Surgery horror stories

[FPAlpha]

So a few weeks ago i had a kidney colic due to a kidney stone.. some of the worst pain i felt in my life (i actually started sweating from the pain until the ambulance arrived and took me to the ER where they gave me painkillers).

3 weeks later i'm pain free but the stone did not pass so they have to do a Ureteroscopy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ureteroscopy )to remove the stone.

It seemed like a simple procedure (though i will still be completely under anaesthetic) but when the surgeon started talking about the risks i went WTF?

Rupture of the urinary canal, damage to the kidney, maybe they need to put in an external outlet for the kidney, they can damage my throat and teeth when they insert the breathing tube etc.

It's not my first operation so i know that every operation carries risk and the doctors need to be honest about it but damn was that weird hearing about all the stuff that can go wrong.. but of course it never happened in their hospital and it never happened to this particular doctor

Still not crazy about the operation (and coming at the worst possible time when i have to study for an important midterm exam in two weeks) but i'd like to hear some of your medical/surgical horror stories.

Yeah.. i'm weird

 

[thestrangequark]

A good surgeon warns you of the risks, but at some point you just have to recognize that while they are legitimate possibilites, they are rare, and what must be done must be done. I've had over 20 surgeries in my life, all between the ages of 2 and 12 (with the exception of removal of impacted wisdom teeth). They were mostly on my ears, and ranged from simple in-office procedures with local anesthetic to more complicated procedures with general anesthetic. I survived. I'm sure you'll be just fine!

 

[B.J.]

I feel for you, I really do, but the surgery part of a ureteroscopy is the easy part.

I had this exact surgery done just a few months ago. I've had well over 50 kidney stones over the last 15 years () and they all eventually passed, except for this last one.

It may not be this way from the doctor's perspective, but the surgery really is the easy part for you, since all you have to do is go to sleep, and when you wake up, it's done. That's when the "fun" starts for you. If your surgery is like mine, they insert a stent that goes all the way from the kidney to the exit, and you're stuck there with a rather uncomfortable string hanging out. They do this so that your tubes don't spasm and cause you *more* pain after the surgery, and to protect them from any irritation. After about a week, you go back in to the doctor's office to have them remove the stent. There are no drugs or anesthetics involved, the nurse just pulls the stent out S-L-O-W-L-Y. That was about the longest 2 or 3 minutes of my life, and yes, you can feel it all the way up to the kidney, and it was not at all pleasant. And in my case, my tubes happened to spasm up after the stent removal (which is not uncommon), and that was about the same level of pain as the kidney stones.

I don't mean to scare you with all this, but I was rather unpleased with my doctors because they didn't tell me about the stent at all. That was a rather rude awakening.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

The worst horror story I heard is when I found out that anesthesia doesn't work on some people. I mean it paralyzes them so that they can't respond but doesn't knock them out or prevent any pain. They are totally aware and feeling everything!Hope that helps.

 

[Starkers]

The worst horror story I heard is when I found out that anesthesia doesn't work on some people. I mean it paralyzes them so that they can't respond but doesn't knock them out or prevent any pain. They are totally aware and feeling everything!Hope that helps.

The one and only major surgery I've ever had was to have my appendix removed. I still remember it as one of the last times I effectively prayed (no athiests in a foxhole) and I remember asking. "Please god, don't let me wake up during the operation." Pause "Let me wake up after it though!"

 

[FPAlpha]

I feel for you, I really do, but the surgery part of a ureteroscopy is the easy part.

I had this exact surgery done just a few months ago. I've had well over 50 kidney stones over the last 15 years () and they all eventually passed, except for this last one.

It may not be this way from the doctor's perspective, but the surgery really is the easy part for you, since all you have to do is go to sleep, and when you wake up, it's done. That's when the "fun" starts for you. If your surgery is like mine, they insert a stent that goes all the way from the kidney to the exit, and you're stuck there with a rather uncomfortable string hanging out. They do this so that your tubes don't spasm and cause you *more* pain after the surgery, and to protect them from any irritation. After about a week, you go back in to the doctor's office to have them remove the stent. There are no drugs or anesthetics involved, the nurse just pulls the stent out S-L-O-W-L-Y. That was about the longest 2 or 3 minutes of my life, and yes, you can feel it all the way up to the kidney, and it was not at all pleasant. And in my case, my tubes happened to spasm up after the stent removal (which is not uncommon), and that was about the same level of pain as the kidney stones.

