How does the body of a woman who has been given anesthesia more than ten times change little by little?

As an anesthesiologist in a tertiary hospital, my daily routine is almost “hospital-home-hospital”. I have so many patients that I can hardly remember any of them. Even if I have just experienced a major rescue, my memory will soon be erased by another rescue.

However, among the many patients, there are indeed some who are engraved in my memory.

I don't remember when I first saw this patient, but it was not until she was undergoing her third surgery that I was surprised to find that the name seemed familiar.

Actually, it's not that her name is special. What impressed me most was the name of the disease she suffered from.

Before the operation, we will see the surgical applications submitted by various surgical departments on the computer.

After that, our anesthesiology department will conduct an assessment. If the patient's physical condition is not suitable for surgery for the time being, we will postpone the surgery; if the patient has a potential huge risk during the operation, we will prepare a response plan in advance to ensure the safety of the patient.

When I saw the words "fibrosarcoma of right shoulder" again, I wondered at first: Why are there so many cases of this disease?

Suddenly, I felt something was wrong: it couldn't be such a coincidence. A surgery I had not long ago seemed to be for the same disease, and also on a woman!

So I immediately pressed the "Search" button on my computer.

Sure enough, the name is the same. The last surgery was a few months ago.

Looking at the surgical method, it is also "lesion resection".

Lesion resection is nothing more than cutting off the lesion through surgery. Therefore, it can be said that this is an easy anesthesia. So, I went to the preoperative visit with a relaxed mood! .

When she saw me coming, she put down the spoon she was feeding her child with and asked her husband to take the child out first. Maybe she was afraid of scaring the child.

After understanding her situation, I found that her overall condition was good except that she had some difficulty lifting her arm after the last surgery. So I quickly ended this preoperative visit.

The surgery on the second day was nothing special. Except for a little bit of bleeding, there was no big deal. After the surgery, she woke up smoothly and we sent her back to the ward directly.

However, we met again soon, and a month later, I saw her name again.

This time, the director also remembered the name. Therefore, he assigned me the anesthesia again. Perhaps he thought I was more familiar with the patient's condition. And, every operation from then on, I was the anesthetist.

This time, looking at her expression, she didn't seem so relaxed. In particular, when asked whether she would continue to use the postoperative analgesia pump, she hesitated. She asked: Are there other alternatives? For example, painkiller injections.

Since most postoperative patients use a patient-controlled analgesia pump to control pain and the effects are good, her question came as a surprise to me.

After asking, we learned that she didn't think the pain pump was ineffective, but she felt it was expensive. After several surgeries, the family's savings were running low.

Although this pain pump is an effective measure, we cannot force patients to use it if they have financial problems. On the one hand, we have no right to set prices or waive fees; on the other hand, for patients, the pain of lack of money may be far more serious than the pain of surgery.

At the end of the operation, I asked the surgeon to inject a long-acting local anesthetic around the incision. Although I can't guarantee that I won't feel any pain for several days after the operation, the only thing I can do is to extend the analgesic time as much as possible. This was how I handled each of the following surgeries.

As the surgery was performed again and again, the flesh on her shoulders became less and less. In each surgery, in addition to cutting off the diseased tissue that had "just" grown, the surgeon "scraped" the only tissue on the surface of the ribs and shoulder blades, which had almost no flesh, hoping to cut more cleanly. And each time, I could only give her more painkillers to prolong the pain relief time.

In addition to the surgery itself, there is another phenomenon that makes me angry: during the first few surgeries, her husband, parents, and parents-in-law were always there. After that, her parents-in-law stopped coming. After that, perhaps because her parents were old, they rarely came. During the first few surgeries, she could still see her husband. For the most recent surgery, she even had to sign the consent form herself.

I was not in a position to ask more about her family, but I felt bad. Seeing her almost useless right upper arm and the lesion that could no longer be completely removed, I felt pity for her. All I could do was to make sure she was safe every time she got off the operating table.

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