It has been a while between posts and my list of medical interests continues to grow. I have for a long time been a fan of the TV show 24 Hours in Emergency (a fly-on-the-wall style documentary about the Accident & Emergency department of a large London hospital) but find that recently my own body is providing almost similar levels of medical entertainment.
There has been a development in that I am now seeing a rheumatologist as well as a vascular surgeon, but let’s not worry about that right now because my most recent visit was back to my old friend, Mr Chimney Sweep the surgeon – the man who likes to thread wires down my arteries and open them up.
Mr Sweep had found a blockage in my femoral artery that he wanted to have a go at. It was at round 70% so doing a pretty good job of restricting blood flow and he had decided that it was time to open it up.
I have had this procedure twice before when he has tackled the much smaller arteries in my calves – once on the right side and once on the left. It goes like this: you arrive at hospital and they admit you and make you dress in paper underwear. Then they wheel you down to a catheter lab and cut the underwear off you and cover you with cold brown antiseptic fluid. They do this on both the right side and the left side near your groin because often the surgeon will go in on the opposite side to the leg he is working on (something about being able to watch the blood flow). Then you wait.
You are under the head of an X-ray machine which can move about and there is a large screen to the side, which if you can see is a bonus because it gives you something to do while you like WIDE AWAKE throughout the whole procedure. This means if you are unlucky like I was the other day that you will notice the size of the needle delivering the local anaesthetic that the surgeon jabs you with so he can get the catheter and dye delivery system into your artery.
Then come the photos. A series of X-ray images taken while they inject a contrast dye that burns like hell while you are told to KEEP STILL so he can see what he is doing followed by the live feed as he threads the catheter through until he hits a blockage and blows it open with his tiny balloon.
I quite like watching the action on the big screen. It distracts me and so helps me to keep still, something I am famously bad at. I was hoping that this operation would be quite quick because the artery was big and there was only one area he wanted to tackle.
Mr Sweep looked at the images then got stuck in and whacked a stent into my leg. That all went as planned. It was when he tried to stop that the fun began. They pulled all the wires and stuff out and injected a seal to close up the artery, the big artery, and stop it bleeding.
The big artery had other ideas.
I lay there trying to be a good patient as the medical team tried various ways to stop me bleeding, the most basic of which was leaning heavily on the wound. Three times they tried to plug me up but three times it failed and the blood kept coming.
‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.
‘Yes fine!’ Said the nurse breezily, sweating slightly.
‘Just maybe don’t let me bleed into my pelvic cavity,’ I suggested. ‘I have heard that most trauma patients who bleed to death do so internally.’
‘ Are you a nurse?’ Asked the nurse.
‘No,’ I explained, ‘but I do watch 24 Hours in Emergency.’
‘Oh I love that show!’ said another nurse who had appeared by my other side.
‘Guys!’ Called a third nurse, ‘Bp is down from 140 to 120.’
The leaning nurse started palpating my groin area.
‘Bit of a haematoma’ she explained.
‘Ah’ I said, ‘you want to keep it soft.’
‘Yes,’ she said looking pleased I was taking what I believe hospitals like to call ‘an active role’ in my health care.
‘I am feeling a bit dizzy’ I added for good measure.
‘Bp down to 90,’ shouted the shouty nurse.
‘Let’s get the Dr back,’ said another.
Not to be left out I added, ‘I am now feeling nauseous.’ Then I yawned.
‘Patient yawning!’ Someone shouted.
They tilted the bed back so my head was lower than my feet.
‘I am feeling quite sleepy,’ I said, then added for good measure ‘but I suppose you want me to stay awake.’
Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they did not want someone whose entire medical knowledge is from the University of Google and TV documentaries, but they lied.
‘Yes – try and stay awake!’
‘Bp is now 60 can we get some fluids in?’
‘I am now very, very nauseous,’ I said, ‘plus all that palpating is exciting my bladder which is not good.’
By now some men had appeared. One to hook me up to a bag of fluid one to stand next to me with a sick bag and one other to deliver oxygen.
He stood at my head and placed a mask over my mouth.
‘I couldn’t find the right sized gloves,’ he wailed, ‘they are really tight on my hands.’
‘Oh how awful for you,’ I said, trying to be sympathetic. ‘I hope your arms don’t turn as blue as my face probably is right now.’
Mr Sweep the surgeon appeared and looked thoughtfully at me. I had the feeling this was my fault somehow.
‘It is OK’ said one of the nurses to him, ‘she watches 24 Hours in Emergency.’
From beneath my mask I nodded to confirm. It was the least I could do.
fifilab 