We struggle mightily to keep your pain under control but the first few hours after you wake up from surgery are a haze of unrelenting agony from the deep, crushing ache in your hips and pelvis and the burn of the incisions on your legs and belly. You lie there, face pale and tight, with your legs propped up under the knees to keep your new joints level, groaning and trembling from the pain as you drift in and out of consciousness.
You've been through a lot but it's normal practice to mobilize hip replacement patients early to aid in joint healing. So we didn't pay you much mind when you started screaming and begging the nurse not to gently lift and manipulate your right leg. But something may have already been wrong because, when we did, everyone in the room heard the sickening pop as your new right hip dislocated. Your eyes went crossed immediately as the pain of the new joint dislocating, tearing all of the recently operated on muscles and tendons surrounding it, ripped through your leg and shot up through your back and down your injured pelvis. The muscle spasm as the joint dislocated was so intense it bucked your entire body forward in the bed and your blood curdling scream could be heard 3 floors down as the involuntary movement pulled your hip further out of place and ripped one of the screws in your pelvic fixator out of the bone in your pelvic girdle.
A wave of nausea hits you. You're lightheaded, quickly going into shock from the trauma. We rush to your aid as you lay stricken, tears streaming down your red, blotchy face as you start to hyperventilate from the pain. "OH GOD MY HIP, HELP ME, I CAN"T TAKE THE PAIN!"
We're getting ready to push sedation but I see it in your eyes the moment the crushing chest pain hits. They go wide with disbelief as a crushing weight settles in your ribs and you feel a white hot burn shooting from your heart as it sputters to a stop, the stress of the accident and the birth and finally the dislocation just too much to handle. You have just enough strength to weakly grab at your chest, trying to massage away the pain of your massive cardiac arrest. You're gasping for breath, feeling yourself suffocating. You take one last agonal breath and fall on to the pillow without a pulse, your mouth lolled open and your eyes fixed and dilated.
You stare lifelessly at the ceiling as we run the code for 40 minutes, your battered body forced to endure a brutal fight for your life along with your devastating injuries. The LUCAS breaks 4 ribs and cracks your sternum and it's sickening for even the most seasoned medical professionals amongst us to watch your right hip bounce at an inward angle, audibly popping around in the socket, in time with the compressions as we work to save you.
We breathe a sigh of relief when we get you back. Your chest is visibly concave and already bruised a sickening shade of purple from the force of the long resuscitation. Your white lips are squeezed around an endotracheal tube and, even deeply unconscious, your face is marred with the pain of what you've just endured.
We transport you up to the OR and you undergo a reduction on your right hip to repair the soft tissure damage and secure it back in the socket. We have to open your pelvic incision back up to repair the fixator. In total it's another five hours on the table in the lithotomy position.
You wake up intubated in the surgical ICU. It feels like an elephant is sitting on your pelvis and your right hip is throbbing in time with your heartbeat, the ache deep in the bone. You don't understand why your chest is hurting so bad. Every mechanical breath the ventilator takes for you pushes air up against your broken ribs and cracked sternum and the sharp slicing burn of it is almost too much to bear. You try to groan but there is a tube down your throat and all you manage is to make yourself feel like you are choking on the ventilator.
You struggle to open your eyes and, somewhere in the haze of the anesthesia and the pain, you realize you can't move. You wonder when the medical staff is going to notice you are in so much pain and give you some relief.
It becomes horrifyingly clear they have no idea how much you are suffering when you overhear two nurses checking the drains on your hips discussing your condition.
"Poor dear's got an epidural and is deeply sedated. She's not feeling anything right now. And lucky thing, too, they really had to do a number on her to repair her."
You try to force open your eyes or move your hand to tell them you are aware and feeling everything but all it does is shoot a wave of nausea and dizziness through you, making you gag on the tube in your throat again.
A sense of dread fills you as the pain spikes and you feel a familiar crushing ache blooming in your bruised, busted chest...
annaxmalina
germansingergirl
2087
janainaart
