Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Icky Medical Procedures

Inspired by Umanda's (much better) post, I thought I would chime in with some more modern medical jibbering.

In my youth I played a lot of sport very well, and that means injuries. And that means medical attention, and that means some okay procedures, and some where the procedure is worse than the injury. This is such a tale.

I played indoor cricket in my youth. How does you explain indoor cricket to someone who doesn't even follow cricket? Ummm, okay. Imagine you are playing baseball. With two batsmen. And eight fielders. You are allowed to bounce the ball every pitch, and there is only one base. With me? Here is the tricky/ extreme part - you are doing this IN A BATTING CAGE, in an area just longer than the distance from pitcher to batsman, and the whole thing is netted in, and rebound catches count.

Okay, so cricket balls kill people, so they made it safer by making the ball a tennis ball wrapped in leather. So it goes much faster off the bat, but doesn't hurt people as much when it hits them.

I was fielding in close when there was a good strike that came of someone else's hand and hit me in the eye. It hurt a bit, and I was taken off the field. I got driven home, and dutifully went to the doctors the next day. He said the orbit (skull bone around the eye) was okay, but the flexibility of the ball and the fact that it might have 'sucked back' the eye meant I had to go to the hospital to have it checked by one of the special machines. The doctor advised I would have to go with someone else, as I would be unable to get back home by myself. Hrmmm.

I rocked up to the doctors with my SO, and they got me and put drops in my eye. "This will relax your eye muscles, and your pupils will dilate heavily to allow us a good view of the eye. It takes half an hour to work. tell us when the light begins to hurt."

One other thing is that I'm one of those people for whom most drugs work ten times better than everyone else. It's a skill in the "Fallout" series, and I like the inexpensiveness of drinking. Apparently its manly to need $200 to get drunk, I like my $20 benders as I am a cheap bastard.

So the SO looks at me and says "Good grief, I can see your pupils peeling back. So I wrap a jumper around my head and wait the half hour. Once the doc comes I peel off my improvised light block, and the doctor manages to stay vaguely professional. The assistant has the giggles "That looks so weird." great. They take me into a fairly dark room, and adjust a machine with funky opticals so my face fits into it. "There may be a sting as I turn on the blue light" Urggh! "And now I need to do some adjustments... Oh my God that is beautiful. I usually use this machine on the elderly, and I have to say, the inside of your eyes are simply stunning."

So I could be an inside of eye model. Interesting to note, not much of a pickup line.

"Here comes the unpleasant part, in order to check I need to put this puff of air into your eye."

Urkk! The puff hits and it's like a finger in the eye. Your hold body does that desperate tense and release, and you realise you are bending the steel in the chair arm.

"Oh my GOD, I need to find a colleague." I hoped this was a continuation on the beautiful theme, and not a new 'we will have to have that out presently' theme.

So I'm sitting in this dark room, and the doctor has skipped off to find someone else. The doctor comes back in with the mention colleague, and a bevy of ten obvious med students. The senior sits, prepares me for the puff of air, and addresses me along with everyone else. "This patient has no sign of injury, but has an interesting phenomenon, an extreme high propensity for cone versus rod receptors. It causes a distinctive sheen to the eye when viewed as compared to the base eyes you have seen before. I bet you can't find a thing in the fridge, but can catch exceptionally well" - Why yes, except for the one that put me in this chair. He laughs politely.

"Now, if you could all shuffle through and have a look at the eye in question" ten more med students, ten more blasts of air to the eyeball, and ten more quivering jerk jumps as I get poked. In that very Brisbane way, one of the med students was in my Senior year. Confident and extroverted tho I am, I could not pull off the 'pick up an old mate while strapped to the chair and being mildly tortured' maneuver.

I wonder what MM is doing now...

Anyway, I was allowed to leave, I was advised that the medicine in my eyes would wear off in six hours, and that I should avoid bright light for that time. Six hours later, people would still laugh out loud at my trippy super- pupil eyes, and a day later, my eyes had returned to normal. i was off all contact sports for 3 months.

I think i would have been annoyed, except that I had just purchased a new computer. Happy co-incidence then...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

you know it's never a good thing when they ask to bring in the round of med students, because frankly, they've never seen anything like it before..

heard this a few times myself, all due to injury..

uamada said...

yeah to be honest you really don't want an audience at any of your procedures... I had the brisbane thing happen with a police officer, someone in my group was a little too rambunctious after too many "Lemonades".

Natalia the Russian Spy said...

Least they weren't looking at your bum...

Flinthart said...

Interesting. You'd want to be careful driving at night, I suspect.

Therbs said...

Indoor cricket? I was once batting when I pulled a shortish delivery straight into the face of the guy fielding at the net square, on side of the wicket. THWACK! The ball bounced off his face and lobbed over to the off side and was caught at cover point. Bastard umpire gave me out.
Poor bloke went down in a screaming heap. After the game he was seated in teh lounge area having a beer and I checked his bruised visage. Didn't look pretty, the makings of a huge shiner, so I bought him a beer.
We did win the match.

Ysambart said...

Didn't touch the ground, fair catch :)

Kiriel du Papillon said...

I have a similar experience regularly (though far less painfully). Apparently I have a perfect cervix and doctors are always calling other people in to take a peek at it when I have my checkups. Nothing like being in a set of stirrups with an audience of students. Like something out of some bad book of fantasies.