Cattle Call

I underwent a Novasure Endometrial Ablation this past Thursday to mitigate some female problems that I've been plagued with every month for the last six months. This procedure destroys the uterine lining by "burning" it out with radio frequency energy.  I was supposed to have the procedure at 10:00 am, but my gynecologist is also an obstetrician and had to do an emergency delivery, so I got booted to the last appointment for the day.  This sucked because I had to fast from after midnight the previous evening up until the procedure!

The procedure was done in outpatient status at my doctor's office, where an operating room team comes to the office and transforms several examining rooms into makeshift operating rooms.  My doctor made it sound like it would be just an in-and-out deal, but it was far from that!  I asked her how many people would have to be in the room and she told me that it would be her, a nurse and an anesthesiologist.  It ended up that there were 5 people in the room:  the doctor, two operating room techs, a nurse, and the anesthesiologist.  I know that these folks look at women's bare crotches every day, but this made me very uncomfortable!  What made it worse was that the anesthesiologist was a man, and I specifically pick female doctors for my gynecological needs as I'm not comfortable with men being in the room when I'm in this unclothed state!

The anesthesiologist put me under with Propofol, which is the drug that Michael Jackson used to go to sleep and which eventually killed him.  To be honest, the Propofol was the worst part of the procedure!  It didn't hurt when the anesthesiologist administered it through the IV as he put Lidocaine through the IV before the Propofol.  I was out within a few seconds after he put it into the IV.   The worst part was waking up from the Propofol.  It felt like I was looking through a pair of broken goggles and I just felt so drugged out and weird!  It took several hours for me to feel normal again.

After going through this procedure, I will have to say in my honest opinion that it should have been done in a hospital. Even though the Propofol was administered by an anesthesiologist, it's a heavy duty drug and a lot can go wrong with it.  I don't even know if those people had a crash cart available for emergencies.  I certainly didn't see one.

Another thing that really bothered me was the "cattle call" feel to the whole thing.  I ended up having to wait about 45 minutes in a examining room right next to one of the makeshift operating rooms and I heard them waking up the poor woman that had the procedure right before me.  The woman was having a really hard time waking up, which I can fully understand after being put under with Propofol and they ended up getting kind of mean to her when she couldn't open her eyes.  Before they wake you (the patient) up, they put your underwear and pants on up to your knees so that they can just yank your pants up and get you out the door.  There was no recovery room with a nurse or anything like that. Once you wake up, they yank up your pants,  plop you into a wheel chair and take you out to your car.

They didn't provide any kind of written post-op instructions and the doctor didn't even bother to speak with my husband, who was waiting to take me home.  I couldn't believe this as I was pretty out of it from the Propofol and couldn't remember much of what anybody said to me right before we left.  However, the absolute worst of all it was the fact that the doctor's office didn't even bother to call me the next day to find out how I was doing!  I have had dentists call me the next day after a dental surgery to see how I was doing and they didn't even put me under with anesthesia!

Frankly, I just found the whole experience to have been rather cold and uncaring.  My doctor is very competent, but not the greatest in the "bedside" manner department.  It's okay to have a doctor like this for just a yearly exam, but not for when you have problems and have to see them more often.  Hopefully, my female problems have been vanquished by this procedure that I had on Thursday.  If not, I will need to find another doctor, preferably one who is just a gynecologist so that they won't be getting called off at the last minute to deliver babies.  Overall, I would prefer somebody a bit warmer that this doctor.