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 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
"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 one, 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, one of the attending physician's 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 it.
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 saw 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. 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 drives me crazy. If the pain of the spinal block was bad enough that the anesthetist gave me Versaid 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? 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 am an absolute moron. I 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. As the revered English Prime Minister once said: "All we have to fear is fear, itself."
Barbara Elliott Carpenter
Author of two novels, Starlight, Starbright... and Wish I May, Wish I Might...Barbara 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.