I don't mean to scare you with all this, but I was rather unpleased with my doctors because they didn't tell me about the stent at all. That was a rather rude awakening.

Damn.. that sounds even worse!

50 is a lot.. i thought my first one was the thing but having 50 of them?
The way my surgeon explained it is that they'll remove the stone and insert a so called pigtail, a tube from the kidney to the bladder through the urinary canal to prevent the canal from swelling shut after the procedure. After 7-10 days if everything checks out they'll remove it.. i hope with some sort of aenesthetic because having that pulled without anything is not something i want to experience.

The worst horror story I heard is when I found out that anesthesia doesn't work on some people. I mean it paralyzes them so that they can't respond but doesn't knock them out or prevent any pain. They are totally aware and feeling everything!Hope that helps.

The one and only major surgery I've ever had was to have my appendix removed. I still remember it as one of the last times I effectively prayed (no athiests in a foxhole) and I remember asking. "Please god, don't let me wake up during the operation." Pause "Let me wake up after it though!"

When i filled out some forms yesterday there was a line about the contact person.. put in my dad but even though its a routine procedure and the risk of something going very wrong is quite low it still is a strange feeling to have to care for the eventuality of something really bad happening and having your parents informed that their kid is in trouble.. i wouldn't want to be the person having to make that call.

 

[StolenThunder]

The way my surgeon explained it is that they'll remove the stone and insert a so called pigtail, a tube from the kidney to the bladder through the urinary canal to prevent the canal from swelling shut after the procedure. After 7-10 days if everything checks out they'll remove it.. i hope with some sort of aenesthetic because having that pulled without anything is not something i want to experience.

Most usually via flexible cystoscopy. It's done with local anaesthetic gel. It's uncomfortable - well, sore - but doesn't take long.

 

[Mr Silver]

There are some pretty questionable people out there, who believe that medical professionals are out to get them, and will cry malpractice at the first sign of difficulty.

My perception is this, surgery CAN go wrong, without ANY human error. Hell, even if there is some slight human error, nobody can fully account for all the variables in any given surgical procedure. After all, everybody is different.

No horror stories of my own, unless you count needing a considerably larger dose of anaesthetic for dental work than was is regarded as normal. During the second part of a recent root canal, I nearly bit the dentist's explorer because it came into contact with a tiny shard of leftover nerve tissue. Like I said, variables.

 

[C.E. Evans]

For me, it was my grandma's knee-replacement surgery. She ended up being far worse off for having it and eventually lost the ability to walk at all. Her surgeon was a top-notch one and actually worked for the St. Louis Rams during football season, but he warned in advance that no surgery is 100% guaranteed to work for everyone, so it was a roll of the dice from the start.

Another story I heard was of a very rare case of a person discovering a lost surgical tool inside of him a good period of time after his procedure. And I've also heard of anesthesia not working for everyone too (I think it didn't work all that well for my mother during eye surgery and she described the whole operation as one long torture sesson because she still felt most of it while strapped down on the surgical table).

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Well I'm not one of the ones for whom anesthesia doesn't work well. But I sure had trouble waking up after my spine surgery.

The operation was thirteen hours -- that's thirteen hours of ketamine ("special K" on the street), in addition to some other more typical anesthetic. It took me eight hours to come out of it. I spent much of those eight hours thinking it was the night before the surgery and that I was having a nightmare, kicking and fighting the nurses (at least they knew that my leg function hadn't been affected by the surgery LOL), pulling out the oxygen thingy, and so on. I understand that at one point there were five staff holding me down.

Lovely experience.

