The Snapple Incident

The story I am about to tell comes from a memory triggered by a fruitless attempt to find a form I am supposed to fill out and return to some indemnity company (presumably) associated with my health insurance carrier. The party in question seems to be interested in an injury I sustained and for which sought medical treatment--last year. I just got a second notice (impatient dickweeds) and was going to break down and fill it out already and get it out of my hair, which meant I had to go and lose it—twice. The injury happened in May 2002; my health insurance provider paid its share of the bill and I paid my (100 dollar) copayment.

The ambulance ride (yes it was that bad) was apparently covered completely by my insurance plan.

Talk about a bunch of slow reactors (and I will assume all in question were/are third party something-or-others). My guess is that my insurance carrier wants to know if I got hurt at work so they can go after Workman's Comp....better late than never, perhaps.... I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad then, that it’s taken me a while to answer, since it took them the better part of a year to contact me.

The first company to approach me was an independent survey business conducting a quality assurance follow up call. Terminally polite person that I am (sometimes) I answered each question thoughtfully even though they weren’t interested so much in details as they were in whether I 1) strongly agreed; 2) mostly agreed; 3) somewhat agreed; 4) somewhat disagreed or 5) strongly disagreed with the arsenal of statements fired my way. I could have been blunt and answered each question with “I don’t know. I was drugged.”, but that answer wasn’t an option anyway.

Here is what happened:


It’s almost funny now. One Saturday afternoon last May (I know, I already mentioned it was May), I was working at my computer at home, when I became thirsty and decided to embark upon the happy business of enjoying a bottle of Snapple. It sounds innocent enough. How difficult can such an undertaking be? It began simply enough. In the usual “hold bottle in left hand, twist cap with right”—I removed the lid from the bottle and placed it upon my desk. The lid wasn’t even hard to remove. I then took one sip (you know, “put bottle to lips, tilt head back somewhat, and drink”) when it happened. By it I mean that for reasons still unclear to me, the series of motions (cap removal and first sip of beverage) resulted in what I now recall as the single worst muscle cramp I have ever experienced—in my neck and right shoulder. I have experienced more exquisite pain, to be certain; this particular pain, on a scale of 1-10 was probably only an 8 or a 9, but considering that all I did was try to drink a bottle of fruit juice, it came as a horrible shock.

I quite literally could not move my head.

I managed to get to a standing position, and whatever was wrong was still very much wrong—I had to kind of fall back on my bed and yell for my daughter. It was terrifying; however, since I’ve worked as a trained medical professional, I had enough composure to realize my bladder wasn’t leaking and I could feel my legs and move my toes, so I was fairly sure I hadn’t ruptured a disk or done anything that was directly affecting my spinal cord. Short of that, I had no idea what was wrong. My daughter called 9-1-1 and a herd of paramedics arrived—I thought my bedroom was going to run out of air.

(Speaking of “air”, I must remember to recount the Air Conditioner Story, which, interestingly enough, happened eight days later.)

The paramedics evaluated my dilemma and immediately radioed in to the Boss Who Authorizes Invasive Procedures and the Administration of Mind-Altering Drugs. Of course they had to have my permission to do this as well. Realize, I was flat on my back, almost afraid to breathe and they wanted to know if it would be okay to give me “something for the pain”….(‘gosh, can I have a little time to think about it? Would I rather hurt, or not hurt? Wow, I dunno....") As soon as the IV catheter was in place (a B-D 22 gauge Insyte-N, the same brand I buy for the clinic....I know, because I looked--there goes my brain again, always analyzing a situation) I complemented them on a job well-done (I am not kidding). I was surmised from the Radio Chief conversation tht I was going to be given morphine and valium. If I were some kind of addict, I imagine this would have been delightful news. The female paramedic briefed me on what I was going to experience, and that there might be some transitory unpleasantness (my own words) followed by a good measure of pain relief--in other words, I'd be high. This kind of scared me, and I was already in a pretty agitated state, so I asked her to please administer the stuff slowly (this is what I do when I give most IV injectable drugs to dogs and cats....otherwise, some drugs will make them vomit outright. She humored me and gave the morphine/valium cocktail slowly, and sure enough I was engulfed by a sense of tunnel vision, a weird sensation in my chest (as if my heart was about to stop), a general sense of itchiness and some nausea. "ooh, I don't care for this," I said, and she assured me it would pass quickly, which it did. I recalled my days in school when we covered a module on pain control, and the instructor said, "Analgesics don't so much block pain impulses as they change the patients attitude about the pain"....I always remembered that, and thought it was a puzzling concept.

