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Modern Surgery and Patriarchy

Bint Alshamsa

Right now, JusticeWalks has a post on her blog called “Anxiety” where she discusses her feelings about an upcoming procedure she will be undergoing. In it, she makes a connection between the body trauma associated with surgeries and the experiences of those women of color from our past who have suffered under patriarchal systems. She writes,

I am concerned about people having access to my unconscious body – seeing it, touching it, judging it – when I am totally unable to defend myself against insult or violation, unable to cover my burns or hide my disfigured hands and feet, unable to speak back in my voice, which has always obscured my hurt, but which has always gotten the more important point across, whatever it was at the time. I am pretty sure I will be menstruating when I have the procedure, and I am especially concerned about people having access to my unconscious, menstruating body.

However, what really struck me was where she wrote,

It almost seems like blasphemy, for me, with my protections of intellect and eloquence outside of these finite circumstances and barring trauma, to feel so haunted by the thought of spending a few hours of my life as vulnerable and exposed as some women spend their entire lives.

That really hit home for me. It made me consider something that I have only discussed with less than a handful of people in my life. Every time I am anesthetized, I wake up feeling raped. On the one hand, I know that I’ve agreed to the procedure, but that doesn’t erase the body trauma that I feel knowing that I have been handled, examined, cut, and penetrated—all while I was completely out of control and unable to withdraw my consent. I remember when I woke up from my third surgery and there was a catheter that had been inserted into me. I suppose I should have realized they would do this but I do not like the fact that, when explaining the upcoming procedure on my back, my chest and my neck, nobody mentioned the fact that I my vagina would be partially shaved and penetrated. To me, that just seems like something that should be specifically pointed out prior to any surgery where this might take place. I mean, should we just EXPECT to be penetrated while we’re unconscious? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over that. Even though I will be eternally grateful for how they saved my life, I still can’t help but think about it all.

My first surgery was performed by a black, female surgeon. That procedure didn’t leave me feeling quite as bad as the third surgery would later on. I wonder if the differences in my reactions were related to the fact that I knew that it would be a woman cutting and penetrating my body, a woman of color, just like me.

28 thoughts on Modern Surgery and Patriarchy

  1. I’ve had a similar feeling two out of the three times I’ve been under general. On the one hand I’m a white male, on the other I’ve got a history of physical and sexual abuse. I suppose maybe the latter overcomes the former. For me, the issue has always been letting go of control. I can remember several points in my life when I simply decided that I wouldn’t ever be subjected to some things again, when I decided that whatever the costs were of defending myself they would be less than the costs of not. Giving someone access to my body when I can’t defend myself, when I’m stripped of my sharp tongue, when my 280 pounds can’t help me any more than my 80 did as a child, its exactly the kind of submission I’ve worked my whole life trying to avoid. Worse is that doctors behave in a way that only aggravates matters. They tell you its for your own good, they assume you don’t understand whats going on, they don’t bother to fill you in on the details, and they always take just a little bit more than they’ve been given. Its the attitude of doctors, the feeling that you can’t always explain but thats always there, the impression that they have all the power and they don’t see any reason to hide it.

  2. I have a hierarchy of types of providers I would prefer when dealing with my body especially when it comes to things like surgery when I will have no awareness of the procedure. It is less a fear of something happening and more an intense discomfort with my body in general. Other trans women are at the top of the list because while they may not have the same exeperiences, I am a bit more confident they will respect my body. I do not worry to much about being denied medical treatment in an emergency but the thought of people having access to my body without my knowledge, scares me. With bottom surgery I kind of want to go to Marci Bowers, a trans woman because of the aforementioned reasons plus just a more intimate understanding of issue. Wish there were more trans surgeons and doctors.

    Hah sorry if I went off topic.

  3. The catheter penetrated your urethra, not your vagina. Although in a strange way, I suppose that just makes it “worse”: even more invasive. I always feel very helpless being put under anesthetic, and I’m sensitive to anesthesia (which means they have to use a special “lighter” drug because the standard drugs could “put me to sleep” in the way we use that expression for dogs and cats)… so I go under knowing they could very well kill me, even if they don’t mean to, because of my body’s stupid sensitivity to these drugs. It might be for that reason that, when I come up out of it, I am usually ecstatic, overjoyed, and really happy to see my loved ones. Surgery is dangerous business, we only ever do it if we really, really have to (or should!), and we should, I think, just be grateful to get out of it in one piece.

