(Gonna start with a quick apology for not writing in a while. My writing machine is not working well these days. Also, I’m just out of a Ketamine appointment so if there are misspellings or things that don’t make sense, I will refund the money you spent reading my posts..)
A million years ago, give or take a million years, my psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota Treatment Resistant Depression clinic mentioned a VNS. A VNS is a vagal nerve stimulator, and I think I’ve covered enough of it in the blog that I might not have to explain again. The tl;dr is that it’s a little thing the size of a car key fob, and then implant it in my chest. For me, just on the left, an inch or so down from the collarbone. It’s also a wire that goes from the fob to my Vagus nerve. It’s a special (expensive) wire, and it wraps around the nerve so the fob can give 30 seconds of an electrical impulse every five minutes. Scar on chest, scar on neck, but they’re not so bad.
To prepare for the surgery I was given a nice list of things to do. Now, I’ve never had surgery before so I’m assuming this is typical. I had to buy expensive pre=surgery soap, and after a complete shower, had to apply said soap to myself and then wait a minute before rinsing it off. You know how sometimes you’re in the shower and you have to get out for a second or go to the other end of the bathtub for something, and you’re totally soaked, but in open air? Yeah, that was pretty much the deal, except I was covered in an eerily non-sticky or bubbly soap.
That night, I had to fast from 8pm on, skip my meds, and take that first shower. The next morning, rinse and repeat – literally. The one thing the two showers had in common was the fact that they were both in the dark. I was due at the hospital at 5:45 or something, so I had to get up at 4:30 to get ready. Waking up that early isn’t so bad when you haven’t really slept the night before, though. At least we know my evening meds are helping me sleep. When I get to take them.
One thing I did know about surgery is that there’s an awful lot of sitting around the house while you’re recovering. So I made a trip to the grocery and stocked up on comfort food and snacks. I still have a lot of them. Eating hasn’t really been something I’ve been doing very well lately. I make a good show of it, though. It’s not as bad as in this video, but I think about Cassie a lot:
Day of procedure we got up at zero dark thirty and made out way to the University. The ramp we parked in didn’t have great access to the hospital, so we got to wander around in the
light drizzle. But when we got to the right place, it was an instant intake machine. Go here, get checked in, go here and get your wristband, wait here and someone will take you to your room. Very little waiting and the only time I got grumpy is when the lady at the second checkpoint called me by my last name. I’m surname deficient, so it happens a lot. But it pisses me off every time it does.
I was taken back to my “little room” – three walls and curtain. Comfy though. Bed, chair, nineteen computers, etc. I was given the requisite gown to put on, but it was easy to do and covered me from every angle. No cold butt and back. I met everyone on the care team, from resident to anesthetist to neurosurgeon himself. Answered a million questions, some of them the same. And gave my birthday about 20 times. That’s not unusual though. I was given a plastic bin to put my personal effects in, it was efficient and handy.
One of the things that came up in my many interviews was that I am a normal, boring, uncomplicated patient. None of the comorbidities that could complicate things, no history of many different maladies. But I hoped that would make everything go so much smoother. I had lost hope that my surgical team would screw up and I’d die on the table, but I’m working on that with my therapist. When the anesthetist came in to put my IV in, he had quite a bit of trouble finding a good vein. When the chief anesthetist came in to ask some more of the same questions, he said that I was the most anesthetized patient he’d met. And he was old, with gray beard and everything, so he’d seen a ton of patients. Given the face that I had dozens of ECT sessions, and each one they put me under, I’d say yeah, I have some experience there. In the end they did have to get the lasers out to find a vein.
I was finally ready and got on the bed, ready to stare at a variety of ceilings. We headed down a couple hallways and into the surgical theater. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was quite light, spacious, and had an impressive display of devices and `s. I was in there for maybe 30 seconds before they said they were going to put me under. No mention of potential pain. In the ECT sessions, they’d say they were putting me under and that I might feel some heat/pain in my arm. And sometimes I would. But not for this serious surgery. In fact they said it and I woke up after the procedure. Really bummed, as one of my favorite parts of anesthesia is when your eyes roll back and you feel a flipping kind of feeling before going out.
While I was out, they made an incision in my chest and placed the key fob of despair in my chest. Then they made an incision in my neck, sorted out my Vagus nerve and prepared to attach the wire. The post procedure notes said I had a “very large Vagus nerve.” So I’ve got that going for me. Somehow they missed a vain, it was hiding behind the very large nerve. So there was a tiny bit of bleeding and they found it and fixed it. Wire from neck to chest and then they turned on the device, so make sure it’s working. And it did. So they turned it off. More about that later.
