowed. 

  
  

   

  
  

              “Let me sleep for one hour.”

  
  

              “Do you want to be moved to your room”

  
  

             

  
  

  More tears as I panicked at the thought of my bed moving even a centimeter.

  
  

   

  
  

              “No movement.  I’m spinning.  Can’t talk.  Must sleep.

  
  

                Please.”

  
  

   

  
  

  Christ, I shouldn’t have opened my eyes.  Now I can’t get back to that place.  I’ll have to lay here counting the minutes, trying not to throw up.

  
  

   

  
  

  Somehow I made it and they let my husband come get me.  The next time I saw my doctor he told me it was the strangest thing, it was like I was in a trance.  He thought it was amusing that I “hissed” “don’t touch me.”

  
  

   

  
  

  I told him I’d had a reaction to the anesthetic and explained what it felt like.  He said it might have been because he sat me up a bunch of times to see how the implant laid.  Then he ended up taking the smaller size out and going with a bigger one.  How he got me in a sitting position while I was unconscious I don’t know.

  
  

   

  
  

  It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with breast cancer a second time and had to have the other breast removed that I found out what really happened to me.

  
  

   

  
  

  It was the night before my second mastectomy and I had been flipped out since they’d told me I’d need another surgery.  I could not face another five hours like that again.  I didn’t have it in me.  The anesthesiologist called and I was explaining about what had happened.  He assured me he would look up my chart from the time before and not give me whatever that was.  The next morning when he came in to introduce himself he sat down and told me that I had been given an anesthetic that hundreds of women had had a bad reaction to.  He described it as psychotic reaction these patients had.  Yeah, I could imagine the screaming and carrying on people might be inclined to do.  And all that time I thought it was something wrong with me.  I had them take the left breast off and the implants, too.  I was done.  No more.

  
  

   

  If you know someone who has had a mastectomy and is considering reconstruction, my advice is don’t do it.  And not because of this horror story.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

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