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Show 80 are explaining the procedure as they go, each helping the other, including me in their conversation. The "pinch" of the local anesthesia was properly described as was the pulling of tissue somehow, though I am searching for a better descriptive term for what I feel as they seek the vein under the collarbone when suddenly I am gasping for breath. "I can't breathe!" I am saying with a voice so soft I do not recognize it as my own and something has happened to punch the air out of my lungs or maybe it is that I cannot refill my lungs with the required amount of air but I cannot breathe and the intern is quickly putting an oxygen mask onto my face as she smacks the button on the wall, summoning additional help. The door is bursting open and several people I do not recognize gather around the bed as a small army, organizing themselves into their apparently pre-assigned tasks. They are adjusting my pillows and the level of the bed even more and ripping open other packages, pulling out things I do not recognize from them, and strapping the blood pressure cuff onto my arm. The resident and intern fade into the background as observers and an attending physician is taking over the lead position barking out orders, setting the rhythm of the silences between each order. "We're going to put in a chest tube," he is saying to me as the nurse next to him is instructing me how to breathe. "We've probably nicked your lung trying to get the central line in," he adds. |