Waking Up Oblivious
The day after my world record nosebleed, when I woke up at 9 AM, I didn’t know what a torture device called a rhino rocket was. I had never been in a Life Flight Helicopter, I had only ever had four surgeries in my life and Mass General had only operated on me once before.
That morning my mom called Dr. Swearingen as soon as his office opened.
“We were in the ER until about 3:45 AM getting her nosebleed stopped. The ER doctor finally stopped it with this contraption made out of popsicle sticks that he fashioned up and stuck in her mouth,” my mom told Dr. Swearingen. “He said if that didn’t stop it he was going to have to use something called a rhino rocket to stop the bleeding and that she would hate that.
Don’t Poke the Angry Surgeon
“Hmm,” said Dr. Swearingen.
“Then the ER doctor tried to say, ‘I don’t think this has anything to do with your surgery you’re already three weeks out. If this happens again, just use this tool in your mouth and you’ll be all set. Do you think it’s related to the surgery?” my mom asked.
“Definitely!” had been Dr. Swearingen’s answer. He was furious that the ER doctor had been dumb enough to send me home without testing the blood for cerebral spinal fluid. “I want to see her in my office in two days. That’s the soonest I have available, in the meantime if her nose starts bleeding again, she needs to be rushed back to the ER and have the blood coming out of her nose checked for cerebrospinal fluid, and if it’s positive she needs to be transferred here to Mass General immediately.”
Needing a Rhino Rocket
The rest of the day at home, I gingerly went about my life, but there was a tension to the air, it was like everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then, sure enough, 2 AM that night I woke up drenched in blood again.
This time we knew what to do. I grabbed the bucket and let it puddle up with a deep pool of blood from my nose. My mom called 911 and grabbed my hospital go-bag that had been packed since Dr. S had warned us this might happen. We briefly tried the duck-bill, but this time it wasn’t doing anything.
“Holy crap!” said the paramedics when they arrived and saw all the blood. For the second night in a row, I was rushed down to the ER lights and sirens. The paramedics couldn’t get an IV started in my arm, but we got to the hospital in record time. Once again I was immediately rushed into one of the highest acuity rooms in the ER. To my horror, the doctors and nurses that descended upon me as soon as the paramedics put me on the ER stretcher cut my favorite panda pajama top right off of me instead of giving me the option of taking it off of me in one piece.
Medical Mayham
“A lot of stuff is going to be happening now very quickly,” one of the medical personals warned me. “I want you to just try taking deep breaths and cooperating with us as best you can.
One of the nurses was putting heart monitor leads over what seemed like every part of my body. A blood pressure cuff tightened around my arm. An O2 sat probe was slid onto my finger.
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” someone said. “Her pulse is weak and thready, blood pressure is 75 systolic and dropping. We need to get a central line in her.”
“We need to type and cross-match her, she’ll need at least four units of blood.”
A Leaking Brain
One of the doctors held a napkin under my nose and let blood drip on it.
“Blood is confirmed positive for CSF,” he said when a halo of light brown appeared on the napkin surrounding the blood drop.
“Have you ever had a central line before?” one of the nurses asked me.
“For a procedure,” I told her through chattering teeth. I had started shivering and couldn’t stop.
“We’re going to numb your chest up and make a small incision to get another one in you.”
I felt a stab in my chest, it burned like fire. There was a lot of pressure and discomfort as the doctor inserted the central line into my chest with no conscious sedation. I couldn’t help it, I screamed.
Getting a Rhino Rocket Shoved Up My Nose
“Where’s my mom?” I asked.
“She’s on her way, we need to stabilize you first before she can come in.” someone told me, as I felt a catheter being jammed up into my urethra. I felt warmth coming through my IV line as someone hooked me up to a bag of someone else’s blood that was now pouring into me through my newly placed central line.
“We’re going to need to put something called a rhino rocket up your nose to stop the bleeding. It’s going to be uncomfortable.” I was warned.
Then I felt an intense jab and pressure in my nose and I jumped ten feet off the bed as a small oval object was shot up into my nose. The pain from the rhino rocket was easily the worst pain I have ever had in my life.
Rhino Rockets Are Not Funny
“We call it a rhino rocket because the patient rockets off the bed whenever we put one in.” someone commented to me. My nose burned so intensely from the object in my nose. I didn’t think it was funny.
“Please can you knock me out, I can’t take this pain!” I begged. The pain medication was going in like shots of water not the 2 mg of IV Dilaudid they were repeatedly dosing me with to mask the agony.
“How long does this rhino rocket stay in?” I asked.
“Until the helicopter gets you to Mass General and they can do surgery to repair your bleed,” someone explained to me.
Life Flight is On the Way
I felt like I was falling down a long dark tunnel. There was no guarantee that I would wake up again if I drifted off, I had a brain bleed and had lost large volumes of blood. My heart was slamming away at a million miles an hour. I felt far away. I knew my life was in danger. I fought the fuzziness trying to pull me under.
“Her bleeding is slowing, but her pressure’s falling too.”
“LifeFlight is ten minutes out.”
“Let’s package her up and get her ready to go,”
“Have mom come in and see her before she goes.”
Words were falling out of the ER staff’s mouths like rain, but I couldn’t respond.
My mom’s voice came into the mix. I felt her hand on my shoulder.
“You’ll be okay Becca, we’ll get you through this,” she told me. Tears were pouring down her face but she smiled at me.
“There’s a medical helicopter on the way to take you back to Mass General,” she explained to me. “Dr. Swearingen is already setting up an OR room for you to fix the bleed. Just hang in there kiddo.”
I tried to stay with her words but I couldn’t focus on anything except keeping myself out of the darkness threatening to engulf me.
Boarding Life Flight With the First Rhino Rocket
There were more people in the room. Someone wearing a flight suit and headphones. I was being lifted onto a different stretcher. People were grabbing the stretcher and running with me to the elevator. The elevator took us to the roof. The helicopter was so noisy it hurt my ears. Someone put headphones on me. They were telling me that my mom would meet me at Mass General. That she wouldn’t fit in the small helicopter I was being loaded into. Someone pressed an oxygen mask with a bag attached to my face. It made the rhino rocket hurt worse.
Adding a Second Rhino Rocket
It took the helicopter 12 minutes to get to Mass General. Halfway through I felt blood start gushing out the other side of my nose, the side that didn’t have a torture device rhino rocket rammed up it. The next thing I knew, the flight nurse was trying to put another rhino rocket up that opposite side of my nose. I moved my head and begged him to stop. His voice came through the headphones.
“If you don’t stop trying to fight me to get this rhino rocket in your nose, you’re going to bleed out in a matter of minutes,” he snapped.
Forcing my body to stop moving away from him, I took a deep breath and then screamed but stayed still as possible as the rocket invaded my small, delicate little nose. The bleeding slowed, but then seconds before we landed the blood began pooling out my mouth.
Straight to the OR
As soon as we landed on the roof of Mass General, a herd of medical people descended on me. I was pulled out of the helicopter, transferred onto a different stretcher. Someone climbed on top of me and was using a special tube to suction out the blood that was pouring out my mouth, they were holding me on my side. They stayed on top of the stretcher suctioning out blood, while the rest of the the herd was literally running with me down the halls of Mass General headed straight for the OR.
A doctor leaned over me as they transferred me directly to the OR table.
“Can you give me a thumbs up if you give us permission to perform this surgery?” he asked me.
I gasped that I did and seconds later in went the general anesthetic, and the blackness finally swallowed me whole.