Procedural Pain

I got this link; The Accidental Amazon » “This Might Hurt A Little” — Procedural Pain from a friend of mine.

Here is what my friend wrote to me in an e-mail...

"Also the writer of the article was surprised that the medical team ignored his pain, and showed no compassion towards him. Is this how they treat us when they think we won't remember it ? Scary.

I wonder how they would treat us if every procedure with conscious sedation was videotaped, and the patient was allowed to see the tape after it was over..."

What my friend is referring to is this statement, taken from the above link.

"...I woke up during an outpatient diagnostic procedure, began to feel stabbing abdominal pain, made the surgeon and clinical staff aware of this, and nothing was done about it. I was in a haze induced by the conscious-sedation cocktail I’d been given — Versed, Fentanyl, and, interestingly, Benadryl — so perhaps I was unable to articulate my symptoms as clearly as I might have. But still, I think saying, “That hurts!” and grimacing should have provided enough clues."

First of all, patients are almost ALWAYS awake while under the Versed, Fentanyl conscious sedation cocktail. You are CONSCIOUS as in conscious sedation. Not asleep or "out." Amnesia being what it is, it only SEEMS to you that you are out. Not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination. This explanation is so you understand what the writer of the above blog link was really experiencing. Their MEMORY began working again and they became aware of the torture. The staff was aware the whole time that the patient was experiencing pain... And chose to do nothing.

This patient WAS able to articulate their pain symptoms and probably had been making the medical team aware of this the entire time. THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT PATIENT PAIN! THAT'S the TRUTH about why this patient didn't get any treatment for pain. "Nothing was done" is the medical staff's PLAN when giving patients Versed. With Versed they can totally ignore patient pain because, according to staff, "the patient won't remember it anyway." The exception being those patients whose minds manage to struggle out of the drug induced amnesia. It is a matter of extreme indifference to medical workers and in fact, these people seem to be so inured to patient suffering, they don't even give a @#$% if you DO remember it. That's covered in their self righteous and sanctimonious "drugs work different on everybody."

This completely ignores the fact that if these drugs truly do work differently on everybody (which they do) then they themselves (medical workers) should be more diligent to PREVENT PAIN, knowing that their patient might be able to remember their torture. After all, complete amnesia is only their GOAL and they have no clue as to whether or not the patient will experience dense amnesia to hide the sadistic actions of the medical team.

Here's my e-mail response to my fellow Versed sufferer...

(Salutation removed for privacy), that IS how they treat you when you have amnesia. I didn't get amnesia, but I had no pain. I HEARD all the nasty things they said about me. I couldn't BELIEVE what I was hearing!!! I wondered what kind of house of horrors I was in where medical people talked like that RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PATIENT!!! I didn't know I was supposed to have amnesia. I wasn't even supposed to have sedation, so I was already pissed because OBVIOUSLY I had been drugged against my will. I just had no idea the depths of depravity my medical team had sunk to by using Versed.