NATIONAL EMBARRASSING MEDICAL MOMENTS MONTH
When Things Collapse Unexpectedly
Red faces, please step forward!
There were several embarrassing moments in my medical balls-up. Few of which were mine!
I woke bright and early one morning in 1989. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and my mind was raring to go. But, my body had other ideas.
I had the worst case of indigestion EVA! Being the stoic person I am, I figured I had wind trapped somewhere behind my breastplate.
Right!
I swallowed two paracetamol tablets and two GoGas. That oughta fix it!
Wrong!
That ends my wankery, embarrassing, (you’re being harsh), behaviour in the whole pathetic saga.
My “indigestion” didn’t go away.
Later in the morning, whilst hanging twenty-eight pairs of male undies and fourteen pairs of knickers on the washing line, I developed a weird cough accompanied by pain in my left shoulder.
I can see Doc Funny nodding his head in diagnosis, but at the time, all I knew was that I was in a bit of trouble.
A visit to the local medico began my tortuous journey.
As it turned out, my doctor was away. Two medicos were on duty — another male, and his doctor wife.
I writhed around in the waiting room until I was called into the surgery by Doctor Anne.
I think she was qualified, but her partner/ husband notoriously made many phone calls on days following his wife’s consults, to re-prescribe medicines Dr. Anne had mistakenly given patients.
Anyhoo, she ushered me in and instructed me to lie flat on my back. I couldn’t because that made the pain unbearable. She made me!
Doc Funny is nodding wisely again.
Quack stuck ECG bits all over me. She nodded sagely. “You have a heart arrhythmia.”
“No kidding,” I snarked. “Been there since birth. I don’t normally take paracetamol and DeGas to fix it up!”
Puzzled, she called her husband for a second opinion.
To be truthful, I don’t remember what Doc Alex did. I do remember he wore a permanently resigned look on his dial. I diagnosed him with wife issues. He diagnosed me with a possible collapsed lung.
Bingo!
I do remember him scratching his head and saying that a spontaneous pneumothorax most frequently occurred in teenage males. (I had suffered an unexplained outbreak of acne during the week; maybe I had more problems than a crook lung)!
Gee, I’m sorry, doc. 39-year-old woman! Wrong demographic!
Clutching an admissions letter, I was directed to make my way to the public hospital in the city.
As I left the surgery, the Practice Manager called out, “Raine, you should never have given up smoking last year. Your lungs aren’t gummed up, anymore!”
Sage advice. I think she was taking doctoring lessons from the lady quack.
Having collected some toiletries from home, my hubby, Dee, drove me to the hospital. We couldn’t get a park and Security wouldn’t lift the barrier for us to drive up to the hospital entrance. The hospital is on a hill.
Dee dropped me off and instructed me to sit on a bench.
When he parked and returned, we had to negotiate the steep walk. Try that with a collapsed lung!
Staggering, I leaned on Dee for support. Every breath was ragged and painful — why the hell did my shoulder feel like it was about to burst into flames? The effort made me cough; a weird, hacking noise that seemed to bust from my abdomen, and rip from my throat.
Because I had a letter, I was taken to the Emergency Department immediately. They sent me to x-ray which confirmed a left lung pneumothorax.
I sent Dee home to attend to our printing business and the family.
After a couple of hours of waiting behind a curtain, I heard two young residents approach the x-ray viewer upon which sat my lung images.
After a few seconds of silence, one spoke, “Spontaneous pneumothorax! Twenty bucks these belong to a male, eighteen years old!”
“Won’t take that bet,” replied his friend.
My age and birthdate were stuck to the corner of the image. I wasn’t too sure that the first speaker was cut out for medicine.
Doctors, Wanker One and Two, yanked back my curtain and glanced around the small cubicle.
“Oh, sorry,” muttered One. “Wrong patient!”
“Right patient,” I wheezed. “Pneumothorax, left lung. Not a male. Not that young. Sorry!” I nodded to the guy I had named, Wanker Two. “Shoulda took the bet!”
Pneumothorax — I had a delicious new word and I was damn well going to use it!
After I had completed my mandatory horrendous wait, squirming around on the ED bed, I was whisked into a side room where they popped me onto a trolley and removed my shirt. They insisted I lay on my back. Again.
At the head of the trolley was a sweet senior nurse who muttered quietly, trying to soothe me. On my left side were a male doctor and a female student. Another whitecoat stood by on the right. I guessed he was a student, too.
The nurse lifted my left arm and place it behind my head.
“Just as well you shave under your arms,” she joked.
I gave her a watery smile and wondered why my armpit hair, or lack thereof, was of any interest.
My attention wandered to the doc on my left side. He was muttering to the student who was waving a scalpel around.
Her hand was shaking — at least a 9.0 on the Richter Scale!
“Hand the scalpel over, already!” my mind screamed, praying she was there to assist.
The student counted my ribs with icy cold fingers. I think she stopped on five?? She cast enquiring eyes to her senior colleague. He nodded somberly.
The shaking scalpel advanced toward my body.
Surely not! I quivered, my pleading eyes now on the nurse’s concerned face.
“No anesthetic? Not even a local?”
She patted my hairless armpit, consolingly. Told me the reason why, which went in one mortified ear and out the other.
