Modern pain thinking is basically that pain is a fucker and it need not happen, which to me smacks of sweet mercy.
In my previous life as nurse Ratchett, aside from holding the keys to the asylum, fortunately, I also worked for 6 years in operating theatres in Sydney. Great weekend job when I was studying Chinese - no routine operations, emergencies only and oodles of overtime pay if we came in out of hours.
Here’s some tips from that time and other experience should you ever face an operation or pain:
Anaethetists are the smartest doctors and recognised as such by the medical hierarchy. They are responsible for your life, pain and whether you say good things about the surgeon. Most people never remember their anaethetist. I would prefer to elect an anaethetist than a surgeon, who should be a mere monkey trained by the repetitive practice of relatively simple hand movements.
You talk to your anaethetist about pain management. They specialise in the neurological interaction of various drugs and other interventions and define the limits of what can and will be used. Also speak to your surgeon. It’s better to have them both think you’re a woos than a Spartan.
Careful about sounding too keen with the nurses about your post-op pain management, unless you strictly use that very term. Start with something like, “Ripper, I’ll get a morphine drip out of this” and alarms go off in their heads. Time wasters seeking treatment and pain relief to feed prescription drug problems are a tedious reality in the health system. They are often also violent. Nurses don’t like violent people; they see too much violence - usually at home.
Be that as it may, nurses are some of the most twisted, fucked up, evil alcohol/prescription drug popping and passively aggressive people on the planet. Do not piss them off!
Nurses are your unfortunate conduit to someone with brains and hopefully sense. They are also translators, with one foot in the heady hierarchy of the quacks and another in the bogs of their lowest patient. They have to speak all languages in between.
Nurses have outrageous power for such fucked up people, the keys to the Scheduled drug cabinet, for example. They are responsible, and god knows why, of ensuring every amp of anything deemed too fun for the free market is accounted for. The red key chain accesses pure medical grade cocaine and opiates, amongst other things. Special K, a disassociative anaesthetic and now a party drug, was never accountable; there were shelves lines with it.
Obviously the temptation is too much for many. Some are caught and sent off elsewhere to work, or are that sneaky they’re still doing it and not been caught. Anaethetists are also the more frequent freaks among the doctors. If you’re lucky, the parties can be fantastic! Anaethetists also tend to kill themselves. As the most knowledgeable doctors, they usually only try once, and of course, it works. None of this pussy-footing wrist scratching for these boys.
At the end of an operation that involved cutting or burning, they usually insert local anaesthetic - lashings of it. People like to go home after work, not come back and sort you out cos you’re gibbering in pain - there’s your leverage! As such, the anaethetist, NOT the surgeon, writes you up for post op pain relief. This is usually, even on the most simple operations, more than enough to deal with what is expected. The problem is, that it is almost inevitably written as a PRN (pro re nata), or as required. Now since the quacks are not going to be there when that local wears off, the nurse is in control of your happiness. That evil witch doles out the "as required, or pro re nata, pain killers.
Your leverage is to be a decent human being, or at least one a wizened, husband loathing, all life’s opportunities slipped me by, I got doctors thrusting their outrageous pay discrepancy in my face as my mortgage is killing me, prescription drug wrecked invariably hungover loather of life can empathise with. I’m not kidding and I really have no axe to grind.
Your other option is to be a nurse, but not one that’s worked with anyone you deal with, and especially so if you are even vaguely considered an arsehole.
You can, however, get between the nurse’s malice and the penchant for a smooth shift - she really does not want to call the anaethetist saying you are screaming in agony but she hasn’t given the “as required” drugs. Exploit that. T
The trick is to make sure she doesn’t call and say something like, “yeah, but I think he really just wants the juice,” cos they might just give you an injection of salt water. Doctors are generally indebted to nurses as they tend to spot and alleviate a doctor’s mistakes. When doctors are training, nurses literally save their patients’ lives and the quacks’ careers.
All true.
HG