The Incident
A couple of people have asked me about The Incident. This was a traumatizing event that happened to me when I was a freshman in high school. It lent itself to my paranoia of doctors, doctor's offices and the interns who work within these walls.I don't have the best luck with doctors. I never have as when I was five, I got the wrong shot in the wrong arm. Pretty much, the tone was set for the rest of my life. When I was 13, I had a nurse wrench my arms trying to withdraw blood for a blood test. After rooting around in one arm, she went to the other, poked, prodded and basically stripped mined my arm trying to strike red gold. Unfortunately, the wench couldn't find a vein and actually said to me, "I can't seem to find a vein."
"Well," I said. "You could probably just mop up the floor from under me and get the blood that way."
She chuckled, obviously finding humor in the not-so-funny aspect of me gushing from my arms. I couldn't even tell her I was getting woozy.
So let's fast forward to my being a freshman.
Here I am, a 15 year old boy in my first year of high school when self-esteem issues always seem to crop up. Factor in the fact that the left side of my face no longer seemed to work and you have a recipe for disaster. I was already in enough of a panicked state thinking that I suffered some kind of attack. (My parents were wondering if I had a stroke at 15.) And when I mean my face didn't work, I mean that I couldn't smile or move the left side of my mouth, I could only wrinkle half my forehead, flare one nostril, barely close my left eyelid and taste with only half of my tongue.
My doctor had a feeling that I was suffering from Bell's Palsy but sent me over to Halstead to an ear, nose and throat specialist for further diagnosis. One look from this doctor confirmed I did indeed have an inflammation of my facial nerve. This doctor told me, they would try to stimulate the muscles in my face to see how severe the inflammation was, using electrodes attached to a device. I was game, feeling kind of like a cool science experiment. The doc trusted his intern to run the show, a move I should have protested with every breath in my lungs.
I remember her to be fairly young with blonde hair. She attached me to the machine and told me that she would turn the dial until I felt the muscles working. I agreed, thinking this was pretty cool. She began and asked me if I felt anything.
"Rusty, do you feel anything?"
"No I don't," I said. She proceeded to nudge the dial up.
Again, she asked and again, I didn't feel anything. Lather, rinse, repeat. She kept turning the dial up and I felt nothing. A quizzical look passed over her face.
"I can't figure this out. You should have felt something by now," she said.
"I don't feel anything," I replied.
"OH!" she exclaimed. "I need to turn it on."
And she proceeded to flip the switch to on.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!
Pain unlike anything I've ever felt started coursing through my face as the left side of my face began to spasm like a suspension bridge in an earthquake. Slobber was flying everywhere as an ear-splitting pre-voice change scream escaped my lips, echoing throughout the building, most likely terrifying anyone in the waiting room. My eyelid was fluttering like a butterfly fighting a tornado while my nostril flared as if I was a ventriloquist's dummy. Before her eyes, I was turning into a real-life version of Batman's enemy Two-Face. To this day, I think I smelled the acrid smell of burning hair, my own burning hair.
She quickly regained her senses and dialed down the machine as I clenched the chair with both hands in a death grip, trying to catch my breath. Tears were welling up in my eyes, yet I was trying to play it cool. But how cool can one be after nearly being cooked by some incompetent airhead of an intern? Not very. After I caught my breath, she proceeded to start over, discovering that my muscles responded to very minor stimulation. No kidding Blondie?
Fortunately, the palsy went away almost as quickly as it had set in, leaving me with a very slight residual droop in my smile and the fond, warm memories of knowing how a fish fillet feels.
That was The Incident and the reason why doctors scare me.
posted by Rusty @ 8:29 PM
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