The shaking scalpel wavered and went off-course. Doc gripped the student’s wrist and guided it back to the correct rib.
A tentative cut.
My mind screamed. I didn’t. I’m old-school tough!
Nurse started rolling a small towel.
Whilst muttering, “This is bloody ridiculous,” she shoved the tight wad between my teeth.
“Bite on this, honey.”
I thought it was bloody ridiculous, too. The stale wad tasted like it had missed the last laundry roll-call!
I did as commanded, although I wondered who the biting was supposed to help. She was probably worried I would scream the ED down and disturb the other patients.
It took fifteen more agonising minutes for the quivering student to feed a tube into my chest cavity, hook me up to shit, and dress the hole where the tube went. Apparently, the exposed end of the tube contained a one-way valve that continuously removed air from my chest cavity. It is the air that prevents a collapsed lung from expanding. Only pneumothorax survivors know this shit!
Torture over, I was wheeled to my ward.
The next day, Wankers One and Two appeared at my bedside with clipboards and a copy of a new x-ray that had been taken that morning.
There was an x-ray viewing thingy beside my bed. Thingy is the technical name for a lightbox. If you’d had a pneumothorax, you would know!
“Hah. See that!” declared One, triumphantly.
“Yep. Tube is in the wrong place. It’s no good there!” sneered Two.
They switched the lightbox off and left. No word to their patient. Didn’t matter, I was cowering in fear of a tube replacement.
I cowered for the next day and ten days following that. Nobody mentioned a misplaced tube. Nobody redressed the wound. EVA!
For the next few days, Dee visited, competent doctors visited, and more x-rays were taken — left lung stayed collapsed.
I was beginning to think I was going to spend the rest of my life in permanent pneumothorax. The next day WI and WII popped by. They muttered a perfunctory greeting. Nodding wisely, they moved to their patient in the next bed.
They seemed interested in her condition, asked some questions, came up with some answers, and a suggestion that sounded something like, “There’s one in the basement. Let’s get that up and give it a try, shall we?”
Two hours later, the Wanker twins returned, trundling an ancient-looking machine that appeared to be covered in dust and cobwebs.
Treating me to a disdainful sneer, WI whisked the curtains around to shield his patient’s bed from my view.
Damn — things were starting to get interesting, and I wasn’t going to be privy to the fun stuff.
A short time later, following a few grunts and satisfied murmurings, a machine started chugging away behind the curtain next to my bed. The patient remained silent. I guessed the machine must be doing its job.
Kudos to Wankers I and II!
Around lunchtime, the curtain separating my bed from the machine and cubicle next door burst into flames!
I screamed for help and pushed buttons frantically. Other patients seemed to be silently rooted to their arses. I was contemplating throwing a full bedpan over the carnage when help arrived, and the flames were extinguished.
My next ward was an improvement! For a start, the curtains seemed to be intact and unlikely to spontaneously combust.
The patients were a cheerful bunch, but I found it difficult to be my usual upbeat self.
My dressing hadn’t been examined or changed, and even though I mentioned it, none of the staff seemed particularly interested.
Nearly two weeks had gone by and there had been no change in my condition. The almost daily x-rays showed that my lung had become slightly worse.
I couldn’t get any sense out of WI and II, and Dee couldn’t get answers from any other staff.
Dee is a quietly spoken, make-no-fuss, kind of person. He visited me daily and left looking progressively more concerned every afternoon.
On night thirteen, I received a visit from the hospital Registrar.
He sat beside my bed, patted my hand frequently, and asked me about my treatment from start to finish.
When he had heard my report, he confided in me that Dee had stormed the local GP’s office. Our doctor had phoned the Registrar with his concerns, and the rest is history as they say.
The Registrar advised me that they would be x-raying me in the early morning, and then sending me off by ambulance to the best heart-lung hospital in the city. I was scheduled for an open-chest operation the next day.
Gulp!
Much later that evening, WI and WII hovered at the end of my bed discussing, in loud whispers, wanker husbands that tell tales to the hospital registrar.
They also discussed the gory details of the operation I was scheduled for.
Not once did they speak to me.
At that time in Australia, hospitals still had Matrons. One came by at midnight to find me struggling out of bed to sit in an armchair.
“Why do you want to do that, dear?” she asked kindly. “It’s cold in the wards tonight.”
I explained to her I wanted to sit and think/meditate on my condition. If I tried to do it in bed, I would fall asleep.
Without further questions, she helped to snuggle me up in the chair.
I meditated on my situation until dawn then struggled back into bed.
At seven am my lungs were x-rayed. All fine!
By the time the mid-morning tea-trolley was rattling down the corridor, I was in the family car, praising Dee for his actions, and me for mine.
I don’t know if I scared myself into healing, whether Divine intervention intervented (’tis so a word), or whether my lung simply got tired of being collapsed.
I didn’t give a crap. I was going home!
Hopefully, so were Wankers I and II, permanently!
PS. When the dressing came off before I was discharged, it really stank; warm, sickly sweet, puke-inducing. Think two-day-old road kill baking on bitumen in forty-five-degree Outback sun!
Just thought you should know!
Kristine Laco prompted:
Michael Burg, MD (AKA Medium Michael Burg) told us about this:
Raine Lore wrote this stuff and is taking a leaf out of Dr Funny’s book by referring to herself in the third person:
