Exam weekend came and went. Throughout the exam, the 300 people taking it were herded like cattle throughout the campus of Red Deer College. We would wait in one room, get taken to another, wait there, do our tests, and wait in yet another room for the marks. Thankfully we were given our practical exam marks about an hour after the practical portion of the exam, but for the written, we must wait, up to 6 weeks.
My written exam results arrived in 4 weeks. I'd wait patiently by the mailbox nearly every day, anxious to find out if I had to return to Red Deer to re-write the exam. The tension built with every passing day, and every day for 4 weeks nothing arrived. My waiting finally paid off on a sunny Wednesday morning. A large envelope from the Alberta College of Paramedics arrived. As I frantically leafed through the papers enclosed, one said “Written – 82%”. I had passed. I jumped up and down for joy, I was happier then I had been in a very long time.
By the time my results from the ACP exams came back, it was almost time for me to go back to school. The new school year was going to bring a new challenge, namely, living on my own. I'd always been rather self sufficient, but this was a big step. I was going to be living in a new place, all by myself. As much of a dream as this had been, the closer it came, the scarier it was.
I had been living there for a few weeks when I decided to have a housewarming party. My housewarming was a small gathering of friends, good food and a lot of alcohol. Everybody was happy, and slowly as the night wore on, people started to part ways. Eventually, there were only 3 of us, and that was when I did arguably the dumbest thing I'd done in my adult life.
It started innocently enough, tickling here and there (and I was young and naïve). As it progressed, there were a few chocolate easter eggs being tossed about (it was September at the time, they were leftovers). One of the parties to this exchange of chocolate artillery had to use the washroom, and thats when it hit me. Well, not really hit me, rather, landed in my lap and put her tongue halfway down my throat. Apparently somebody had taken a liking to me. As my other friend returned from the bathroom, we threw a few more eggs, and then he decided that he needed to go home. From that point on, I was left alone with her. By early morning, she had me wrapped around her finger, and I loved it.
My life carried on, with, of course, an extra addition. We were together all the time, spending most of our time in my place. It was wonderful. I was in love, I had my own place to go and nobody to answer to. I hadn't felt this happy in a very long time. I knew something had to change. I received the phone call that changed my life.
It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday when my mother called. My female companion was asleep in the bedroom, I was up watching football. “You got a surgery date” she said. I was thrilled. For years I'd lived with what was dubbed “Man-boobs”. A pair of B-Cup sized lumps of tissue on my chest. I was on a waiting list for surgery for 4 years, and finally the day came that I could have these terrible things taken off.
I had to wait until November to go to Calgary to have the surgery, but I began counting down the days. She was happy for me, I was overjoyed. This was going to be the best year I'd ever had. I'd done something with my life, I had a meaningful relationship and I was getting rid of these things. Living with them was unbearable, never taking off my shirt in public, always trying to conceal it beneath a jacket or vest. Anytime they were slightly noticeable, I wanted to curl up and die. It was all about to change, I thought, it's going to get better.
I boarded a plane on a November morning. I was on my way, soon I'd land in Calgary for the 2 days I had with my parents pre-surgery. I'd spent time visiting with my parents, talking about the days to come and mentally preparing myself. I was shaking with excitement, but apprehensive about what lie ahead. “What is it going to look like?”, “Will it hurt?”, “Will she still love me?”. The thoughts were circling through my head like vultures, until finally, the morning came.
We set out early in the morning to go to the hospital. I registered, and began my long wait. There was a room at the end of the hall, a TV, some books a few garden plants. I sat in one of the comfortable chairs there and tried to put my mind at ease. “What are you in for?”, one of the other patients asked. “Chest surgery”, I replied, thinking thoughts of being in prison. I had to stop myself from saying “Murder, you?”. We struck up an awkward conversation, discussing deep philosophical issues becomes rather difficult while wearing a hospital gown. The other patient noted that my gown was a size too small for me, and that I had just given the nurse a private chippendale show.
The nurse that I had just flashed was on her way to tell me that they were ready for me on the fifth floor. The walk to the elevators was long (and drafty). It seemed to take forever for the elevator to arrive, and even longer for it to go up two floors. Had I have not been barefoot, with my posterior poking out of a thin piece of cloth, I would have taken the stairs. Eventually the elevator did make it to the fifth floor, and I was ushered to yet another waiting area. “It won't be long” the nurse said. After fifteen minutes of terror, I was escorted by my surgeon into an office, for him to take pictures of the before, and mark my chest with that ominous blue pen. It felt like a scalpel cutting into me as he started to draw a series of lines, lines that resembled some form of battlefield.
“Well, lets get started” he said, motioning towards a hospital bed parked outside the office. A nurse helped me up onto the bed, and yet another member of the hospital staff was treated to a show courtesy of the ill-fitting gown. “Are you ready?” she asked. “Can you be ready for this sort of thing?” I replied. “Well, as long as you aren't trying to run off” she said. “I'd get arrested for indecent exposure the second I left the ward” I joked, she simply laughed and continued to push me towards the operating room.
“Are you comfortable” the anesthesiologist asked. “With any luck, I'll be asleep for the whole thing doc, so I don't think it matters much now”, I replied with a smile. He laughed and began asking me a few questions. “I see here on your file you have a very strong tolerance for medication” he said. “For the most part I require somewhere between a horse and hippopotamus sized dose for anything” I said, laughing. “Well, you will be a challenge” he said, motioning for a nurse to come and stick me with an IV line. “Are you afraid of needles?” asked the nurse, prepping my hand with rubbing alcohol. “Can't say as I am” I said, looking down at my hand. “You'll feel a pinch now” she said, sticking the needle in my hand. I had never been afraid of being poked or prodded, and I figured this would be nothing compared to the pain I'd have ahead of me.
“Your arm is going to feel a little bit funny, then you'll get a warm sensation up through your body, and then next thing you know, you'll wake up in recovery” the nurse said. I slowly started to feel it flowing through my veins. I wondered if this was what death felt like. A warmth slowly started in my arm, flowing down to my feet, then through my stomach, up towards my chest, and it stopped there. I couldn't move, but I could still talk, and I sensed something was wrong. I opened my eyes, and looked down to see what had happened, but instead of being in a post operative ward, I was looking at a number of confused nurses. “We'll have to give him another dose” the anesthesiologist said. Once again, the warmness started, but this time it went up through my chest, up my neck, and then everything went black.
When I woke up, there were alarms going somewhere beside me. I looked at the pulse oximeter (the tool used to measure blood oxygen levels) and saw that whoever was hooked up to that one was in serious trouble, they were only at 74%, when they should be at 95%+. As I started to gain my presence of mind, I realized that the machine was hooked up to me, and that I wasn't breathing. At that moment, I figured it would be a good idea to do so. As I started breathing, the numbers started coming up, and the nurse placed an oxygen tube in my nose to keep my levels normal.
I woke up again, this time in a private room with my mother by my side. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Pain” I said. This time when I woke up, I was in pure agony. “LOTS OF PAIN!!!!!!!” I said, in my loudest whisper, because that was about all I could muster. Once again, I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up again, there was the anesthesiologist standing beside me, asking me how my pain was. At first I was going to say “oh, what pain”, and then it hit me. “I'd rate it a fourteen out of ten doc”, I moaned. “I'll give you some morphine” he said, reaching for a vial in his coat. “Start him off with 10mg, and then put another 25mg in the bag, he's going to need it” he said to the nurse. As the nurse started to inject the morphine into my IV, I passed out again.
When I woke up for the third time, I saw that my morphine bag was empty, and I realized I was still in agony. The nurse in my room called to have the doctor come back to look at me, and seemed very confused when I told him that the pain was still there, and still as bad as it was before. “Well, I've got something a bit stronger for you” he said, once again reaching into his jacket. “This is called Fentanyl, it's ten times more potent then morphine, and it should help with your pain” he said to me, as he drew up a small dose. “As long as it works doc, I don't care what I get” I said. He injected the contents of the syringe into the IV line, and asked me to count backwards from twenty five. When I reached number one, he seemed very puzzled, and called for two other doctors. After a brief conference outside my room, the anesthesiologist said “We are going to give you a drug called Ketamine, it's very potent and you will probably have some hallucinations, are you okay with that?” he asked me, in a concerned tone. “If it takes the pain away, I don't care if I'm peeing blue for a week” I joked. He drew up a small dose in yet another syringe and pushed the contents into the IV. Once again he asked me to count backwards from twenty five, and this time I got to about twenty fi.....
I woke up again, in what seemed to be a different room. Little did I know how much effect these drugs would have. I began talking to the first thing that struck up a conversation with me, the lamp. Now, I talk to inanimate objects on a regular basis, but this was the first time that any of them had started talking back to me. While I was hallucinating (and quite enjoying it), my mother was in the room, quite amused with all of this. There he was, her psychology student son talking to lamps and IV poles. After a brief discussion with a chair, I drifted off to sleep again.
I woke up once again, this time with a clearer head. My chest was hurting, but it was bearable. I was queasy and a bit shaky on my feet, but the doctor determined I was okay to go home. I piled my sorry corpse into a wheelchair and made my way to the car with my mother. I needed to make a brief stop in the restroom on the ground floor to allow my stomach to have its say in the matter. After all was said, done and thrown up, I proceeded to my mothers car.
I laid on the couch for two days after surgery, feeling significant pain, and having to drain fluid from two small tubes coming from my chest. Every six hours I had to empty these small blood sacs. By day four, my right side had stopped draining fluid and I could have this strange looking device removed from my chest. In order to do so, I had to go back to the hospital to see the surgeon. He looked at both of them, said that the right side was ready to come out, but the left would need another four to five days. He took a small set of scissors and cut the stitches and said to me “You'll have to do the next one at home, so all you have to do is cut and remove the stitches, grasp the tube firmly and give it a gentle pull until all of it comes out”. As he was pulling on it, I saw more and more tubing coming out, and I began to wonder if the tip of this was the strange discomfort I'd felt in my knee. Six inches of tubing came out, and he said “there you go, leave the other side in for another four or five days, and you'll be on your way”. I thanked him, re-bandaged the incisions and went on my merry way.
The day after I saw the surgeon, I had a flight booked back to Regina from Calgary. I said goodbye to my parents, and disappeared through airport security, on my way to board the aircraft. I still wasn't feeling totally well, but I figured I was well enough to fly home, because I was beginning to miss the woman I'd been dating. She was supposed to pick me up at the airport, take me home, and take care of me.
After I got off the plane, and she helped me with my luggage, as I was not supposed to carry anything for the next two weeks, and we got into her car and we drove home. When we got inside, she said “I have a surprise for you”, and handed me a teddy bear holding a small box....
And so ends Part 2. Stay tuned for part 3.
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