 

[OmahaStar]

The worst horror story I heard is when I found out that anesthesia doesn't work on some people. I mean it paralyzes them so that they can't respond but doesn't knock them out or prevent any pain. They are totally aware and feeling everything!Hope that helps.

Oh, it could be worse. For some, it can kill them.

I had surgery when I was young ... 4 or 5 years old. I had a bad reaction to the anesthesia. And by bad, I mean I was pronounced dead. No heart beat, no nothing.

About thirty minutes after that, I woke up with a toe tag on and connected to what I called the "spider" ... some kind of scanning machine with wires they stuck all over, from the top of my head down to my stomach. No idea what it was actually called, that was in 79/80.

You can imagine how terrified I was when, about two years ago, I had to have another surgery and they had to knock me out instead of giving me a local. Already been dead once, thanks. Let's wait a bit before we do that all over again.

 

[ngc7293]

The best (worst?) I have is not about me. A coworker and good friend at my last job had gone in for hernia surgery. He had been talking about it a lot. It would be an in and out type of thing. That weekend, he went in for it. The following Monday we all showed up for work except for him. We were told that he had had the surgery but there was a complication that evening and he had gone back in on Sunday and died on the Table.

We were just coworkers, but we were a big family and we had lost one of our own we never learned why.

I have never had surgery, but I don't trust it because things can change so quickly.

 

[propita]

The worst horror story I heard is when I found out that anesthesia doesn't work on some people. I mean it paralyzes them so that they can't respond but doesn't knock them out or prevent any pain. They are totally aware and feeling everything!Hope that helps.

The one and only major surgery I've ever had was to have my appendix removed. I still remember it as one of the last times I effectively prayed (no athiests in a foxhole) and I remember asking. "Please god, don't let me wake up during the operation." Pause "Let me wake up after it though!"

I was so worried about this, since I'm 49 and had never been knocked out for any surgery. And then I had an angiogram (all good results--I could probably eat deep-fried fat for the next 10 years). They knocked me out when they didn't really have to. The only problem was that, since they knocked me out, I couldn't control my leg. It kept kicking. The one they were accessing my artery through. The cardiologist was not thrilled about that. I told them that, had I been awake, my leg would not have moved. All good, though they kept me flat on my back for four hours and someone was watching me the entire time. I guess they didn't want a complication.

And it's true! I didn't remember a thing from while I was under! At least now I know that I don't have that "awake while under" thing to worry about.

 

[Captain Ice]

My worst experience was when I was 8 and had my tonsils removed. A week after having them removed, I was out in the front yard, mowing the grass, when all of a sudden I was spitting up blood. I passed out in the bathroom, and then again in my bedroom (while Mom was on the phone with the doctor). We went in to the ER, and the doctor who had done the surgery came in, looked me over, and admitted me for observation. Thirty-six hours later, I was sent home.

Problem is that this kept reoccurring on about a weekly basis. I'd be somewhere, start spitting up blood (and always the bright red stuff from your arteries, not the darker stuff), and quit just before or just after getting to the ER. Every time I was sent home, I'd have more and more restrictions placed on me, to the point where at the end I was on complete bedrest. Still, every five to eight days, it would happen again.

Finally, one night I woke up at around midnight in a pool of blood. I managed to find my Dad, but then promptly passed out. In the ER, we finally caught a break. My doctor was on vacation and his partner was covering for him. When the ER staff got him on the phone, he told them he wanted me in an operating room by the time he got there and ready for surgery. This was 1230am or so.

When he came out of the surgery and talked to my parents, he told them that I had started to bleed again while on the table. Had the surgery started five minutes later, according to him, I would not have made it. During the original surgery, the doctor had nicked an artery in my neck. When it was not spotted and sutured, it scabbed over. Every time that scab would come off, it would start to bleed again.

On a side note, I found out after my Dad died, that that night, he did one of the most loving things for my mother that he ever did. At the time, he had a hollow cane that contained a flask for carrying alcohol discreetly. After she arrived at the hospital, he went home, filled the flask with Jack Daniels, drove back to the hospital, and made my mother (basically a teetotaller at the time) drink the entire thing (he knew it would calm her nerves).