After allowing me a few minutes to "bake", I was asked to rate my pain ('heady with a slightly impish afterglow....uh, it sucks, okay?...but hey, we're all brothers and sisters under the skin, and I'm okay and you're okay....I love ya man....kumbaya') and then I was strapped to a backboard to get me the hell out of my apartment and into the ambulance. Unfortunately for me, thanks to a thousand pound amoire located near the front door, they were unable to get me out through the front door (and there was no back door). The only solution they could think of was to remove me from the board, help me to a sitting position with my arms crossed over my chest and my hands resting on the opposite shoulders, and ever so carefully walk me down the stairs. As I was being escorted down said stairwell and to the gurney whcih waited at the bottom of the steps, I became aware of a rather nice-sized crowd of onlookers which was beginning to gather. My daughter (who was right behind us), was feeling protective of her frail mother and angry that I had been reduced to a spectator pastime, and so she yelled, “Go home! Nobody’s dead! Mind your own business!” I was trying to reassure her by saying, “It’s okay, Amanda”, but she was just too fired up to stay quiet. "Fuck that!" she said, "these people need to get out of here--what a bunch of vultures!" (Not so fast, sweet daughter, let's hope it's not that bad.)....Amanda is normally a pretty quiet girl--this must have really bothered her.

Once loaded into the chariot of medical mercy, I looked around at all the weird stuff hanging from shelves and boxes of all sorts of life-saving goodies. "Boy, you guys have your bases covered, don't you?" I mused, feeling actually kind of chatty now that my brains were nicely scrambled. I was shipped off the Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center, where I spent eight or so hours in the E.R., drugged out of my skull, but awake enough to be able to think. I was getting acquainted with my pain. As I lay there, I decided to try to determine what my range of motion was. I found that I could turn my head about an inch in either direction and I could lift my left arm fairly okay, but my right arm sent a searing pain up my neck when I tried to move it. I wondered again if maybe I really had blown a disk, and tried to imagine what the next six months of my life was going to be like, how much this would set me back physically and financially, and if I’d ever be able to pay off my car or buy a house someday. I was just this side of paralyzed, but honestly too woozy to become hysterical. It was depressing, though. I think I cried. Knowing me, I had to have cried. When I became bored with feeling sorry for myself, I decided I missed my Pocket PC. A nice little game of Mahjongg or Ms. Pacman would have been a welcome distraction. Of course, my arms weren't really of much use, so it was more of a fleeting wish than anything else.

A few different doctors came to visit me. They located a monstrous spasm, as tight as a rock, and almost visible just under the skin in the region of the right trapezius, which is a very large and important muscle group (it was hell getting me on my side to look). I was told that a spasm of that magnitude could be excruciating (duh) but since my legs, feet and toes were okay, and that I hadn’t lost control of my bladder and/or bowels (thank God), it was probably no more than a very bad spasm. Well thanks, I thought, this is enough. I had to do that “sqeeze my hand” thing with my left and right hands. It hurt like crazy but I could do it, and my strength was apparently okay. Amazingly, they didn’t take xrays or any other diagnostics for that matter. Beyond that, I didn’t know if I was going to be admitted or go home. I had a nurse call home, and spoke with my son, requesting my purse and a pair of slippers (I was barefoot) and my Pocket PC--just in case. Hey, even if I was mostly immobile, it had a very nice mp3 player and lots of songs to entertain me--just in case. My son arrived, and kept me company for the rest of my visit.

After an undetermined period of time (hours, I guess) another doctor came in and gave me an another blast of morphine. Previous to this whole neck experience, I’d only had morphine while in recovery after abdominal surgery so I was only marginally present anyway; I don’t know how aware I was of its effects. I got some other strong injections after that, but most of them were intramuscular, so they took longer to kick in, and the effects were not as pronounced. Even still, I know I had a few occasions where I had a visitor, a nurse came in and gave me the old shot, and I would try desperately to act appreciative of my company....and then nod off. This time was different though; it was actually scary when the drug entered my system. I think my senses were in some ways heightened because I just didn't know what the hell was really wrong with me, and that had me kind of freaked out. At one point I thought I was going to have a panic attack or die. I remember thinking at that moment that I would make the world’s worst junkie. I was told to expect this, and it soon subsided, and finally, mercifully, the knot in my neck/shoulder began to come undone. After awhile, I was able to sit up with assistance, and then Sean helped me to stand and walk around a little bit.

Finally, I was deemed fit to go home and to get a day or two of bed rest followed by activity as tolerated. I was given a prescription for painkillers and discharged. My son drove me home and by that time the analgesia was working so well I was feeling almost cocky. It didn't last long, but over time, the pain began to kind of peter out and I actually got better quite rapidly.

I'm not so sure that was a good thing, because in no time at all I was back to my old tricks, trying to build furniture and dropping air conditioners out of windows....ooops....that's a story for later.

I have no idea why the whole neck thing happened. I haven’t had a Snapple since then.

current mood: mellow
current music: Help! --The Beatles