  4. William, thank you so much for being willing to identify yourself as a fellow survivor of physical and sexual abuse. I couldn’t help but feel very connected to what you wrote, especially about being stripped of your sharp tongue. I was always a very skinny kid; I didn’t weigh over a hundred pounds until high school. The best I’ve ever been able to do is give voice to my experiences and speak out about what I went through when I was unable to protect myself from abusers. To have that taken away from me, even temporarily, is/was difficult to deal with. After my first surgery, my family came in to see me and I was still to drugged up to get my mouth to formulate the words I wanted to say. However, I was able to purse my lips together to blow kisses. It was a great relief just to be able to communicate in some way.

  5. Nicole,

    Of course it wasn’t off topic! My feeling is that disability issues and transgender issues often go hand in hand. All of us who have bodies that do not conform to societal expectations/norms have extra reasons to be wary when it comes to who will provide our health care.

  6. When I had to have surgery to have my (cancerous) thyroid removed last year, the number of people who told me that it was SO TERRIBLE AND AWFUL that I was going to have a scar that curved across my neck, just above the hollow in my throat. Because, of course, I was just so BEAUTIFUL and to have that HORRIBLE scar there it was TERRIBLE!!!11eleventy
    Me? I am thrilled to have the fucking thing out of my body! It was CANCEROUS. Metastasizing thyroid cancers tend to go places like the brain and kill you, but they found mine early and got it out while it was still totally contained. In my opinion, having an ugly scar but being alive and healthy is much better having cancer that could spread to my brain. Also, my pre-surgery goiter wasn’t horrible-looking?
    But no, of course not. I’m a young woman with conventionally attractive looks. Therefore visible scars = TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!!
    Then, of course, are the people who are just SHOCKED that I don’t wear high-necked shirts, put makeup over the scar or cover it with some jewelry or something (a choker would cover it). I’m sorry, it’s still-healing scar tissue. It itches. I’m not covering it with scratchy cloth or leather or metal! And I’m certainly not putting makeup over it (especially when I don’t put makeup anywhere else on my body)!
    I don’t feel the need to hide my scar. It is part of who I am now. I had a close shave (literally!) but I’m okay now.
    As for the other part of the post, re the surgery itself, I completely agree. When I woke up and was able to get up and about, I discovered blood all over my thighs. I panicked – my first thought was that I had been assaulted. Then I remembered that I was due to menstruate (also, menses has a different consistency than blood).
    But I had the same fear that William voiced: conscious, I would have at least been able to attempt to defend myself. Under general, I was totally defenseless. And a man (a nice man who I get along great with) would quite literally be slitting my throat. I was nervous. I was surrendering control of myself in the ultimate way – I would be unconscious, near-naked (hospital gowns don’t cover that much) and a bunch of strange people with knives would be standing over me. I had to force myself to not think about it.
    The thing that affects me today is that sometimes people will ask me if I was assaulted – they think that my scar is an aftereffect (from someone holding a knife on me. I’ve gotten this when I go to a DV shelter to donate money or volunteer or just walking down the street. I am not entirely sure what to make of this.