 

[FPAlpha]

My worst experience was when I was 8 and had my tonsils removed. A week after having them removed, I was out in the front yard, mowing the grass, when all of a sudden I was spitting up blood. I passed out in the bathroom, and then again in my bedroom (while Mom was on the phone with the doctor). We went in to the ER, and the doctor who had done the surgery came in, looked me over, and admitted me for observation. Thirty-six hours later, I was sent home.

I'm back and as i expected everything was ok and went fine without complications.. still not crazy about being operated on.
But i did see the kidney stone and i shudder to think how it would have felt if i had to pee it out

I had my tonsils removed 2 years ago and the pain was bad afterwards for 2-3 days.. i had to repeatedly ask for some heavy duty painkillers and they numbed me out pretty good.. so much that i nearly slept through half of my hospital visit (a co-patient joked that he'd never see someone sleep this much).

I was informed that it may come to additional bleeding when i return home and it happened once though it was more a thick blob of deep red blood. I was worried for a moment mit it was the only time and everything healed up fine.

However i nearly lost my mother several years ago to meningitis. We were at home and she complained about insane headaches and nearly fainted so we drove her to the hospital where she was admitted. Several days passed and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong.
Finally they transferred her to a bigger hospital in town and within a short time they found out she has a severe case of meningitis.. had she come in later than 24 hours to them she wouldn't have made it.

I don't know what we would have done with the first hospital then.. for a layman it is hard to judge if the doctors made mistakes and in this litigation happy society it's easy to sue but i know doctors personally and know under how much pressure they sometimes are. Working hours are insane.. at my company i'm allowed a max. of 10 hours per day and i work in an office.. if i fuck up at worst it costs money to rectify the problem and i don't endanger lives. But when i think about doctors doing 12 hour shifts and then be on call (and as luck will have it they have to come back in for an extended time) i don't know how they make it. Doctors are still people and they can make mistakes and miss things which can have huge impacts later on.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

^I'm glad to hear it went smoothly.

 

[RyanKCR]

My "horror" story occured when I was 10. It was my total correction surgery. They were going to "correct" the blood flow through my heart and major arteries. They had to take down two shunts that were put in when I was younger. One shunt connected the ascending aorta to the right pulmonary artery. When the surgery was done there was a lot of bleeding and they could not find where it was from. It was coming from a loose suture on the aorta. There was so much blood that they could not find the exact spot so I was "packed" to soak up the blood. The packing became so heavy that it put pressure on my lungs. They took the packing out and the bleeding had stopped by then. In the middle of it the respirator I was on failed. This occured over a period of about 17 1/2 hours. When done I had gotten about 50 pints of blood over a period of 48 hours.

 

[propita]

This was not a horror story per se, because everything went right, but still....ouch!

My dear Hubby had externalized hemorrhoids, more than one. In fact, so many that they were totally surrounded his anus. About 10 or 12. The doctor said that any one was no big deal, but having so many made Hubby among the worst five cases this doctor had seen.

In prep, I asked the doctor to make sure that Hubby was facedown before he started cutting anything off. Hubby did laugh, which was my intent. All went well, but he was in great pain on the third day after. He was afraid to have a bowel movement and afraid to fart. I had been with him almost 25 years and had never heard him sob. Until then. And there was nothing I could really do to help.

A few weeks later, he was feeling better, and I wanted to see if things were healing. Omg! Things looked awful! Horizontal gouges in his bottom! Quick appointment with the doctor. He reassured us that it was just the stitches dissolving and that everything was okay--and was surprised that I would check! Of course I'm going to make sure everything's fine!

He was off work for six full weeks. A year later and Hubby's just fine.

Lesson: Do your best to avoid getting hemorrhoids. Especially that many.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

^ The doctor was surprised that you'd check your husband's surgical site? That's kind of sad.

 

[Rhaven]

FPAlpha, I wish you a smooth procedure with a minimum of pain.

As to disclosure of adverse outcomes from surgery: it's called informed consent and we even use it for pet surgery. You'd be surprised on how often it's needed for people as well as pets.