Last week, I told you about my unexpected ride through the countryside in a luxury vehicle worth about $200,000.
I’m talking about my ambulance ride to the hospital, where I was informed I had a 100-percent blockage of my small bowel…and how the surgeon was going to try to unblock it by stopping the bowel from all activity until it finally screamed out from starvation to demand food…and in the process, unblocked itself.
This, he said, would be accomplished by putting a nasogastric (NG) tube down into my stomach and draining out all of the backed-up gunk, then allowing me nothing by mouth, not even a sip of water, for a “few” days. If, after all of that, the blockage still remained uncooperative and decided not to open up, I would need surgery.
This information instantly brought to mind the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” I mean, how many thousands of times had I wished I could drop some weight? Well, I’m no psychic, but I was pretty certain that what I was about to endure probably was going to make that wish come true.
And for the first time in my life, the idea of dropping a few pounds didn’t appeal to me at all.
My heart sank even lower when a nurse who was carrying a coil of clear tubing attached to a big plastic container entered the room and told me I probably was going to end up not liking her much by the time she was through.
No argument from me there.
She held up one end of the tube. “The objective here is for me to insert this into your nose, where you then will swallow it until it reaches your stomach…hopefully without gagging. Remaining calm helps.”
Calm? Easy for her to say! Just the thought of swallowing something even as thick as a strand of hair made me want to gag, never mind something the size of an entire braid! (Well, maybe a Barbie-doll-sized braid, but still…).
She handed me a cup of water and then explained that after she inserted the tube into my nose, she wanted me to quickly lower my chin to my chest and start drinking the water as fast as I could...and continue to do so until she told me to stop.
On the subject of gagging, I honestly never had been able to stomach the tap water at that hospital, so I was just about to ask if I might be able to get bottled water instead, when I suddenly felt the tube slide into my nose.
“Now drink,” the nurse said to me. “And keep swallowing! Keep swallowing!”
Panicking, I gulped down that water faster than if I were a dying explorer who’d been lost in the Sahara for a week. Before I knew it, the nurse said to stop. The tube was in place.
I just stared at her. That was it? I hadn’t felt anything, not even a slight urge to gag. And I barely could feel the tube in my throat.
“That’s honestly the easiest NG tube I’ve ever inserted,” she said.
Her words made me feel just smug enough to think this NG tube, the mere sight of which had terrified me more than the shower scene in the movie “Psycho,” actually was going to be a breeze.
How naïve I was…
Immediately, the tube started to drain out everything that had been backed up inside of me for…maybe the last 30 or 40 years, judging from the way it looked. I could swear I even saw a few prehistoric fossils in it. And most of it was a stunning shade of green. To my relief, as more and more of the stuff came out, my stomach pain finally began to let up for the first time in about 16 hours. At that moment, I think I realized how new mothers must feel after suffering through seemingly endless hours of labor pains and then at long last, giving birth.
The big difference, of course, was that the result of the new mothers’ pain was much, much cuter than the result of mine, which kind of resembled what Linda Blair had hacked up in the film “The Exorcist.”
I finally was wheeled up to the sixth floor to my new home. The room had a huge picture window with a breathtaking view of rolling hills, fields and trees. I was impressed. There was a bed near the window, but it already was occupied. So I ended up with the bed near the door…and directly facing the bathroom.
This, in retrospect, turned out to be a very good thing.
I was given painkillers, from morphine to dilaudid, through my IV, so I slept soundly until 3 AM, when I was awakened to have my vitals taken and also to have someone listen for “sounds” in my digestive tract. Sounds meant progress, but I didn’t have any yet. Not a rumble, a gurgle or even a squeak. I had to be patient, I was told.
Later that morning I awakened with the worst sore throat I’d ever had. When I was a kid, I often would get strep throat, which would be so severe, my throat actually would nearly swell shut and I barely could swallow even as much as saliva. The doctor finally had told my mother the only solution was to have my tonsils removed. But she refused.
Well, this sore throat was worse than any of those childhood bouts of strep throat. I even found myself wishing my mother had agreed to have my tonsils removed because at that moment my left one felt as if it had a porcupine sitting on it.
I rang for the nurse. After several medical professionals wielding penlights peered down into my throat, I was assured it was just an irritation from the NG tube, and it would improve as my throat grew more accustomed to it being there. In the meantime, they said they would add some Tylenol to my IV drip.
Tylenol? No way, I thought, was something that wimpy going to knock out my intense pain. I also asked if I could suck on ice to help soothe my throat.
No…nothing by mouth, they repeated. It was a wonder they didn’t find someplace to also re-route my saliva, even though I doubted I had any left at that point.
But to my surprise, the Tylenol worked, so I promised myself I never would refer to it as wimpy again. It actually made the sore throat bearable, which was good enough for me, even though my voice sounded like a 13-year-old boy’s who was going through puberty.
The next day passed fairly uneventfully. I joked with my roommate, who fortunately shared my sense of humor. I joked with my nurses, even if they didn’t share my sense of humor. They all were terrific, however, and treated me as if I were royalty. If I rang the buzzer, they immediately arrived. If I asked for a pillow, I got two. And I constantly was asked if I needed anything.
I have to admit I really enjoyed the pampering part.
I watched a lot of TV, despite the fact most of my favorite stations weren’t carried in that hospital. I would have given anything to trade one of the sports channels for one of my favorites, like the Game Show Network, especially since I felt an urgent need to sharpen my drug-fogged brain cells.
I also walked laps around the sixth floor three times a day, which was difficult because every time I wanted to take a stroll to stretch my stiff muscles, I had to ring for a nurse to come disconnect my NG tube from the container it drained into, and then clamp off the end of the tube. That way, all I had to drag around with me was the IV stand with the bags of fluid and medications hanging from it. I called the IV stand George…after a guy I’d once dated who really annoyed me.
When I’m at home, I usually walk 45 minutes every day, which I enjoy. So I looked forward to my laps in the hospital. The only thing that ruined them, however, was the aforementioned clamped-off NG tube. It always leaked. So I left a trail of green slime wherever I went, which made me feel like some giant, mutant snail. It was embarrassing…and messy. The nurses tried a variety of different clamps and gizmos to make the seal tighter, but that stubborn sucker chuckled fiendishly at all of us and kept right on dripping.
And let’s just say it didn’t smell like roses in bloom.
My roommate was allowed to eat, so I lived vicariously through her and her meals as she dined on creamy fruit parfaits, fresh salads, grilled fish and even a cheeseburger with oven-baked fries. Oh, and iced tea. My throat felt so parched by then, I wouldn’t have cared if the tea had been made from toilet water, I still would have gulped it down.
I finally dared to ask a physician’s assistant how I’d know when or if all of my starving and suffering with the NG Tube From Hell might be working.
“The first sign will be when you pass gas,” came the answer. “After that, we’ll do another scan with contrast to see if the blockage is opening and if the solution clearly can be tracked all the way down to your rectum. If it can be seen all the way down, then the NG tube will be removed and we’ll start you on liquids. However, if the blockage is still there, our only other options will be to wait a bit longer to see if it still might improve on its own…or if it will need to be surgically removed.”
So all I had to do to get things rolling was pass gas? Then, no more tube? And I’d finally be able to drink something cold and refreshing?
Never in my life have I wanted to fart more than I did at that moment…
I’ll wrap up this
saga next week and let you know what finally happened! But be forewarned…it
won’t be pretty.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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