  7. I recently decided to let a complete stranger knock me out and cut a hole in my head and pull out a broken piece of my brain. ‘Course, I decided this while my brain was massively broken, and it was extremely likely that I would die within the space of a few months without surgical intervention. I didn’t have much chance to get anxious about it ahead of time (see what I said about massive brain breakage), but since my condition turned out to be completely different than anyone had guessed, I’ve got a whole lifetime left to regret and be creeped out by having done what turned out to be the wrong thing. A heavy course of steroids probably would have served me better than surgery. It’s almost 6 months later, and I’m facing the music of trying to resume my normal life, without any real rehab or warning of what the consequences of this kind of brain damage might be. I consented to the procedure, sure, but I wasn’t well-informed. My experience of surgeons is that they just aren’t interested in things they’re not currently or about to be cutting up. Sure, they let me convalesce for a week in the hospital, and after that, they just sent me on my way to my GP and a neurologist, apparently figuring that if I didn’t have the terminal brain cancer we thought I had, I was basically ok. After several weeks when I was brave enough to touch my head again, I learned that they had to cut through a nerve that serves sensation on my scalp, and though it’s improved over time, I now had no feeling in most of my scalp. Returning to work has been extremely difficult (not quite possible, really), and I’m feeling very abandoned and underserved by my doctors and especially the surgeons, who basically told me and my family there wouldn’t be any cognitive effects from the surgery (They were pretty wrong; I was a lot more with-it post-surgery, which brings up the difficulty of intervening on the medical condition of someone suffering at least moderate dementia).

    I know I tell this story a lot, but I’ve been Brain Surgeon Patient for about 6 months now, and it’s my entire world at the moment.

  8. I’ve never been in surgery or under anesthesia, but I feel like I can relate to the body trauma aspect to some degree… I absolutely will not go to a male doctor unless there are no females available (as was the case with my knee injury). Even then I couldn’t feel okay with him touching my legs, just because of my past sexual assualts from older men. I kept joking around the whole time because I was so nervous.

    I’m like that with female doctors, and my physical therapists too; I constantly keep talking while I’m around them, because when the assaults happened I felt muted and unable to talk. Talking is now my way of telling myself that I’m safe and in control.

    Bint, I cannot even imagine what it must be like to not have that, because of the anesthesia. You’re very brave. JusticeWalks is too.

  9. Thank you, Bint Alshamsa, for making me feel as though perhaps I wasn’t so blasphemous after all. It means a lot.

    And the surgery went well, by the way 🙂

  10. 15 kidney surgeries here. the part i hate the most is the goddamn plastic tube down my throat so i can breath while im under the general. waking up and feeling like im not me, im someone else, trying to bat the oxygen mask off my face cos the plastic smell is suffocating, but my arms are still weak like jello from the anesthesia. being naked except for those itchy hospital socks and thin rough blankets and only being able to look at the ceiling.

    there is a connection between my assaults/rapes and my surgeries. they connect in that place that reminds me my body is not mine. so i get tattoos and i mark my body how i choose to remind myself that yes, it is mine.

  11. I recently went under anesthesia for the first time to have my wisdom teeth removed. The days leading up to the surgery were torture. I already have problems handling anxiety when there is nothing to be afraid of. It was really hard to explain why I would get upset every time someone mentioned it. They usually assumed I was nervous about the pain. I eventually found the words to describe the feeling and my mom agreed to stay in the room with me until they were ready to operate. That helped, and also the fact that the male doctor had two female assistants.

    What concerns me is the fact that I’m nearing the age where I can’t avoid getting a pelvic exam anymore. Our family doctor is also a female Ob/Gyn whom I trust, and I’ve never been abused in any way before. But still, I can’t seem to get over the fear of violation. How am I supposed to resist fighting back when I’m fully awake? If the oral surgery bothered me so much psychologically, I can only imagine how traumatizing a pelvic exam will be.

  13. Worse yet is being told that you shouldn’t be worried, or that there’s something wrong with you if you are.

    I am a trans man, and in planning an upcoming surgery, I told my then mental health care provider (because, of course, I have to get psychiatric approval for a a procedure that my health insurance doesn’t even cover) that I had vague, but serious, concerns about being under general anesthesia, and that I would be interested in talking to her about strategies for combating anxiety.

    Her response? Oh, well, I don’t think I can write you a letter for surgery then.

    It’s helplessness all around. Helplessness while under anesthesia. Helplessness in having anxiety taken seriously. Helplessness in changing what needs to be changed—the whole structure of how our society looks at the body.

    At least we’re not alone.

  14. I am a trans man, and in planning an upcoming surgery, I told my then mental health care provider (because, of course, I have to get psychiatric approval for a a procedure that my health insurance doesn’t even cover) that I had vague, but serious, concerns about being under general anesthesia, and that I would be interested in talking to her about strategies for combating anxiety.

