Hi, friends!
I hope your Monday is going well.
Tonight’s topic is basically “what some random detail that you wish you’d known before a medical decision?”
This NOT is prompted because I recently had to get my IUD removed. If you don’t have a uterus or haven’t had an IUD, insertion is painful as fuck. It’s like having darts thrown at your cervix and it’s very unclear what is even causing the pain while it’s happening because it’s a lot of stabbing pain but nothing seems to actually be happening. Like yes, a speculum jammed up there and opened is uncomfortable and there’s some pinching pain at first, but not like the actual insertion process. Spoiler alert, some of that pain was due to the clamps needed to jam the cervix more open so the IUD can be inserted. Once that part is done, the doctor pulls on the strings to make it expand to the T shape, then they use tiny scissors to trim the strings.
Useful details that I wish I’d know 5 years ago when it was inserted? Don’t trim the strings too short. The new obgyn was like yeah I can’t see the strings, some docs like to cut them real short and they basically live up in your uterus. When that happens? Ope! Time to get one of those tiny spoolie brushes they use for a pap smear and shove it up there and fiddle around until the strings are found, then get the alligator clamps up there to grab them and yank. For comparison, this was only 1 painful sharp tug vs trying to deep breathe and not pass out during the insertion process 5 years ago.
OK, since we’re talking squidgy reproductive stuff, I think I should have known vasectomies weren’t so bad. When I finally bit the bullet, there were a couple of brief gnarly taps, sort of like what any guy who has played a sport like soccer or basketball has experienced, but it was over pretty quick. Recovery wasn’t too bad either.
I’ve had a couple of friends get vasectomies and all of them were like eh, not fun but also not that bad. Recovery seemed more uncomfortable than actual procedure, but also I feel like that’s most surgeries.
Yeah, basic dental procedure level stuff. Freed up my wife from a bunch, so fair’s fair.
I’ve had an appendectomy and a vasectomy, and recovery from the first was more difficult. I was pretty stunned with how easy the latter was.
I don’t take medical advice.
That’s a smart strategy because any rando on the internet can give advice!
@Hannibal, that’s the ticket!
I suffered from blunt force trauma to my hip (running with the stroller and a wheel got caught in the sidewalk). When the physical therapist starts using a vibrating wand on the problem area, run as fast as your crippled body can manage! She set me back months of work because she basically inflicted a thousand mini blunt force trauma injuries to the problem area. She knew she fucked up when I could barely hobble out of there (I had initially walked in fine but with pain). I’m so fucking timid that I kept on with her even after that assault.
Oh holy fuck that sounds so so painful.
I feel like suddenly everyone loves those massage percussion wands and then when I talk to people who use them, the experience is just so much pain.
Public Service Announcement: If you’re going to have general anesthesia surgery, and you are a recovering alcoholic or drug addict, there is an option besides morphine in the post-op recovery room. It’s IV Tylenol. Not Tylenol 3 with the codeine. Just Tylenol in an IV bag. When I woke up from my shoulder surgery my pain was at an 8. Thirty minutes later, my pain was at a 3 without any of the bullshit side effects.
Oh hot damn! That is really good to know, because I’d much rather have tylenol that hard stuff side effects. Thanks!
When my wife had surgery last year she quickly switched from the Sackler nonsense to the non-opiate acetominophine (sp?) stuff and found it better overall.
I kinda wish I had that. Maybe have saved me from suffering two miserable days of opiate withdrawal (it is as bad.)
Toradol (another high-dose NSAID)+ Tylenol is the combo that i ask for, any time I end up in the hospital recovering from surgery or with a broken bone.
As long as you can keep it *down* (had some problems with that, after my pancreas surgery!), it works really well, if you stay on top of your dosage times (staggering it a few hours before/after the Tylenol works FAR better than taking both at the same time!💖)–even if you’re just a person who doesn’t like opiates, because of the way those make you feel.
Granted, my pain scale is pretty abnormal–but when I chipped the heck out of my vertebrae a decade-ish ago, Toradol+Tylenol was all I needed, as I waited overnight in “observation” until they got my back brace made.
And after my distal pancreatectomy–when they opened me up from the bottom of my sternum to my belly button, I had an epidural for the first couple days, but the Toradol+Tylenol combo was what did most of my pain relief… and then I just popped Aleve after I was released from the hospital.
For me, it’s just an inability to tolerate the “loopy” feelings that opiates create–even as a little kid, post ear-surgeries, I hated the way that Tylenol with Codeine made the world “wobbly”/wiggly as I looked around… and all I could stand to do, was sleep until the Codeine wore off.
Morphine was hell, and made me hallucinate “Giant bugs, coming to get me!”–so I’ve refused it ever since–but luckily, when I chipped those vertebrae, I ended up with a pain Dr who listened after I explained the reasons I hated the opiates I’d had to take before–and they tried that lovely Toradol “…just to see how it works for you.”
