I posted this x-ray of my tailbone in another thread and it got me thinking. The doctor who ordered that x-ray is now helping me find a surgeon to amputate my tailbone. This is a very uncommon procedure. He’s an old fart and has only ever seen it done twice.
For me what happened was I broke my tailbone about 10 years ago and it healed badly. In the x-ray you can see it makes like an S curve, where it goes back out again at the bottom, causing it to hit things when I sit and generally be in a constant state of inflamed painful irritation. After 10 years it’s safe to say it ain’t gonna heal any more than it has, and so the only real option is to snip that sucker off.
So what unusual medical procedures have you had done or are going to have done?
Ouch, Opalcat. You haved my sympathy. I had a bump like that from tobogganing and it took a year to heal. Can’t imagine going ten years with that discomfort.
In the '80s I had a thyroid tumor and then parathyroid tumors. Subsequent to that I developed tumors in my eyes. When I was finally able to get a diagnosis the University Dr. told me only one out of a thousand patients ever has that complication.
One of the tests I had was to have a thin instrument threaded through each of my tear ducts. That was certainly an interesting experience.
But the real thriller was having the eye tumors removed. I needed to follow the surgeon’s directions about eye movements so I had to be awake during the operation.
First they gave me a sedative, local anaesthesia and clamped my eyes wide open so I couldn’t blink. It was an “Un Chien Andalou” half an hour of watching the scalpel headed directly toward my defenseless eyeball and then hearing the cutting away of the tissue. Not everyone gets to have an experience like that.
Unfortunately some of the tumors have regrown but I have a second opinion that they may be left in my eyes with little concern. So much for visiting a teaching clinic.
I think I had PTS syndrome for a while after the surgery and certainly don’t plan on repeating that experience again unless my eyesight is threatened.
I had a superficial parotidectomy. (The parotid gland is the big salivary gland in your cheek). They removed about half of it. They cut all around your ear and lay your face back to get at it. My ear on that side is still without sensation. Luckily, the nerve to my lower lip came back and I didn’t have a stroke smile for very long. The facial nerves go right through the parotid gland. I had a benign (luckily) tumor. Parotid tumors are kinda rare. But would you believe there’s a support group online for parotid tumors? I swear there’s a group for everything!
I had part of my liver removed. When I was six months old. I guess I was lucky, in that it grew back (I presume!), but as it was due to a very rare tumour, it wasn’t a particularly great situation on balance. Still, it gives doctors something to talk about the first time they meet me.
I also had half my reproductive system removed, after another large tumour situation, but I think that might be more common than the liver thing. And not as serious, as that one was benign. Still sucked at the time, though.
The only surgery I’ve ever had was to remove my front teeth as a toddler - as is family tradition, some of my baby teeth came in with no enamel, and I’m the third generation to have them sugically removed before they could get septic like happened to these kids(though it sounds like these kids had normal teeth to begin with). Fortunately this genetic quirk, one of the teeth related imperfectas, didn’t extend to our adult teeth beyond generally weak enamel…though my mom and I are missing a tooth in the same spot because the adult tooth simply didn’t form.
I had surgery on my jaw for an unknown shadow on my dental xray. The pathology report was periapical cemental dysplasia. Basically, it’s just some odd jawbone tissue that doesn’t indicate any other health issues.
What’s odd is that it’s most commonly found in Black women, a demographic that I fail on both counts.
Hmmm…well, I had LEEP, which isn’t that unusual, but the doctor started to explain it…
We are going to take a loop of electrified metal, to be used as a scalpel, and insert it…
I broke in with “how long will the general anathesia last?”
“Oh, it is outpatient, you will be awake.”
“Doctor, if you take an electrified anything to any sensitive part of of my anatomy and tell me I will be awake during this… Well, I will smile at you, make the appointment you will never see me again.”
He booked the operating room. Then the hospital lost the biopsied tissue.
The whole experience was a bit surreal. Does that count?
I’ve only had one surgery, and it was just a simple lymphadenectomy
But unlike most lymphadenectomies, it had nothing to do with cancer. It was removed because it was infected from cat scratch fever. Yeah, it’s a real thing.
When I was eight I developed herpetic keratitis (apparently now known as herpetic keratoconjunctivitis), which is basically a cold sore on the cornea. Its treatment is pretty straightforward now, but at the time there weren’t any really effective antivirals; so the standard therapy was “cauterization and curettage” — burning the affected tissue with iodine and scraping it away with a scalpel.
It’s probably just as well that I don’t recall the procedure itself. All I remember of the time was being swathed in bandages in a dark room, and hurting like hell.
Seriously? You should’ve went to my dr. I was awake and felt nothing. (for those who don’t know, a leep is taking a slice out of your cervix)
My answer, which isn’t that unusual, is i had a heart oblation, for my wpw, which i lo longer have. Woke up during it.
The strangest thing that ever happened to me was having a fifth wisdom tooth removed. It left a hole in my sinus cavity that took about a month to recover, but otherwise was not anymore traumatic than the other 4 teeth.
Atresia repair. Born without earcanals or eardrums, and had surgery to try to construct them. Didn’t work. Plus, you know how when a broken arm or leg heals, it itches? Imagine that in your EAR. UGH!
I had my hymen surgically removed. It wasn’t an entirely imperforate hymen, but close–the doctor said the opening was about the size of a coffee stirrer. What I thought were “cramps” when I first started getting my period was the blood pooling inside me waiting to get out.
[hijack] Wow, I have never heard of that condition. I assume that you must be deaf, right? Does it make your ears look unusual from the outside? [/hijack]
I had a modified radical neck dissection as part of treatment for tongue cancer – also had a chunk of my tongue removed and then sewn up, so my tongue is lumpy and crooked, though fully functional – but the neck dissection involved removing the jugular vein on one side (vampires, take note). Also had chemo and radiation for that; head or neck radiotherapy these days involves some pretty cool-looking equipment, including a custom-fitted mesh mask that clamps down to a table over you. I think you can click through here to see photos of me in the mask, though you might have to have a Facebook account for it to work.
As I probably mention too often - I had my stomach removed. OK, *technically *it is still in there somewhere - but it has been taken out of the plumbing loop - my esophagus goes straight into my small intestine.
I was born with an esophagus that was too short. It pulled my stomach up into the chest cavity. After years of beating against it, the heart attached itself to my stomach.
The first surgeon botched the surgery - by not accounting for the short esophagus. The sutures split, and they went back in. Nothing was ever right after that.
The second surgeon fixed me for almost a year, but the stomach eventually stopped working and then split itself open. In movies where the bad guy is gut shot and they say what a painful thing that is: man, if anything they are downplaying it.
10 1/2 hours of emergency surgery and now I have no stomach. It makes life interesting, but I’m told it could have been much worse, with a strong possibility of death or living life being fed through a tube.