    Her response? Oh, well, I don’t think I can write you a letter for surgery then.

    Maybe its just that my professional ethics as a mental health provider run a little bit (and by that I mean a lot) towards the libertarian end of the spectrum, but I just simply cannot comprehend what would have lead your provider to even consider not writing you that letter because you voiced anxiety around the concept of being put under general. You’re right, it is ridiculous that you would even have to get a permission letter for a procedure like that. Beyond that, I don’t imagine many people wouldn’t have some anxiety around having any kind of surgery, much less life changing surgery, asking someone to be completely level and unafraid is asking more than most human beings are capable of. Your provider ought to be ashamed that she lost sight of what her job is, that she forgot her role isn’t to act as your parent but as a fresh set of eyes to look at your situation and help you gain more agency and insight.

    That, right there, is exactly where I think a big part of my discomfort with doctors comes from. The attitude that, no matter how old you get or how aware you are, you’ll always just be a child to them. You’re someone not worth filling in on the details, someone who needs to be cared for and lead, someone whose just too damn stupid/uneducated/emotional to understand whats going on around you. They know whats best and, one way or another, they’ll do what they believe is right (your will be damned). That attitude reminds me just a bit too much of abusers I’ve known (and those with the best of intentions have always been the worst) for me to ever be comfortable submitting.

  15. Oh, this post and comments packed a punch for me. I’ve had several surgeries within the last year, and I wondered if I was alone in feeling so vulnerable due to past sexual abuse, bullying, and years of silence. Although JusticeWalks and William put it so much more eloquently, being under anesthesia means that I lose my best weapon – my ability to verbally fight back, a skill which took me years and years to aquire. Are smart ass comments being made by the jaded doctors and nurses? Are they not moving me as gently as they could, once I’m out? Jessilikewhoa brought up the breathing tube – TWICE I’ve woken up with a fat lip from, I presume, the tube pinching my lip against my teeth, which makes me wonder exactly how much care is being taken.

    Bint, I had the same feelings as you regarding the catheter. I kind of expected it for one long surgery I had, but not for other shorter ones. My surgeon did not explain everything that was going to occur (including the catheter), or especially what the after-effects of the surgery would be. (Large parts of my back, sides, and underarms are now numb.) He’s a very good surgeon, but he always comes across as SO busy, and it’s like I have to really stand my ground to get all the information out of him. I know I should’ve done research on my own on the web, but the time between diagnosis and surgery was very fast, and there was a lot I had to get in order, quickly.

    With my last surgery, I actually asked the anesthesiologist about what Orientalista brought up, regarding the pelvic exams. I knew that it happened, and I didn’t want it to happen to me. He was, thankfully, rather horrified by it and reassured me that it wouldn’t. I was sad that I had to ask.

    Bint, if you have to have any more surgeries, I hope that you’re able to go to the black, female doctor you felt safer with. You deserve it. JusticeWalks, I’m very glad to hear that it went well. And Sara? I know what you mean about it being your whole world at the moment. Wow, do I ever.

  16. This is compelling to me as a woman and as a medical student. I was very upset by the recent incident (discussed on here with lots of fireworks) of the surgeon putting the temporary tattoo near a woman’s genitals during an operation. When I discussed it with one of the members of our orthopedic surgery interest groups, I was horrified by his response.

    Now, this guy is a tool. I am not saying he represents every future surgeon (*ahem*) and he certainly does not represent every medical student. He has already horrified me by saying poor women should be sterilized “for their own good” when they have multiple children and are on public support. He laughed about the tattoo incident, and then told me that there are lots of underground stories, including some really disturbing ones about surgeons carving their initials in various places, including on skulls and on other internal structures.

    I was sickened. I think informed consent is the most important, most sacred part of medicine. And I thought this was a big deal when we’re talking about therapeutic procedures. When it comes to these kinds of violations, I think this outlines a deeply unethical disregard for the doctor-patient relationship. I can see the correlation with rape, since there should be explicit consent to enter the body. The case of the temporary tattoo was easily a sexualized situation with the placement and the gender of the practitioner and patient. (Not to downplay victims of other gender). I would like to see how many of these incidents involve male surgeons, and how many involve female clients.

