Apparently, I try to extubate myself when I wake from surgery with a breathing tube still in. Why do I wake up with the breathing tube still? That’s a good question that I’d like to ask of the doctor who decided during my second surgery to leave the breathing tube in for 22 hours longer than I needed it. I was breathing on my own, the machines clearly showed that, and the longer they kept the tube in, the less likely it was I would come off the tube.

We almost felt like it was punitive because they were forced to do the surgery and didn’t want to. This was my ankle surgery. I had fallen and completely shattered part of my foot, my ankle, and fractured my leg in two places. I kept telling the doctor my leg hurt in this one spot and they ignored me, then apologized later when the X-rays showed it was indeed fractured, but they didn’t do anything to it during surgery because they didn’t know about it.

I’ve seen so many mistakes in all the medical stuff I’ve had to deal with. I realize that doctors are only human and that mistakes do happen, but some of these mistakes could be deadly. Keeping me on a breathing tube longer than I needed to be when not coming off the tube is risky for me, well, that wasn’t a mistake — that was a dumbass thing to do. He was a dumbass doctor.

We requested medical records because I wanted to know the name of the person who tortured me like this. And it was torture to not only leave me on a breathing tube but to keep me in restraints without sedation for 22 hours….it was agonizing.

And that scares me because if I have the PTE surgery I’m planning on having *If I qualify*, then I’ll have to be on a breathing tube and moderately sedated, only for several days, and if I can’t get off the tube soon enough, they’ll do a trach. The thought of all of that is terrifying to me. I’ve been through it before without meaning to go through it, but to do it on purpose seems crazy to me.

Back to the second surgery. I woke up alone this time, no Lynn hanging over my face to comfort me. It was not visiting hours, and they would not allow anyone in when it wasn’t visiting hours. The other ICU didn’t have visiting hours. Family was allowed 24/7 over there. But this was the PACU, and it was the post-surgical waiting area until you could be moved into a regular room. They had strict visiting hours, and they limited it to two visitors at a time, so my family had to alternate coming in to visit me.

I remember every bit of this experience. They woke me up enough, and I spent 22 hours on the tube after surgery, with about 9 or 10 of those hours fully aware and awake. Lynn was finally able to convince the PACU doctor to extubate me when she looked at the machine and said, “She’s breathing on her own, isn’t she?”

He said, “Yes, she is, but Dr. so and so said not to extubate her until he got back…” we’re still not sure why or where he was, and I will never forgive him for this — I’m sorry, but he tortured me for no reason. When we tried to contact him through his assistant, she was rude and condescending to us.

Once I was extubated — it felt fantastic to take that big deep breath once the tube is out — they refused to let me eat. Now understand, I had not eaten anything and had had only small amounts of water for the past three days. I asked for Chloraseptic, something that was given to me by the ICU after another intubation surgery, but it was refused to me after this one by the condescending assistant. She said it might numb my throat, and I could damage it when I ate. Damage it with what? The food you won’t let me eat?

They finally brought me a plate with three bowls of different flavored jello on it, red, yellow, and green. I don’t care for the green, but I ate all three, greedily and hungrily. But I’ll tell you, that old joke ‘There’s always room for jelllo’ is true in that it doesn’t fill you up. I wanted to be put into a regular room so bad, I couldn’t see straight. I begged them to move me. The assistant came in and said, “We’re not moving you tonight. Maybe tomorrow,” and then she walked out without even waiting for me to say anything. She probably knew what was going to happen anyway, so why wait around for my complaints?

Finally, my lung doctor was allowed in to see me. My lung doctor, who has privileges at the hospital, was not allowed to see me outside of visiting hours and was not afforded professional courtesy. I told him about the tube and the food and the rest of it. He set his resident/assistant up at a computer, they found me a room, assigned me to it, and he got me the hell out of dodge, fast. They moved me within half an hour. I will never go through Dunn tower at Methodist Hospital if I can avoid it. The PACU there has unreasonable rules about visitation where they lock the doors and even your doctors aren’t allowed in to see you if they aren’t staff doctors for that procedure or surgery. I can’t believe they locked my lung doctor out.

But I feel like he saved me from future torture. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to stay there any longer. It was sheer agony.

I had another surgery after that, where they worked on my ankle to remove the external fixator. That one I woke up from without the tube and did just fine. I woke up groggy and felt fantastic with no pain (I had been in a lot of pain before that surgery). So I don’t know what the differences are.

It makes me think about this surgery that’s coming up on my lungs…. I have a long road to go and I know for three days minimum I would have to be on the breathing tube, sometimes longer. I know I can handle it, but I wish I didn’t have to. It’s scary.

i’ll know more on December 9th and will definitely update everyone then.

Love and stuff,

Michy