Close Call

Friday, my sister Margaret (on the right in the picture above - sorry, Marg, this is the only picture I could find on short notice) went to the hospital to have a bit of outpatient surgery. The surgeon decided to use general anesthesia, because he wasn't exactly sure how complicated the procedure would be. So the good news was that the procedure wasn't as complicated as he thought it might be, and he came out to the waiting room to tell my mom and aunt that everything had gone well, and that they would be sending her to recovery soon. Mom calls me to let me know, and yada, yada, yada.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...they're having a bit of trouble bringing Margaret back around. You know how they always say that even a minor surgery is dangerous because of the anesthesia? Well, case in point. After the normal 5 minute period to come back to consciousness is up and Margaret is still not waking up, they start to worry. They're shaking her, calling her name, etc. When the Anesthesiologist comes back in and sees what's going on, he says, "I think she's paralyzed." WHAT?!?! Okay, at this point you're probably asking yourself how I know what he said, right? Well, I know what he said because Margaret could hear EVERY WORD! So she's laying there (what else could she do, right?), and hears that she's paralyzed. And she thinks, "Great, just what I needed." They mess around with her for a few more minutes - shocking her temples with electrodes, twisting her head around, etc. - and she's feeling and hearing everything. She just cannot open her eyes or, literally, move a muscle. Then she says that the thought occurs to her that she can't breath very well - uh oh. I guess the docs must have come to the same conclusion at that point, because they quickly drugged her back up and stuck a ventilator tube down her throat (this she does not remember, thankfully).
Apparently, a component of what was used in the anesthesia requires a certain amount of an impossible to pronounce enzyme
(http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1935.htm) to flush it quickly out of the system. Where "normal" people have a reading of anywhere between 1900 and 3800, Margaret's blood test results showed that she had 63. Not a typo - I really mean 63. The result of this is that it took her body about 7 hours to process this chemical. All the while, she's in ICU, breathing with the help of a ventilator, restrained, and totally out of it. My dad and I, who are 500 miles away and helpless, are pretty much freaking out. I mean even though the docs said they'd seen this before (although it's pretty rare), when somebody uses the words "paralyzed" and "ventilator", it kind of gets to you.
Luckily, everything worked out alright, and Margaret was released from the hospital the next morning. A little hoarse, quite a bit bruised from the restraints, and definitely disappointed that she didn't have any paranormal experiences during her period of unconsciousness. Since this enzyme deficiency is hereditary, I get to go have blood drawn a week from Monday to be tested, too. I always do so well on tests - I hope I can score better than a 63!
I know she doesn't hear this much from me (for whatever reason, I'm rather stunted when it comes to expressing affection), but (deep breath)...I love you, Marg, and I don't think I could stand to lose you yet. Glad you're back!