    I used to make fun of people who wanted to go into anesthesiology. It is a very competitive residency, but it is pretty well known that, for most people, this is due to the “lifestyle” benefits of the field. They say it is 99.5% utter boredom, standing and watching someone sleep, and .5% emergency. But, a classmate of mine whose daughter is applying for med school (they may be two generations of mothers in med school together – how awesome is that? My classmate is a grandmother) says she wants to go into anesthesiology. She told her mother that she wants to be the last person the patient sees before they go under, because when she was in that situation, she felt so terrified and helpless.

    Of course, I blame and condemn any surgeon or any health care practitioner who would do such crimes. But, I also condemn any other member of that surgery team who stands by as a witness. Where was the anesthesiologist when this was going on?

  17. I’m really glad you all wrote about this. I, too, hate dental anaesthesia, even when it’s localized. It seems to affect me systemically, so that I feel woozy and disoriented just as the dentist is pushing me out the door. Also, I hate that so many women have had nonconsensual episiotomies foisted on them in labor after they’ve had an epidural. I haven’t had any children yet, but I think I fear the incapacitation and helplessness of an epidural more than potential pain.

    My mom has had some terrible experiences with physicians. She remembers one dentist fondling her breasts when she was going under anesthesia. In another case, anesthesia was denied when it was needed–because she was poor, she says.

    I’m a graduate student in medical ethics, and I really want to help doctors make the connection between sexual trauma and the practice of medicine. If you physicians-in-training have any suggestions for me, I’d be grateful.

  18. When I had surgery a couple years back, they had to have a nurse hold my arm down because I was shaking so bad. I mean, they just lay you down, start sticking hands down your gown to put those sticky things on you (several of which they left on? Weird), and nobody explains anything. I woke up and nobody mentioned anything about care after the surgery. When I got home I called the hospital and they told me I needed visits from a home nurse and all these supplies that should have been provided from the hospital. But no one tells you shit! Luckily the home nurse was nice, she explained to me that when you go to a hospital out of (your) town/city they try and give you as few resources as possible so that you will have to get them from home or pay for them yourself. There is zero respect. I mean, had I not called the hospital–and let’s face it, there are lots of people who wouldn’t because they’d be uncomfortable or feel silly–I would have been facing a lot of pain, infection, and permanent damage.

    There is so much training, especially for women, to just trust the nice doctor. Trust the nice policeman. Trust the nice teacher. Trust the nice etc. After having a doctor get angry at me for being upset about the potential after effects of the surgery above (“Leaky Bucket Syndrome”. What 22 year old would not be upset at having “Leaky Bucket Syndrome” for the rest of her life?) because he “treats patients with CANCER.” After I dealt with that guy, refusing to have him perform the surgery after he got angry (again) at me wanting a second opinion, I basically said: Fuck this shit. Fuck not asking all the questions I’m thinking, even if they seem stupid and the doctor seems impatient, fuck not demanding to know what’s going to happen during tests and surgery, fuck not asking about MY treatment for MY body.

    It’s sad and it’s not right, but I feel like patients are in a position where we all need to say to ourselves: “I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to get healthy. SO LISTEN TO AND EXPLAIN TO AND RESPECT ME!

  19. Justicewalks,

    Actually, I really want to thank you because without your revelation, I’m sure this would all just be haunting memories that I held inside. I’m glad that your surgery went well, very glad.

  20. I wanted to point out that it is possible to get respectful medical treatment, it just isn’t easy. After going in for a minor operation and stating that I didn’t know if she could actually perform the procedure because I was too anxious to open my legs, my doctor responded, “You have a couple of choices. You can walk out, right now, and reschedule. We can walk through the steps of the procedure, but not actually do it. I can do the procedure, but ask your permission every step of the way. You can give your permission for the entire procedure and I can keep you informed every step of the way, with the understanding that if you tell me to stop, I will. I can give you medication to relieve the anxiety. What would you like?” I went with just being informed, and she showed me every tool before she used it, with a running patter that went something like, “This is (whatever), a blood clotter. I’m going to open the bottle and coat this Qtip. See, this is what it looks like. I’m going to put my hand on your left thigh now, to brace you. There. With my other hand, I’m going to swab the area. It’s going to sting for a few seconds after I do that. Are you ready?” I’ve since recommended her to several others.

