Nasty epidurals!
ypaschke (ypaschke@cclink.fhcrc.org)
Thu, 28 Mar 1996 18:03:44 -0800
Did any of you out there have an "epidural block"?
Where they put a line in your back and continuously feed you the
epidural drug so it won't wear off.
When the doctors finally determined that I was definately delivering
they scheduled the epidural block. The anesthesiologist came in to
start one and I remember screaming in pain. Then he asked me to
pull my knees to my chin. I could have pulled his lip over his head
at this point. You want to see something funny...picture a very
large pregant (twins) woman trying to get her knees to her chin. Well
needless to say I was a difficult start and he missed. He went into
the spinal column and injected the local anestetic.
He didn't realize he did it till I stopped screaming and said thank
you. Then he says "I didn't do anything". So then I was monitored
to see just how far it would go. If it went past my nipples, then we
were in trouble. So we had to wait for the spinal to wear off before
we could do the epidural.
One thing they do with the blocks is take 40cc of your blood to fill
in the air pockets created by the line. This way you don't get
spinal headaches...wrong!! Because of the botched job I ended up
getting 3 blood patches done. Even after I was discharged. I had
spinal headaches for over 6 months. The only thing they would do
was the blood patches.
Well any way...that's my vent. Thanks for listening!
Sincerely,
Yvonne