At Mon, 12 Nov 2001, cathy:- wrote:
>
>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 :-)
>