More On My Personal Experience With Versed

Most of my friends know my story, but by now it's buried way back in my blog.

I went to the outpatient treatment center at a big medical center. My surgeon had conned me into doing this ORIF thing for my broken arm. Supposed to be a simple surgery with very little risk associated with it. The surgery was supposed to allow me to return to work almost immediately. The surgery is easily done with a nerve block. This is what I consented to. I consented to a low risk surgery and a nerve block for anesthesia.

Enter the crna Aaron. He pretended to be my MDA. At no time did he reveal that he was a nurse OR that he was going to perform my anesthesia. I needed to know one or the other of these important facts. I would never have allowed a nurse to perform any anesthesia upon me at all. Not a nerve block and not any of the rest of the stuff he did to me against my will and without my consent. I clearly stated that ANY drug that would incapacite me was strictly forbidden and no G/A. (Nurse or not, this was NOT allowed!)

The next problem is the substitution of a PA whom I had never met as my Doctor of record. At no time was Travis identified to me as my substitute surgeon. There I was waiting for my surgeon to come in and explain things, but Travis was there instead. Of course I had no questions of Travis... Who the Hell was he and why was he in the room? I didn't know enough to ask that question. Stupid me, I had CONTRACTED with a specific person as surgeon and HE NEVER APPEARED PRIOR TO SURGERY. He sent a complete stranger who never identified themselves as my new surgeon. Tricky!

Upon injection of Versed, which I am pointing out is an INCAPACITATING DRUG, the first thing I noticed was an inability to speak. In my head, everything seemed normal, except that when I tried to talk, gibberish came out. I was very puzzled. Had to think about THAT little item. Unfortunately as I was trying to figure out why I couldn't get the words to form from my mouth, the nurse was busily injecting more poison into my body.

The next thing I noticed was that I was very obedient. I had a desire to obey them and I did. At least my body did. There was a peculiar disconnect from my brain to my body. I could not stop myself from obeying their every command. Trust me, this is not comforting at all. In the TRAPPED part of me, my soul if you will, I was frustrated, infuriated, horrified, aghast, etc. that my body was obeying THEM and was completely beyond my control. I have never felt so helpless and humiliated in my life. My blood pressure and heart rate shot up.

I couldn't do anything about it by this time... I was too uncoordinated. I tried to keep them from touching me, but they just laughed at me. I was an object of scorn and derision. At the time I had NO IDEA that I was supposed to have amnesia. The slurring of words is supposed to be the clue that you have amnesia. You would not believe the change in attitude that slurring of words brings on in a medical suite. Like that song "Carnival" which I quote in an earlier post, it was if "Makeup on their faces, actors took their places, next to me." The complete change in their behavior was uncanny. In a way, I wish the amnesia had worked. I wouldn't have the memory of their callous disregard for me, and their hateful statements, once they felt I was helpless and had amnesia. But I was cognizent, trapped in an insane asylum that was called medical care.

Whenever my surgeon finally got around to seeing me, over an hour late, he immediately flipped my arm over backwards and began trying to see how far he could bend my wrist into unatural shapes. He called it "manipulating" the arm. Is this good? I was scared that he would do some nerve damage among other things by doing this. Since I had no idea that the incision was going to be throught the tendons on the underpart of my arm, it was a mystery as to why he was bending it backwards to start with. Then he nastily said "Put her out."

I swear to you I was being as still as I could. Absolutely motionless. I was afraid that they would do even worse things to me, like give me G/A against my will. They had already drugged me with a "date rape drug" against everything I told them and now I was afraid that if I did or said anything, that they would knock me out. So I stayed still and silent, but my horrible surgeon ordered them to "put her out" anyway.

At this time I truly expected my team to say something like "But Dr. this patient has refused G/A, we can't give it to her." My mind must have been addled because they had already beaten me over the head with Versed against my instructions, why would I think they would follow the rest of my directives? Why in the world would I still have hope that they would follow the law about informed consent? I knew I HAD NOT SIGNED any document to allow the use of Versed or G/A, but this didn't matter.

My body continued to obey them as they prepared to do what my surgeon wanted. I couldn't believe it! I still can hardly believe it. I was totally trapped in a part of my brain, watching, listening and enduring. Bad, bad, BAD experience.

Also of note is the stories they all made up about what happened. I kept telling them that I know what had happened and that they were telling me falsehoods. Finally that witch Dorothy, the "patient relations" nurse told me that "You can't possibly know what happened as we gave you a little something to cause amnesia." WHAT! I felt like I was in the twilight zone. After everything I told them and the LEGAL boundaries I had placed on them, they tried to create AMNESIA! What the bloody HELL! Wow! I had to repeat their nasty talk verbatum and create a timeline for them before it finally began to soak in that I didn't get amnesia. Then the REAL stories started.

Since they couldn't refute the reality of my experience they began backing down from their stories. Suddenly, I WASN'T screaming in pain after all... "You lifted your shoulder." Aaron said. Liar. No I didn't. I was deliberately being corpse still.

All of a sudden my surgeon NEVER works on conscious patients so the whole thing was lies to justify the fact the HE is uncomfortable with cognizent patients. His excuse also went from "You were screaming and wouldn't hold still" to "You said ouch." What a LIAR! This is something that should have been revealed by Doug (surgeon) when we had that "significant discussion" about G/A that he CLAIMS we had in his office. Actually I told him that G/A was out of the question. That was our "significant discussion" about G/A. He even tried to claim that he told me that I would have to take it up with anesthesia. Liar. He NEVER said anything of the sort! Sheesh, I wasn't even on Versed in his office and he tries that crap on me? Can you say pass the buck? The crna claims that he only did the G/A because the Dr. wanted it. Passing the buck back to the Dr.

Neither one of the people, not Aaron nor Doug, ever considered that I had said NO to the entire thing. Aaron started it by giving me an incapacitating drug against my will. Doug finished it by demanding that I be put out. They are both equally culpable in the vicious attack.