morphine question
From: cathy:- (anonymous@medispecialty.com)
Mon Nov 12 16:18:46 2001
I had a c-section 7-1/2 years ago. It's the only abdominal surgery I've
ever had, and is probably the source of my adhesions, if indeed that's
what I have. I had an epidural during labor. It slowed the labor down
enough so that the doctor could declare "time's up" and do the section
even though nothing was really going wrong with my baby or with me it
was just not progressing very fast. They "upped" the epidural for the
surgery and it worked just fine. After the surgery they took the
epidural out and put a PCA pump on my IV with what they claimed had
morphine in it. I think that this was about money. Lots of c-section
moms seem to have the epidural left in for 4-6 hours after the surgery.
But I don't think that they would have been able to charge any more for
the epidural if they had done that, and the epidural and PCA pump were
the 2 most expensive items on my hospital bill.
But that's not really my question... They also left the pitocin running
for 7 hours after the surgery, which caused one single, horrific,
7-hour-long contraction. If that wasn't bad enough, whatever drug was
in the PCA pump did absolutely nothing for the pain at all, except to
take away any ability to deal with the pain. It was like I was sealed
up in my head, with the constant screaming pounding pain, and I couldn't
think at all and my hearing was "throbbing" in and out. I was far too
stupid to do anything other than lie there as a tortured animal, and I
kept pushing that stupid button because I was too stupid to form the
rather simple thought that the drug was magnifying the pain. With my
second baby I had a 52-hour back labor and I was delirious from the pain
between about hour 42 and hour 48 of labor. That was pretty grueling,
but it was nothing like the pitocin pain after #1.
At one point several hours into the pitocin & "morphine" my husband went
out into the hallway to track down the nurse and told her "the morphine
isn't working." The nurse replied digustedly that "the morphine CAN'T
'not work'" and then she stomped into the room and slammed the IV
equipment around a bit and stomped back out without a word to me. After
that the feeling of being walled up inside with the pain got even worse,
so I'm quite willing to believe that she upped the dosage.
So, anyway, lots of you have experience with morphine -- has anyone ever
had this kind of experience? I know that codeine "doesn't work" on some
people, and I am suspicious that I may be one of those people. (After
both babies I took one of the tylenol-codeine combos and it seemed to
have exactly the same effect as just plain tylenol.) Is there such a
thing as people who get no pain relief from morphine? Both of my
epidurals were with one of the "caine" drugs (related to novicaine,
lidocaine, etc.) and I think that those are chemically pretty different
from the narcotic drugs. The other thing I've wondered about was maybe
they lied and they didn't use morphine and they used some other drug
that doesn't really work well...
--
cathy :-)
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