Word: paines
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Except for acupuncture, which has been studied for pain relief in lab animals, and some herbal remedies, most alternative treatments for pets are not well tested. "There is not a controlled study for everything," admits David Jaggar, former executive director of the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society in Longmont, Colo. "We use the science whenever we can, but as practitioners we have to resort to artful applications...
When Andrea Thaler, 46, was wheeled into the operating room for routine gallbladder surgery five years ago, she thought she was in a safe place. But as soon as the operation began, the Nashville, Tenn., HMO executive realized that the sedatives and pain-killers administered by her anesthesiologist hadn't quite taken hold. She could feel the surgeon make six "slicing, burning" laparoscopic incisions in her abdomen, but she was trapped by the paralytic drugs given along with the anesthesia, and she couldn't cry out or even open her eyes. "I was screaming in a black hole," she recalls...
Thaler was experiencing a phenomenon that anesthesiologists delicately call "awareness." These unexpected wake-ups occur in at least 40,000 of the nation's 20 million annual surgeries, according to Emory University anesthesiologist Peter Sebel, who has studied the problem. In most cases the pain-killers keep working, and all the patient feels is the unnerving pressure of a scalpel cutting and scraping. But, Sebel estimates conservatively, in at least 400 such awareness accidents, the pain breaks through the veil of drugs. It's possible, say other experts, that the number of patients who wake up each year to excruciating...
Adding insult to injury, many "survivors," as they call themselves, report that doctors and other medical personnel routinely leer at or ridicule the inert bodies before them. Jeanette Tracy, a television producer from Dallas, suffered this when she was anesthetized for a hernia operation in 1991. Enduring pain she describes as "a blow torch in my stomach...every tissue tearing like a piece of paper," she heard the anesthesiologist say she had "the right size breasts" and was in "great shape" for a mother of two. "You can't cover yourself," she says furiously. "You're screaming as loud...
Foale did what he always hoped he would do in this situation: he forced himself to stand absolutely still. If the station's wound was a mortal one, the atmosphere inside would gush out of the ship, and Foale's ears would pop suddenly and painfully. If that happened, the pain would probably be one of the last things he would ever feel, as rapid depressurization would kill the crew almost instantly...