Hey there folks. Now that we’re back from our trip, this blog is going back to being a personal blog for me. I know, I know, I still need to write about Thailand, and I promise I’ll get to it, but something came up today that takes precedence.
Today, I experienced what could have been the most physically) painful thing I've ever felt in my life. I had an appt for a minor foot surgery to fix a deep... callous... kind of thing on the ball of my right foot. We think it was caused by a tiny pebble or splinter or something that I picked up a few months ago (probably during the 2 months of heavy barefoot beach-walking in Bali). Whatever it was got in deep, got encapsulated, and formed a heavy, deep callous in my foot.
It hurts a LITTLE bit to walk on (some days more than others, but nothing crippling), so it wasn't an urgent issue. But it was ugly, and annoying, and now that I have health care here in Costa Rica (effective again as of YESTERDAY, thanks to my new job), I figured I'd get it fixed. I had the appt set about 4 months ago, so it was fortunate that my job came through when it did, or I would have missed the appt entirely. In any case, it was this appt that killed me today. The worst part? It was all for naught! The pain ended up being so intense that they had to abandon the procedure, and schedule me for a heavier procedure.
So, what was the major problem? Well… ultimately, it came down to this particular form of anesthetic. Apparently, it seems my body is resistant to it. Even the Dr admitted that the anesthetic itself was known to hurt, but that's supposed to be short-lived (on the order of 5 seconds). After a MAXIMUM of 10 seconds, I should have felt nothing. Turns out that not only was it EXCRUCIATINGLY painful, so much that it actually made me scream out loud (and I'm somebody who is accustomed to handling certain levels of pain and discomfort, such on-going back pain, boxing training pain, etc), and actually get nauseous, shaky and actually cry tears. When I say I screamed… I don't mean I yelped. I mean I SCREAMED! LOUD! The Dr even said I startled her the first time it happened. I pity anybody who was in the waiting room. I think I probably must have scared the shit out of them (“Holy shit! What is this, Frankenstein’s lab?? Do they have the dentist from Little Shop of Horrors in there?”). I cussed in both English and Spanish. The problem was that not only was the anesthetic INSANELY painful, but that it also wasn’t working. So, they had to keep using more and more, to try and get me to not feel where they were going to be working. Aside from not working well even at the surface, which at least experienced SOME numbing effects, my callous thing is deep, so they had to inject the stuff into deep tissue. The needle itself, while definitely being painful, was not unbearable. It hurt, but I could hang. It was when she started to inject the anesthetic, though, that made my eyes roll back into my head. I am generally the kind of person who suffers internally. I can breathe out, fast and hard, and handle a lot of shit. But this was so intense, and so sudden, that the yells were RIPPED out of me, at full force, and with zero shame. Sure, I was embarrassed afterwards, and felt weak for not being able to stomach it, butt in that moment, there was no room for caring. There was only searing pain.
To make matters worse, because my body was rejecting the anesthetic, they ended up having to give me 2 full syringes worth, trying to get me to a point where I could tolerate the surgery. So, not only was it the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced up until now, but it went on and on and on. Ultimately, since I did have SOME numbness at least at the surface after a while, I tried to let the Dr start the surgery. But the moment she started cutting, I got about 5 seconds into it, and we had to call it off. The anesthetic was not doing it’s job, and this was just the warm-up. So, in the end, we had to abandon this whole procedure, and get me in line for a bigger, heavier hitting process at a bigger clinic (whatever that process may be, I have no idea). This probably means another several months of waiting, but… fuckit. Today just wasn’t going to happen. I can live with the status quo for a few more months. I could NOT have endured the surgery with things as they were today.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t take TOO long, and then when they finally get me in for the next thing, whatever it is, it’s something I can actually live with!
Interesting side note, this was an electric scalpel. That is, the blade itself did not do the cutting. The blade was instead electrified, and served rather to focus a tiny electric arc into my skin, so that I was actually being cut by… a mini lightning bolt. The advantage of this process is that the wound was instantly cauterized at the same moment as the cut was made. Very neat to watch. If it just hadn’t been for that whole issue of “screaming for my life and barely containing my body’s urge to vomit and pass out”, I would have been quite amused by the whole process.
