Craig Considine

I had just woken up from general anesthesia and felt okay, or as good as one could feel after being knocked out cold.

I had been under the knife to remove a sebaceous cyst  that I have had since I was a little kid.  The cyst was bigger than a golf ball and located right at the very top of my sternum and at the bottom of my throat.  It had never hurt, but it was never easy to look at.  I had just wanted it to be gone for good.

And so it was.

After the surgery, I had asked one of the nurses to send a doctor down to explain to me how the procedure went.  A younger doctor, with bright orange hair, had come to tell me that everything went fine.  They removed the cyst in-tact.  There were no complications.

‘Great’, I had thought.

Just how I had imagined it would go.

Fast forward a few hours.  I was at home, all alone, and had just woken up from a nap.  I was awake, but the problem was, I could not lift myself up from the bed.  The wound was incredibly soar.  Even my chest and neck were in severe pain.  Another problem: my phone was on the other side of the room, so I could not easily get in touch with someone for help.

Impending doom is not a good feeling.

Nonetheless, I had decided to play it out a bit.  I had figured that maybe the pain and swelling was normal and both would go away soon.  As you could expect, that never happened.  Indeed, both got worse.

While in bed, I had felt the lump over the wound growing bigger and bigger.  When it creeped up over my throat, I knew something was wrong.  When breathing became problematic, I knew something had to be done.  Breathing, after all, is fundamental.  Without it, we cannot exist.

I had mustered up the strength to raise myself out of bed, though when I was up it felt like someone had shot me directly in the upper chest with a shotgun.  I went over to the mirror and saw that the wound had opened and was bleeding.  I also could not help but notice the massive lump, which went from the top of the sternum to mid-throat.  It was not a pretty sight.  It had looked like someone inserted a rugby ball underneath my skin.

I had thrown on some clothes and left my house, covering my wound from the sight of pedestrians.  My destination was a cab.  When I had reached it, I could tell the cab driver was very uneasy.  He drove quickly up to the ER at St. James Hospital.  He did not charge me a thing for the ride.  He wished me luck, which I had felt I needed.

I had entered the ER and went straight for the main counter.  The time on the wall had said that the wait to be seen was two hours.  So I had to tell the lady at the counter that I clearly could not wait.  She agreed.  Within two minutes, I was in through to the main ER.

The nurse who first received me, Naimh, was clearly worried.  I could see it in her eyes.  Not a very comfortable feeling when the head nurse in the ER is a bit shaken by you, the patient.  So she sat me down and took my blood pressure.  It happened to read 200, about 140 spots higher than it should have been.  Niamh said I had no colour and looked like a ghost.  She immediately called the doctors who saw me earlier.  They had to figure out what could be done to aleve me of these conditions.

Another nurse, who could not have been any older than 22, took me into the ER room to be seated.  She was in no rush and that really bugged me.  She had gone over to a bed and could not figure out how to lower so I could get on.  She was meandering around, asking people questions on whether they could help her.

We were not off to a great start.

Once I was down, one of the surgeons who saw my first surgery had come through and basically said that some blood vessels near my wound had never been shut and that blood clots had formed.

‘Blood clots…’, I thought, ‘…great’.

The doctor, whose name was Catherine, said she had to re-open the wound.

Quick flash back – 5 years.  I had been laying on an ER bed in Washington, DC.  I had just been struck in the face with a pint glass at a local club.  I had extensive facial damage, as you could imagine.  When they finally put 75 stitches in me to close the wound, a doctor came in and told me that they had to re-open the wound and engage in a bit of re-structuring.

To this day, I remember that moment vividly.  It was one of the worst things I had ever heard.  The first operation was under local anesthesia, so I had witnessed it live.  The same thing had been true for the second operation.

Now, I thought, here we go again with this incident.  I have to go through another operation…  awake?

Just my luck.

So, Catherine had opened my wound and started to push down on the massive lump that had swelled up.

It was one of the worst pains.  She had pushed the lump down and down to let all the blood out.  I could feel the blood pouring down the side of my neck and near my back.  I felt myself getting weaker and weaker from the loss of blood.  The doctors tossed the oxygen mask on me as I was having trouble breathing. Not a very pleasant sight.

Next, two doctors – one young lady from Belgium and another witty Irish chap – had come to take a look at the wound.  Both had said that immediate work had to be done to close off some of the blood vessels, so they decided to put me under local anesthesia for a second surgery in about 8 hours.

I swear… the drugs they gave me did not work, or just were not strong enough.  I could feel their hands inside and outside of the wound.  I could feel them dig for things.  I could feel the machine that zapped the blood vessels shut.  It was like someone was shocking me very quickly.  It did not hurt, but you could imagine, it wasn’t an easy feeling.

The doctors, however, pulled out a massive hematoma.  It had to be the size of a golf ball.

The doctors had also decided to keep the wound open because they wanted to conduct a third operation either that night or the next morning.  This operation would be under general anesthesia.  It happened to be the next morning, which meant I was staying overnight.

As you could imagine, it was a miserable night.  I could not even lay down because of the pain in the neck area.  The doctors woke me up at 7am and tore open the patch which was over my wound, which was still open.  Not a nice feeling.  The doctors said, however, that the wound was not infected.  Finally, some good news.

So the doctors had brought me again to what they called ‘the theatre’, which is basically the major operating area where patients are knocked out cold.  The anesthesiologists that had looked over me this time was a diverse bunch: a young and nervous lady from India and an older, more mature, man from Sudan.  Of course, the last thing I remember the doctor saying, ‘Okay, Craig, we are injected you now’.  Next thing I knew, I was awake and in the recovery room.

In the recovery room, I had felt like vomiting.  I had figured this was probably due to two knock-outs in 24 hours.  I was also having trouble breathing, or so I thought.  I had kept telling the friendly nurse that it felt like my breathing was off, but she said it was actually perfect as she looked at the monitor.  She said the morphine was playing tricks with me.

I had to spend another night in the hospital.  It is not even worth getting into how miserable that stay was.

In essence, as this story winds down, I should note that this event ranks right up there as one of the toughest few days of my life.

I cannot forget the feeling that went through me while I was alone, in my room, looking at the swelling of the wound, trying to catch up with my breathing and, all the while, trying to stay calm as not to do any more damage to myself.  I will also never forget the face of the main nurse in the ER when she first saw me.

To be honest, I thought I was screwed.  It had seemed like she felt so as well.

But, now that the storm has passed, I take this all in stride and see it as a test of my character.

I am a tough cookie.  This has just made me even tougher.

And so life goes on.

Tags: Cyst, Health, Life, Operation, Personal, St James Hospital, Struggle, Surgery, Thoughts