Not me, happily…
A friend of my parents’ was born without an anus. The doctor took a look, said “he’s dead if we do it, dead if we don’t…” and asked for a nurse who was good at sewing eyelets for buttons. He did his military service normally (apparently “born without an anus” wasn’t in the list of disqualifiers) and is now in his 70s.
I had eight impacted wisdom teeth removed.
About 15 years ago, a doctor wanted me to have some sort of full-mouth/head x-ray to investigate TMJ problems.
When I get to the radiology department, there was a small gaggle of med students waiting as this was an unusual procedure and they wanted to see one done. The radiologist intervened, saying that my head would be glowing from all of that radiation and called the doc to ask if a CT scan would suffice. It would, so that was the end of class.
Had an ultrasound done of my manly bits to confirm an epididymitis diagnosis. The procedure itself was not painful, but embarrassing all around.
Within the last few years I developed what my doctor called a rare fungus that only affects large toenails. I ended up having both of them removed. None of the other nails were infected or impacted in any way. Just the two.
Essentially the podiatrist forced the blood from the toe, the wrapped line around it to keep the blood out. Following that he froze the toe and inserted a thing under the toe. Move back and forth until the nail pops off. Then he BURNED the nail bad with very caustic acid to make sure the nail never grew back.
I can’t imagine how such a specific fungus developed. But it’s not like I kept my big toes isolated from the other eight and none of the others ever developed any symptoms even though I went a year or so prior to getting them even looked at.
I’ve had several surgeries and ingested radioactive iodine to treat thyroid cancer. I don’t think any of it was especially weird, though.
You know what WAS weird? Snorting cold gel infused with local anesthetic up my nose, and then having a really long tube with a camera stuck up my nostril and down my windpipe. It wasn’t particularly painful, and I don’t know how unusual it is. But it was definitely weird.
When I was 16, I had to have silicone oil injected into my eye to treat a severe retinal detachment. Also with that eye: Had to have the lens removed from that eye, due to reoccurring cataracts and had to have a small hole punched into the pupil.
Over 12 years later, the silicone oil is still in my eye, which new eye doctors always find fascinating to peer at.
So that’s where mine went. I’m 53 and haven’t had a wisdom tooth yet. (I consider it a sign of my being more highly evolved).
I had a body part transplant… FROM A CADAVER!!!
Sadly, I haven’t detected any strange personality changes, or urges to serial killings (what, the Simpsons isn’t a guide to reality?). But then of course, I wouldn’t notice the changes, would I?
Also sadly, it’s actually kind of a common procedure. And the cadaver’s ligament is by now completely dissolved; it was only there to be a scaffold for my own body to regrow onto.
But it sounds cool, right?
Back in 2002, I had my PFO plugged with a cardioseal device while I was still awake. A PFO is a patent foramen ovale which is an opening between the right and left chambers of the heart. The procedure itself was a run of the mill catheter situation but being awake was kinda unusual. I was on Valium of course. First, they used a catheter to feed a balloon to measure my PFO. I was in screaming pain as the catheter went through my lungs (narrower veins). And I could feel the balloon going in and out of the PFO. When they went back in with the cardioseal, it felt like my heart was stapled when it was inserted. I had an awesome nurse who kept me sane and upped the Valium when needed.
My penis doesn’t work very well.
At 25, had a penile doppler scan. A nurse injected Caverject (vasodilator) into my penis. (yes, a needle in the side of your penis hurts. A lot.) Ten minutes later (when there was supposed to be a raging erection, but there wasn’t one), two doppler techs came in and used a probe sort of like an ultrasound unit to measure penile blood flow. The results were, um, sub-par.
That led to the pelvic arteriogram. after some mild sedation, they sliced into my femoral artery and inserted a catheter which they snaked upstream to some major abdomenal arterial junction. Then they injected Caverject into my penis, just like in the last procedure, only this time they used even more, making sure I developed a really serious boner (they left the needle in place the whole damn time to facilitate repeated doses). From the tip of the arterial catheter, they then released radio-opaque x-ray contrast agent, and immediately snapped a series of X-ray images; the contrast agent blocks the X-rays, and its progress through the arterial network reveals where and how large the relevant blood vessels (in this case, the ones feeding my penis) are.
The contrast agent feels like they’re lighting a fire inside you when they release it. They did this repeatedly. The needle they left in the side of my penis (and repeatedly fiddled with) turned my entire penis black and blue with bruising; seriously I took a picture of it, it was that spectactular. Lying down with a raging boner at the end of the procedure, I couldn’t pee, so they catheterized me (not the previously mentioned arterial catheter; now I’m talking about a urethral catheter). Except the doctor couldn’t get it past my prostate. Solution? Use a BIGGER one that won’t buckle when she pushes on it. It hurt going in and (later) coming out, and left my entire urethra inflamed and irritated. Any guy who has accidentally gotten soap in the end of his urethra knows it hurts like a mofo when you pee; try to imagine your entire urethra burning like that when you pee.