    I do know from a friend that she does a detailed run-through of what the operation will entail before you go under, and I suspect that if I had to go under general, she would let me have a friend in the room to speak for me. Sort of a surgery doula…

    New question: are there surgery doulas?

  21. Every time I am anesthetized, I wake up feeling raped. On the one hand, I know that I’ve agreed to the procedure, but that doesn’t erase the body trauma that I feel knowing that I have been handled, examined, cut, and penetrated—all while I was completely out of control and unable to withdraw my consent.

    Yes, THAT. Bless your heart, bint, for expressing what I feel, yet have been unable to really articulate, about my experiences with surgery.

    And also? Dental procedures. Damned dentists just take over your mouth, put those dams in with your jaw stretched out, and again, cutting, blood, total loss of control. It’s no wonder I’ve not seen a dentist for ten years.

  22. I’m a graduate student in medical ethics, and I really want to help doctors make the connection between sexual trauma and the practice of medicine. If you physicians-in-training have any suggestions for me, I’d be grateful.

    Michelle, I’m not a physician in training, but I am working on a PsyD and professional ethics are an area of specific interest for me. I think the thing that a lot of professionals lose sight of is that they’re working with a patient, not a puzzle. We come from competitive fields, we’re among the intellectual elite, we have training that qualifies us to make the kinds of calls that the average person wouldn’t dream of making, and we see things that others don’t quite quickly. Its very easy to feel superior. One top of that, our average day consists of dealing with the worst parts of someone’s month/year/decade/life, and we need to give ourselves emotional distance if we want to avoid burning out.

    Think about that recipe: a sense of superiority and entitlement, incredible power, and emotional distance from those we treat. Couple that with the fact that our patients generally don’t want to see us, they literally have no other choice. Take away the fact that we’re talking about a medical procedure and you start to see the same themes that you see when someone discusses sexual abuse. Think about the little sayings, the mnemonics, the acronyms, the dark humor; a patient goes into a hospital or a doctor’s office already a little dehumanized, and no matter how good a doctor is some of that is going to be picked up by the patient.

    I guess for me one of the things that really hammered home why ethics were so important was a professor I had that described the process of therapy in a very different way. She cut out all of the euphemisms and jargon, and just laid the experience out. You’re having the worst day of your life and now someone is going to take away all of your defenses, ask you to tell them all of the things you keep secret in your daily life, and then they’re going to analyze that data. They’re going to drag you in front of all the things you’ve run away from, all the things so painful you’ve pushed them away will be out in the open, there will be no defense, and you must trust this person implicitly. You don’t hear descriptions like that a lot, doctors are constantly distanced. Take away their supports, push them out of their comfort zones, make them look at what they do in the worst possible light.

  23. The only real surgery I’ve ever had was getting my wisdom teeth removed two years ago. I didn’t feel raped when I woke up, but it was incredibly disorienting. I was in a different room than the one I had been put to sleep in. I didn’t know how I got there. I remember waking up and asking, “where am I?” but there was gauze in my mouth and no one got what I was saying. I was on a cot, not the operating chair. Did they pick me up? I don’t know. This is standard procedure at that office, my sister says the same thing happened with her. Both my sister and I weigh less than 150 lbs. Picking either one of us up would be fairly easy.
    Which makes me wonder…my procrastinating, 24-year-old, 220-lb boyfriend is going to need his wisdom teeth removed soon. He’d be a lot more difficult to move. Will they allow him to wake up in the room he went to sleep in?

