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Of all the negative emotions we can experience, fear
may be the most paralyzing. It can cause us to hesitate when action is
imperative, or it can make us react too quickly in a situation that needs
careful consideration. Fear of the unknown may keep us from something truly
wonderful. On the other hand, fear of letting something “too good to be
true” slip away can be disastrous.
For seven years, I postponed a surgical procedure that
had the potential to make my life five hundred percent better than it was,
to say nothing of relieving constant, often excruciating, pain. General
anesthesia, during other necessary surgeries, had come close to ending my
life three times. The alternative, a spinal block, scared me to death!
When I finally reached the point that the possibility
of dying during or following the knee replacement surgery was no worse than
the pain I felt daily, I agreed to see a surgeon. Several of my friends
recommended the same doctor, so I took my courage in both hands and went to
see him.
“Not a problem,” the six-foot-seven,
blond-turning-to-silver Adonis told me. “We’ll do a spinal block.” I
blinked several times and swallowed hard before I replied.
“Uh…isn’t that painful?” I asked. The doctor leaned
back in his swivel chair and smiled.
“Some say it’s no worse than a bee sting,” he said.
“Others seem to have more of a problem with it. It’s really not bad. We’ll
keep you lightly sedated during the whole surgical procedure, and you will
be fine.”
I blinked some more. It was on the tip of my tongue to
ask how many spinals he had received in his lifetime. Before I could
retort, he continued.
“When would you like to schedule the knee
replacement?” Since it was mid-October, January seemed far enough away to
give me pondering time, just in case I needed to re-think the situation.
“Maybe mid-January?” I asked.
“Fine. How about January seventeenth?” I swallowed
hard again and agreed.
January came awfully fast. No matter how many people I
talked to about the spinal block, I couldn’t get a positive consensus that
there would be little pain. It was the part of the whole procedure that I
dreaded the most. Just the thought of baring my vulnerable backbone to a
needle of monstrous size (according to several witnesses) gave me cold
chills. I took the most sensible approach: I tried not to think about it,
which was a miserable failure.
At six a.m. on the morning of January seventeenth, I
allowed a blue-swathed nurse to wheel me into the pre-op cubicle. Another
lady in blue proceeded to paint and scrub my entire right leg with a sudsy
iodine-y substance, which she did for several minutes.
“Does a spinal block really hurt?” I blurted out my
fear. The woman nodded.
“It can,” she said, “but usually no more than a
hornet’s sting.” A hornet’s sting? I remembered how badly honeybee
and bumblebee stings hurt when I was a child. I considered hobbling away
from the gurney, but I had already come this far. I couldn’t let my
children and grandchildren think that I was a total wimp.
After two attempts at finding a vein my left hand, the
anesthetist attacked my right. He finally found a vein, but his finesse was
not wonderful. I frowned. “I bet that spinal is going to hurt a lot worse,
isn’t it?” I asked.
“It might,” he replied. I was not reassured.
After what seemed like a very short time, someone said,
“Let’s get this show on the road.” I knew a moment of total, absolute
terror.
“Don’t I have to have a spinal?” I asked. General
laughter greeted my remark.
“Sweetie, you’ve already had it.”
“Oh.” Duh, as my granddaughter would have said. I
wondered why I couldn’t remember getting the spinal block. Oh well, I
wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
During the surgery I seemed to be totally aware of
everything that was done, but I’m sure that I drifted in and out of
consciousness. I heard the conversation, even took part in it occasionally;
and I could see the tall surgeon’s masked face above the blue screen that
was draped across my chest and separated me from the action. I heard the
sound of the instrument that prepared the bones for the prosthesis, and the
whine of the drill that screwed four, three-inch screws into my lower leg.
Even when the hammering began, I thought: Hmmmm…that’s interesting.
They must be pounding on my leg, but I can’t feel a thing.
Intermittent sedation made the whole process seem very
short, time wise. In less than three hours I was wheeled into the room that
would become mine for the next three days. My family waited to
commiserate. “Piece of cake!” I announced. That, of course, was before the
feeling came back into my leg. Still, even though the pain of the surgery
did get really nasty, and the therapy was sometimes more than I thought I
could bear, it was worth it.
Three months after the fact, I walk without pain. I
can go up and down stairs without wincing and moaning and groaning. I can
almost cross my legs, as I had not been able to do for years. Still, there
is one thing that really bothers me. If
the pain of the spinal block was bad enough that the anesthetist gave me
something to make me forget the entire procedure, HOW BAD WAS IT? DID I
MAKE A COMPLETE FOOL OF MYSELF WITH HYSTERICS OR SCREAMING OR BABBLING OR
WHAT? DID I MAKE A
SWEET, GRANDMOTHERLY PASS AT DOCTOR ADONIS?
WHAT HAPPENED THAT THEY DIDN’T WANT ME TO REMEMBER?
Now here I am, new knee, new life, new outlook; and the
thought of a spinal block still makes me cringe with fear. If I weren’t so
busy with my new abilities, I could drive myself crazy with dread of the
possibility of another spinal block somewhere down the road. How asinine is
that? To quote a wonderful source of wisdom: “Sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof.”
How moronic is unreasonable fear? I don’t know. I
just know that when it comes to contemplating a spinal block, I must be an
absolute moron. I guess I’ll have to keep in mind that the things we
sometimes fear the most never come to pass. In my case, even if someday I
must repeat the spinal block thing without benefit of the amnesia-inducing
drug, I can get through it. To paraphrase a quote from one of our
illustrious presidents: We have nothing to fear but fear, itself.
Barbara Elliott Carpenter
www.barbaraelliottcarpenter.com
bjlogger2@aol.com
Author of two novels, Starlight, Starbright… and
Wish I May, Wish I Might… Carpenter continues to work on the third
book of the series, The Wish I Wish Tonight. She contributes to many
online publications, both fiction and non-fiction; and three of her articles
have appeared on a site that reaches over 150,000 computers daily. Excerpts
from both novels, as well as links to a toll-free order number and online
booksellers, can be seen on her web site. Readers can access http://heartswithsoul.com/book_starlight.htm
to post a comment or review of the novels. |