When I woke up back in my little room, I was a little groggy, but not that bad. Within a minute or two I felt really clear. I could see the chest incision at least, and it was gnarly. All red and swollen and covered in surface glue. Once the glue wears off and the incision chills out a bit, it eventually fades into a scar that you don’t notice anymore. We’ll see about the scar on the neck though.
Turns out there were actually dissolving stitches inside me and the incision was glued shut and covered in the protective surface glue. Felt like rubber cement. The wounds hurt as much as you would expect, but honestly not that much. I mean, the first couple days they hurt like I’d been cut open and poked and prodded. But at no point was I curled up on the floor screaming and moaning at the pain.
That was just me though. My curtain was open, so I could see the nurses station and a couple other “little rooms” in the unit. They brought a man in who was moaning and groaning and deep-sighing so much it was a little alarming. He calmed down eventually but never stopped wanting to get up out of bed and go somewhere. In stark contrast, there was another older gentleman who was in the bed, but sitting up a bit. He had a dedicated nurse, so I assumed something might be wrong or complicated. A bit later when I was able to hear him better, it turns out he was talking recipes with the nurse. Go figure.
They wanted me out of bed and into the Immensely Comfortable Hospital Patient Chair as soon as I could, to help clear any remaining fog. But I was wide awake. They let me get dressed and then the wife came in. We had a chatty nurse for discharge and at some point I asked if, after I healed, I would be able to play the piano. I admit it was about as dry a delivery as they come. But she said only if I could play before. So joke defeated, but that’s ok. I regretted not asking the doctors and such. I may be devastatingly depressed, but I can throw bad jokes out any time.
Here’s a picture of me in the chair. I figure the mask anonymizes it enough, and I really don’t care if it doesn’t. So that works out.
Sent home with antibiotics and opioid medication. I asked the wife to be incharge of the Oxy. The last time I’d had some on an autumn evening on the porch didn’t work out quite like I wanted/expected. I did sleep a ton, but within a day or two I was up and able to go downstairs (slowly) and do something besides lay in bed.
So what’s happened since?
First, the scars. Healing nicely, glue came off after a week or so, which helped. All of the drawing they did near my incisions had been sealed in with the glue, so just getting those to go away also helped. I think I’m more than a month out and they look so much better. Just little pink lines and some persistent swelling on the neck scar, but that’s going down bit by bit. Right after I got out and the scars were pretty gnarly, I would wear a winter scarf (it was still snowing, after all) so I wouldn’t scare small children or put anyone off their dinner.
After two weeks we went to my psychiatrist at the treatment resistant depression clinic. I keep specifying that because I have enough psychiatrists in my life that I need to clarify these things. Anyway, he’s a really good doctor, nice guy, and is an exact clone of Stephen Mangan.
He handed me a wand – like a giant tv remote with a big circle bit at the end. I held the circle bit over the fob of despair in my chest, and he activated it. He started at .25ma and I’ll go back to him every couple weeks to get it turned up to .5, then .75 and finally 1ma. I couldn’t feel anything while he was firing it, so he turned it up to .5 for a moment to let me feel that stimulation. Ideally I’ll just get used to it as it happens. It felt like someone was standing on my chest. But not in a bad way. It also felt like there was some electiricity being zapped into my neck, but just a tiny bit. It also had a sensation that is extremely hard to describe. Like there was a collection of (like 8) stiff wires and they were all not so much as painful, but felt. Like I said, hard to describe. But no voice modulation, didn’t sound like a robot or like I was talking into a fan. There are, as usual, a long list of possible side effects, but that was the one I was most concerned about.
For those times when I feel it firing and it’s problematic, I have some rare earth magnets that I can place over the fob location in my chest, and a reed switch is pulled which prevents the device from firing. So if my speech is affected at some point and I need to give a speech or record something, I can turn it off for those times. Carrying the magnet 24×7 is recommended, but this device is also used to epileptics to control siezures. With theirs they can activate it so it fires at will, or
BTW, that psychiatrist is an apparent clone of Stephen Mangan, sans accent: (also, I don’t think he’s a cad like the character.)
Going in and out of stores is fine, Target didn’t beep at me as I entered or left. I do wonder how the TSA will deal with the little electronic device I’m carrying.
I also wonder when it’s firing. It’s 30 seconds every five minutes. There are 1440 minutes in a day. Divide that by five since it’s only happening every five minutes – that gives 288 times a day that it fires. Multiply by 30 for the duration, and you get 8640 seconds. Divide that by 60 for a number of minutes and I get 144. Divide again by 60 to see how many hours that is, and I get 2.4 — so for two and a half hours every day I’m getting these shocks. But I can’t feel them, so that’s ok I guess.
While I would love it if I had an app to go with it, I understand the battery life would suck, and I’d need an operation every month to recharge. As it stands, the device can last up to four years on the single charge it has.
I wonder what four years from now will look like.
a Scarlet D 