    I don’t know. This wasn’t even my most traumatic medical experience. No, that would have been my orthodontist inserting sandpaper between my teeth and rubbing it up and down. Without asking permission. While I was obviously in pain. This was two years ago, and when I got out of that office I decided that I was never wearing the retainers he made me again, that I did not care if I was undoing eight years of work on my teeth, I was never associating with that man and his creations again. I was crying. I’m a survivor of rape and frankly, that experience was the closest I’ve ever mentally gotten to being back on my rapist’s couch after the fact. Especially since the orthodontist’s whole MO seemed to be, “you’ve been a bad girl forgetting to wear your retainers, you’ve given me no choice…” Even though I was eighteen and could damn do as I pleased, particularly when it came to people who had never shown me respect. The fucker.
    Sort of made me realize that if I ever have kids, I’m taking their complaints about ‘authority figures’ like doctors seriously. If my mother had listened to me say that my ortho was creepy and mean when I was ten, he’d’ve never had the ability to do that when I was eighteen. I’m looking into them, not dismissing them.

  24. i’ve been mostly lucky in all my surgeries. my latest set started well, i have a wonderful surgeon who, without promting, told me in explicite detail what he would be doing. too eplicite, really…

    but!! omg. the wound got infected, and i was re-hospitalized. and i have the worst veins known to humanity – in the 8 days i was hospitalized, i had 14 IVs. those are just the ones that WORKED – i had twice that many blow on insertion. so, before the first surgery to clean out the infection, the nurses couldn’t get an IV started. the anthesiologist came over to try. he grabbed my right hand and i told him that i had already had two IVs there in the past 24 hours blow, could he please look somewhere else. he got pissed and decided that i needed a central line. i said no i didn’t, a regular IV would work, it was a small surgery. he said “Hand or central line, or no surgery”. i’m lying there, been awake for over 40 hours, with possible MRSA on my hip (and maybe in the bone) and this fucker starts power trips. he throws a cloth over my head (and i’m crying, at this point, BEFORE he starts, which he ignores) he has two nurses hold me down, and doesn’t use a local, and yells at me every time i flinch or wiggle, won’t answer any questions, and just hurts me. i have PTSD, and my literal biggest trigger is being held immobalized like that. then the fucker can’t EVEN GET THE CENTRAL LINE TO WORK. he just walks off, leaving my head covered, and i have what is essentially a basic IV in my neck, while the rest of it does’t work right, and it infiltrated in 8 hours. i guess i’m lucky it lasted for the surgery.

    it still makes me cry. well, it was exactly 2 weeks ago, so i guess its okay to still cry. i’m waiting to find out how to file a formal complaint. i mean, who the hell does that? ignore that their patient is CRYING and yells at them for flinching in pain? especially when they are SUPPOSED to use locals for that sort of thing?

  25. Pingback: Scars « Tanglad

  26. This post really hit home for me… very unexpectedly. Thanks for articulating it. Women especially, feel very vulnerable about their bodies, if we’re not safe on the streets no wonder it goes against every instinct to be naked and unconcious with strangers.

  27. in the 8 days i was hospitalized, i had 14 IVs. those are just the ones that WORKED – i had twice that many blow on insertion. so, before the first surgery to clean out the infection, the nurses couldn’t get an IV started. the anthesiologist came over to try. he grabbed my right hand and i told him that i had already had two IVs there in the past 24 hours blow, could he please look somewhere else. he got pissed and decided that i needed a central line. i said no i didn’t, a regular IV would work, it was a small surgery.

    Well the anes handled this situation poorly, but I agree with his logic over yours. If your venous access is that poor/difficult, then at some point you need to consider a central line. I dont think its appropriate to stick somebody 20 times hoping for the elusive IV.

    My rule is this: Floor nurse gets 2 sticks. Best IV nurse on floor gets 2 sticks. ER nurse gets 2 sticks. Gas doc gets 2 sticks. If after 8 sticks you still cant get venous access, then its time for a central line, regardless of how “small” the surgery is. Its either that or postponing surgery.

  28. My veins are rather tiny and even some very experienced nurses just haven’t been able to gain access via my hands or the inside of my elbow. I’ve had a central line. I didn’t like it, of course, but then who does? Fortunately, it was done while I was under anesthesia. I was awake when it was removed and boy was that just the most unbelievably “uncomfortable” (that’s as mildly as I can honestly describe it) feeling in my neck!

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