Getting Poked
I like a good poke every now and then but this past week was a little much.
You might have noticed that I was conspicuously absent from my regular Sunday night gibberish last week. It’s the first time I haven’t shared a Sunday story in about five years- and for good reason.
I was trying to die.
As many of know, my son and new daughter-in-law got married at our house last Saturday night- it was a beautiful wedding. But that’s not what was killing me.
I had been having some chest pain and shortness of breath for a few months that suddenly took a turn for the worse on Sunday. And by Sunday night, well
I was feeling worse than a coon that’s been eating stink weed.
After taking one look at me Monday morning, my lovely (and compassionate) wife told me to get my butt in the car.
“You’re not dying in my house,” she said. “I just got new rugs.”
So off to the doctor I went. He took one look at me and said, “Boy, you look sicker than a coon that’s been eating stink weed. I’m putting you in the hospital.”
After signing about 300 different forms in the ER (I swear one of ‘em probably had me agreeing to donate my organs to the hospital to sell for a profit), they wheeled me into my room.
Now, I don’t know the last time you were in the hospital, but one thing they sure like to do is poke you.
Not with their fingers. No, with needles. All kinds of needles. Big ones, little ones, long ones, short ones.
If the nurse sees a nice pristine patch of skin anywhere on your body, she is going to stick a needle in it just in to show you who’s boss.
The first poke is always the IV.
I don’t care what you go to the hospital for, you’re going to get an IV. You can just be running in there to get a Coke from the vending machine and somebody will tackle you and stick and IV in your arm.
Just in case you need ‘fluids.’
That’s why I was getting the Coke. I needed fluids.
I got settled in my bed. It had not one but two of those ‘potty pads’ on top of the sheets. The kind you use to house break puppies. I guess I looked like I wasn’t house broken.
I hadn’t been under the covers ten seconds when Nurse Jackie burst through the door and announced it was time for my IV.
Jackie wasn’t her real name. Or maybe it was. I was a little delirious from nausea at the moment. Maybe that’s why I had two puppy pads under me.
Trailing behind Nurse Jackie was a young women wearing a white outfit and name tag declaring that she was a student nurse.
That didn’t bother me. The entire nursing class at South Georgia Tech had seen my bare ass in the 80’s. So what if I gave nightmares to another impressionable young mind.
Nurse Jackie pulled a plastic bag full of hoses and needles and other stabbing paraphernalia and laid it on the bed beside me. Then she got real serious and looked me in the eye.
“Mr. Lovett, this here is my student and she is learning how to insert IV’s. Would you mind if she practiced on you?”
Practiced? Practiced?
Hold up there, sister. I don’t want anybody sticking a big bore needle into my arteries who is just ‘practicing.’ For that kind of thing, I want somebody who knows the difference between a vein and a nerve so I don’t become paralyzed from the neck down while she’s rooting around in there trying to find the right spot.
I was in a tough spot. The moment Nurse Jackie asked if her student could poke me, the room went deathly silent.
My wife, my pastor, Nurse Jackie and the nursing student all stared at me in complete silence, waiting for my answer.
I felt like a rat trapped in a corner.
If I said no, I was a jerk. The student was standing right there looking at me with her big doughy eyes. Would she burst into tears and run out of the room if I declined to allow myself to be a practice dummy for her needling skills?
But if I said yes and she botched it, that would mean Nurse Jackie would have to take over and I was a little afraid of what she may do.
I’m pretty sure her method of inserting an IV is preceded with the words ‘brace yourself’ followed by a lot of screaming.
So, I gave into the pressure and said yes. I would be a Guinea pig.
Poke away.
It took the young girl a couple of tries but she got the needle in my vein before I bled out and all was well in the world.
At least until the other people started arriving with their needles.
Another nurse came in to draw blood for a heart enzyme test. That came from the top of my left hand.
Then another one came in to get blood for some other test I couldn’t pronounce. That came from the inside of my right elbow.
After she left, I thought I might finally have a little peace and quiet so I could play with the up and down controls for the bed and see what was on the TV.
Nope. Just as I settled back for a little adolescent fun, the door to my room swings open and in comes two ladies from the Respiratory Therapy Department.
I figured they were there to get me to blow into one of those things with the ping pong ball in it.
Wrong again.
“We’re here to do your blood ox test,” one of them said.
“Can you come back later,” I replied. “I need more time to study.”
Even on death’s door, I’m still a smart ass.
They laughed. And then one of them pulled out a syringe with a needle that looked like the thing you use to inject marinade into your Thanksgiving Turkey.
“Wait. You’re going to stick me with that.”
“Afraid so.”
She didn’t seem very sorry as she pulled out a tourniquet and deftly tied off my left arm.
I didn’t know what a blood ox test was but it didn’t look like much fun. I was right.
While the other women held my free hand and told me ‘this may sting a little’ the other woman took that turkey needle and stuck it laterally into my wrist and kept pushing. It felt like the tip of that needle made it all the way to my elbow before she stopped.
I realized why there were two of them. The woman holding my hand wasn’t there just to distract me from the torture being practiced upon me by her colleague but also to make sure when that huge pipe went up my arm, I didn’t haul off and slap the wig right off her friend’s head.
After sucking some blood from my arm pit, she withdrew the needle and I actually saw blood ‘spurt’ from the hole in rhythm with my heartbeat.
She had stuck that turkey baster into my dang artery.
If I wasn’t weak from blood loss, I would have probably punched her right in the mouth.
After they left, I tried to sleep, but my slumber didn’t last long.
A young woman came in to get another blood sample. Seeing all of the bandages already stuck on my arms, it took a few minutes for her to decide where to poke me.
She finally decided on a spot in the top of my right hand.
Another bandaid.
Hopefully that would be the end of the poking.
Not so fast.
I was playing with the controls for my bed, raising my head and then my feet- generally driving my wife crazy- when some dude came into my room. He had a big smile on his face like he was there to announce that Salma Hayek would be by later to give me a sponge bath.
Instead, he had another shot. But not just any shot. Oh no. This was a special one. This shot was to help keep my blood thin and it went into my stomach.
My stomach?
Had I somehow contracted rabies? I wasn’t foaming at the mouth or howling at the moon
That happy dude pulled up my shirt and jammed that shot into my stomach like he was Buzz Aldin planting the flag on the moon.
Over the next three days, I had my blood taken four more times for ‘tests’, had some kind of dye injected into my arm for a CT scan and had two more of those ‘happy’ shots in my stomach.
I had so many bandaids on my arms, I could have walked out of there and gone trick-or-treating as the Mummy.
I’m home now and a little afraid to drink anything. I keep imagining that as soon as I do, I’ll spring leaks like Yosemite Sam in one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoon.
So if you ever have to go to the hospital, let this be a warning to you.
If you don’t like needles, just stay home and die in the peace and quiet of your own home.
And if somebody comes at you with a turkey injector, grab your giblets and run. Run like hell.
