Word: nicked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nick Batter...
...back. My back always hurts for a week after I do one. Spasms of the huge muscles around the patient's hip must be controlled with intravenous sedation - or else the entire procedure has to be done in the operating room under general anesthesia. But taking Nick to the OR would involve a long wait (in pain), tests, risks from the drugs, paperwork and high costs - all of which I wanted to avoid...
...kept pushing in drugs. I asked him repeatedly, "Do you feel sleepy, Nick, or a little drunk, or anything?" And he just kept smiling, saying no and talking about wine recipes and the exploits of Leonidas. Sedating old people is a dangerous business - they can stop breathing in an instant - so by the time we had given him enough narcotic to drop a horse and he wasn't even sleepy, we knew we couldn't give him any more. We had to reduce the hip with Nick fully awake...
...relax his muscles. And, then, a wonderful light came on in his eyes. He told me he understood this - maybe it was something a wounded Spartan hoplite might have done while being treated on the battlefield. Anyway, he got it. And, by Zeus, he relaxed. So I pulled, lifting Nick and an ER doc off the stretcher, and while Nick waxed on about sterilizing old wine bottles, I felt his new old hip pop back into place. The leg came out to length and was straight again. Everyone was relieved - everyone but Nick, who seemed a little annoyed that...
...results for the rest of our lives; they are the swords by which we live or die. So, should a two-minute TV commercial or a random website that sways the patient sway the orthopedic surgeon too? The answer is obvious - and it was embodied in my patient. Old Nick's confidence in his wine-drinking, Persian-stopping heritage told me it would be wise to have a little more confidence...