Last summer I went into the hospital for a minor back surgery. I checked with at least 3 different doctors before being cleared for surgery because I’m on the heavier side (280). I was cleared all good to go. I was have had multiple surgeries before ranging from minor to major, I’ve never had second thoughts about them, all having gone smoothly. For some reason this time around I was having panic attacks days up to the surgery with intense feelings of dread and impending doom.
The day of the surgery I started going through the normal procedures of checking in. Phlebotomist couldn’t locate my vein and they had to use some machine to find them and then a long rod to poke around in my arm to get the IV in. The nurses seemed more aggressive than usual as I was telling them I didn’t know if I wanted to go through with it. The family members who came with me where no where to be found. Everything just seemed wrong. As they’re wheeling me to the OR after being given Ativan I started sobbing telling them I didn’t want to go. The nurse held my face and smiled and told me everything was going to be okay…..
I woke up to bright lights and a team of doctors all around me. My body felt like it was on fire. I started screaming because of the pain and because I was scared. My hearing focused and the doctor yelled at me telling me I needed to move my arms because they needed to do an emergency chest X-Ray. Someone came in and flooded my IV with morphine. Because I went in for back surgery I was expecting to wake up to back pain but that’s just it, my back was the only thing no hurting. I was in an extreme haze when another doctor got mad at the nurse who gave me morphine and said “we didn’t even preform the surgery.”
I was shocked and still out of it from waking up less than a minute before and I started yelling,” what why? Why wouldn’t you do the surgery if I went under.”Turns out immediately after they gave me the anesthetics my vitals tanked. I had an allergic reaction to the fucking anesthetics. I experienced what I learned is called Malignant Hypothermia. Basically a full body Charlie horse. The doctor who came in said my lungs wouldn’t expand so they couldn’t get air into me and they couldn’t preform surgery. The anesthesiologist came and sat with my family and I and cried. He said the only reason I survived that he could think of is because I’m a young adult at a perfect in between age. If I had been a few years younger or older he said he doesn’t think they would have been able to get me to come back. I didn’t understand what they were saying to me until my grandma looked me in the eyes and spelled it out for me “You’re not supposed to be here. You almost died.”
I didn’t feel the same for months after that, My brain felt like it was filled with bees. Im fucking terrified of sleeping now. Every night I go through those events. I couldn’t died in my sleep. The thing that terrifies me the most about what happened is that you literally can’t dream on anesthesia so I wouldn’t have even known anything happened. It would’ve just been the void for forever.