It’s been my requested pain medicine, whenever I’ve ended up in the hospital, ever since.😉💖💞
That is good to know.
Hammocks!
One time I did a 180 in the hammock as a kid and wiped out on the dirt.
Fun as hell, not gonna lie. Helped that I was like 9 and didn’t realize the potential for injury!!!
If you’re allergic to metals (turning various shades of colors from green to black, red, or brown), and your skin has a history of being acidic enough to “eat” the finish/coatings off of various metal products in a month or two, double-check, and then VERIFY the materials that any metal medical equipment which will remain in contact with that skin are composed of!
Brought to you, by the words, “Oh, no one is allergic to surgical steel!” from a Department-heading Surgeon** and the literal holes/missing CHUNKS in a certain patient’s staples, two weeks post-surgery!
Only *half* of the staples were supposed to come out, at my “1 week” post-surgery appointment …
Until my surgeon’s nurse started removing them, got the first 4 or so out (I’d warned her that my skin seemed to be getting *really* infected & angry-looking, all along the parts of the staples where they went “into” my body!🤣🤣🤣)–she took a couple more out, as her eyebrows started to approach her hairline, and then quickly asked me, “Can you handle it, if I take them ALL out right now?!? I’ve never seen anything like this–they HAVE to come out today!!!”
There were literally chunks missing, from many of the staples–where they’d been *inside* my skin. Everything under the surface of my skin was *also* completely black–it looked like OLD tarnished silver–and was lumpy/bumpy, from the chunks my body had simply dissolved out of multiple of the staples…
Otoh–it was an incredibly valuable bit of information to learn, in a relatively “low stakes” way!
Because after discovering that i don’t just “eat” cheap jewelry–but medical equipment, too–i now know that if a Dr or Dentist ever wants to use metal in my body, we’ve got to do LOTS of research & probably some testing, before I have that metal put *anywhere* inside my body!🤪🙃🥴
No dental implants, annnnnd at least I know that I HAVE to take as good of care as possible of my joints–to prevent the need for replacement joints as looooooong as I can!💖
(**department head, at a *teaching* hospital, no less!😆😂🤣)
Edited for typos!
No one likes to think we’re just sacks of goop and icky fluids, but we are.
Post op, I had seven tubes coming out of me
1 Surgical drain
2 NasoGastric drain (thru my nose)
3 O2 line
4 Glucose IV line
5 Antibiotic IV line
6 Morphine IV line
7 Catheter
I probably mentioned this before, but I was forced to walk around a day after surgery and I stumbled onto a family which gawked at me like I was a freak (I was). I pointed my finger at the kids and in my hoarsest voice, I said “DON’T GET SICK!”
The family took off in a flash. My nurse tried not to laugh until she got to the nurses station.
Manchu, you’re 100% RIGHT!!!😉
We’re all basically just a bunch of meat, slimy stuff–blood, fat, mucus, acids, poop, etc.,–and a massive set of bacteria colonies…
Hanging on a wet skeleton, and wrapped up in a hole-y/leaky skin-bag!!😆😂🤣💖
Also, when it comes to your insurance plan options (US)–
If you have chronic/ongoing medical conditions, which will require monitoring via CT/MRI/Endoscopy/etc. over many years?
Figure out which of your plan options has the lowest overall “Out of pocket” (aka “Deductible”) costs, and choose *that one*!!!
Then, just make the appointmentfor your most expensive “follow up” test, as close as possibleto the beginning of your “plan year,” blow that Deductible right away, annnnd make your payments to that clinic/those doctors for the rest of the year (especially you have a HSA that’ll be coming out of your paychecks all year!😉).
It’s a lot easier to just blow that cap, and pay a couple of folks, than it is to shell out hundreds (or thousands!) of dollars a pop until you max out your Deductible, *and* you won’t have co-pays for the rest of the year💖
There are lots of times, that the “High Deductible” plan offered is the lowest cost plan, when you look at the *total* “Out of pocket Maximum” you’d pay…
So far, at ALL the places I’ve worked, the “High Deductible” option has *always* had the lowest total cost, overall…
It’s just that–until you do max out all your Deductibles, you have to pay more “upfront.”
But if you cap out every year?
The only number you need to pay attention to, really, *is* the amount of that “Out of Pocket Maximum”!!!😉💖
OMG the exact same thing happened to me with my IUD removal.
Luckily, I was smart and self medicated beforehand (i.e. 4 Advil and high af).
He offered for me to come back and do it under anesthesia but he was already all up in my mitt so I said go for it. He got it out and held it up like the lion king above my head so I could see it. I have the best gyno I swear.
New one went in smoothly a couple of months after that, but again, I went the self medication route.
Yes! I had saved a few 600mg ibuprofen from my surgery last year (adios, fallopian tubes) for the morning of the IUD removal. Definitely helped!!!