A Special Patient (3)

This post is a continuation of an earlier post.

Me: So would you mind to participate in it?

Maria: Yeah sure! Since I won't be doing anything else anyway. How long do you think I am gonna wait for?

Me: A couple of hours or so... I can't be sure because the operation time is quite variable. I am sorry about that.

Maria: It's alright.

I am surprised at her lack of anger or disappointment, given that she thought she was going to be called in for surgery earlier when I was calling them.

With her agreement, we proceeded to the documentation, went through some details like the possible benefit of the research, possible risks, and signed the form.

I went to the anaesthetist and then told him that Maria has given me consent for the study. I handed him an envelope which was chosen in random, and in that envelope was the pain killer she is supposed to receive for the purpose of our study. Rest be assured, all the drugs are safe and used in the hospital all the time (that's what I told the patients all the time anyway :P).

So she went in for the operation later, and at about 6.30pm she was out from the theatre and sent to the recovery room. When I first entered the recovery room, the nurse told me, "Eerrm, it's not the best time to talk to her. She seems a bit upset."

She was more than a bit upset.

She seems quite frustrated as she closed her eyes and wriggled about on the bed and whined like a child throwing tantrums. Whenever the nurse tried to talk to her, she waved her hands and whimpered incessantly. It seems terribly difficult to approach her, not to mention set up the sleep monitor on her.

So I waited there for her to recover. I assumed that she was only whimpering because of pain, but the nurse told me that she doesn't have much pain at all, she's just getting upset for no reason. Weird isn't it?

After some 15 to 30 minutes, she gradually stopped tossing and turning, and I decided to approach her and begin my work. Surprisingly she was pretty friendly and cooperative. She just kept saying "Yeah sure" when I asked whether I could do something.

So I started setting up the stuff one by one:

1. Stick a little oximeter probe (blood oxygen sensor) on her index finger.
2. Stick electrodes on right collar bone, at the skin upper right to the right eye, lower left to the left eye, behind the right ear, and at the 10 o'clock direction of the scalp.
3. Attach the nasal prong.
4. Tie up two belts on the chest and the abdomen.
5. Attach the nasal prong and wires of all the probes and sensors to an electronic recorder.
   

But something wrong was happening. She started to complain about feeling sick (nauseous) and she wanted to vomit.

[To be continued...]
[20 Dec: Continued and completed here]