After it was all done, I was instructed to drink plenty of water to flush the contrast agent out of my system. Except something they had given me - the sedatives, the Caverject, or the contrast agent itself - had messed up my stomach. I couldn’t keep anything down for more than a few minutes. The procedure had started at 8 AM, and ended just after 1 PM; by 9 that night I had thrown up about a dozen times, so violently that I had been bursting blood vessels in my eyelids. I had to go back to the ER for anti-emetics and a saline IV just to get some hydration into my system.
At 30 I had a penile plethysmograph. You strap a monitoring unit to your thigh while you sleep, and this thing has two tiny cuffs that fit around your penis. Every few seconds the device gently contracts the cuffs, gauging penile rigidity to see if there’s an erection at that time. Turns out I get fantastic nighttime boners; I go to sleep, and my penis wakes up. I wake up, and my penis plays dead until bedtime. Seems my lack of daytime performance capability is all in my head somehow. Go figure. <shrug>
They couldn’t have done this before all that horror with the needles and catheters? Oooch…
You bastard! You got anaesthetic?! About ten years ago, I was being tested out to see how bad my stomach was doing WRT reflux. Lots of weird instrumentation needed to be snaked through my nose and into my stomach, and after several really unpleasant failed attempts, I asked if they at least had any Cetacaine. Some was found and squirted in, much to my (and their) relief. Then I went home with tubes and wires coming out of my nose. Unsurprisingly, nobody sat next to me on the bus. :eek:
About three weeks later, I was in an OR for a laparoscopc fundoplication, which is in itself a bit weird.
I’ve had nose-scopes (what’s the technical term, do either of you know?) regularly since 2001 for sinus stuff and now cancer follow-up, and I have to say, while it’s probably my least favorite in-office procedure ever, I handle it better without anesthetic. I learned this when my doc wouldn’t give me the anesthetic while I was pregnant. But the anesthetic I’ve got is this lukewarm spray stuff, not a gel. It makes my nose feel like a swamp, and trickles bitter nastiness down the back of my throat, and I hate it.
Oh my god Elf, I’m female, and reading that hurt me!
Condolences.
For three years of my life, I had terrible ingrown toenails. I had to have both sides of both big toenails removed three times because no matter what, they kept growing back. Finally they decided to kill the nail matrix on the sides so my toenails would be more narrow. That pain was unbelievable (and my toes were completely numb from the toenail removal). I can’t even imagine how terrible that must have felt.
Um, I had this done on my right big toe (ripped the nail off stubbing it, and it healed badly), and the only thing that hurt was the injection of Novocaine. I watched the Dr burn away the nail bed with acid on a qtip and didn’t feel squat.
I was born with club feet. I had multiple surgeries done on both of my legs before I was 6 months old. The left one is ok, the right wasn’t so good. About 6 years ago my ankle was surgically immobilized (androdesis), in an attempt to reduce cumulative wear & tear. It now has a range of motion of only a few degrees, and also has severe neuropathy.
I had to have a cornea transplant a couple of years ago. Having read about the long wait some people have for a kidney, heart, etc, I asked the doc how long before a cornea was available.
He told me that there were so many fatal accidents in the Phoenix area, there there were plenty available. I never thought I’d be thankful for fatal accidents. :eek:
Also had both knees operated on (not unusual) and last year a laminectormy. Spinal surgery where they cut out part of the spine bone to take pressure off the spinal cord.
Maybe more weird is I am now going to have a brachytherapy for my prostate cancer. Interesting procedure where they implant about 150 little radioactive needles (referred to as “seeds”), into the gland to kill the tumor. Besides the radiology oncologist to plants 'em, there is a urologist to be sure none migrate into the bladder, and a physicist to determine the right amount of radioactive material.
Thank og this is under general anesthesia!
I had a testicular biopsy, local anesthesia only, then rode 30 miles home on a moped.
No pain, if you’ve got the balls for it.
I had a tooth pulled from the back of my hand. A neighbors cat bit me when I was a kid and I never told my parents. Actually I basically forgot all about it and it healed pretty quick. When I was older and had a crash on my motorcycle and in shooting the x-rays and seeing what all was broken, there was this odd sliver the doctor thought was bone. He went after it surgically and it turned out to be a tooth from a cat.
Oh, I remember another one: after my baby teeth fell out, my adult teeth came in. Then, I noticed a strange growth. The dentist said it was a third tooth growing behind my front tooth. He said he had to pull all three teeth out (the two adult teeth and the third tooth growing behind it.) I’m like, NO WAY MAN, DON’T TOUCH MY ADULT TEETH! What did he care, I’m just a kid so he yanked them all. Luckily, they grew back. Therefore, one of my front teeth is actually the 4th tooth growing in that spot.
Oh, btw, this same dentist is the one is who put his foot on my shoulder to yank out a wisdom tooth.