4:28am November 12, 2013

And the IV problem (discussion of failed IVs, needles, blood, etc.)

So the only real thing that went wrong with the surgery was starting the IV.

i actually tried to warn them that my veins have been wrecked by all these hospitalizations.  They said “Oh no, it looks like you have great veins here and here…”

So the first insertion she tried to numb me before I could stop her.  Numbing medication just makes the IV insertion even harder.  I knew she wasn’t in a vein, but she didn’t, and again before I could stop her she was putting saline into my … not my vein, anyway.  And then I got this giant blob of fluid under my skin, which was painful and made it impossible to close my hand.

Then she tried another site and couldn’t get anything

So she called in another guy, saying that if she can’t get two places in a row she refuses to try more.

So this guy came in and had real trouble finding a good vein.  Then he found one vein and it didn’t work.  And started bleeding a lot in the process.

So then he got another vein, which for some reason made me dizzy and woozy even though nothing else had brgotr.  And all this blood came out.  Not spurting, but just because he didn’t have everything ready to put over the needle. so it was just sitting there, open, and bleeding.  So blood was going everywhere.  

Meanwhile he was unwilling to move his hand because he wanted to make sure the IV didn’t move.  

So he had this medical student with him, who apparently didn’t know even the most basic stuff about IVs, so she kept fumbling around with the tube and messing up or misunderstanding his instructions, while I was sitting there bleeding.

But we eventually got it in.

And then it hurt every time people put meds in.

So they said they’d find another vein once I was asleep.

But they didn’t, because, they said, the vein “worked fine” while I was out.

Well of course it “worked fine”, I wash’t awake to tell them it was painful.  It was painful in a way that usually means it’s not going to last very long.  It lasted fine because I was only there for surgery, not a long hospital stay.  If I’d needed a hospital stay, i hope they’d have taken me a little more seriously about the pain.  

In past hospital stays (in a completely different hospital), I’ve had problems where people have decided I was “just tender”, then not put in orders for an IV nurse, so eventually I was left with  no IV and no ability to get crucial medications for hours at a time.

But really this wasn’t too big a deal.  Everything else went as well as it could under the circumstances  And I need to send this as fast as I can, because the meds I’m on keep making me sleep randomly and then I wake up with my head flopping down and my teeth biting my tongue.

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