The Chloroform, the Tonsils and Me

I was only eight when this happened. I had been coughing and coughing for the last four years. My mum thought it wasn’t normal that I coughed so much (I coughed every five seconds). I had a nose bleed about six times everyday. So, after four years of nose bleeding and coughing she decided to take me to a specialist. He looked in my mouth, nose and ears. My mum, who was sitting in a corner of the room, looked rather grim. When the doctor had finished inspecting me, he told my mum that I needed to get my tonsils taken out. My mum took me to the hospital. They kept me there for two days before the operation. On the day of the operation they took me on a rolling bed into the operating block. There I waited half an hour or so for the surgeon. When he arrived he brought me into the operating room.

The nurses disinfected my hands, then the surgeon put me to sleep with a general anaesthetic. They had underestimated the time of the operation; they thought it would only take an hour, so they gave a little dose of anaesthetic. Later on, in the middle of the operation, the chloroform started wearing off. At first, everything I saw was blurry, but then I started to see better. The nurses and the surgeon were all dressed with green paper hats, green masks, green robes, green blouses and green paper slippers. I blinked, looked down, and saw…BLOOD.

My whole body was starting to feel alive, but I still had much difficulty move my arms and legs. I could move them only very slowly. I felt as if a wood chopper had been cutting trees down in my throat. Then I saw on a table near me one huge, round, red lump. I started to understand what was happening: I was still in the operating room. My throat hurt so much that I lifted my hands to massage it and instead of touching skin I touched a gruesome liquid: my blood! I thought it was some water so I brought my fingers to my mouth and drank my blood. THE TASTE WAS, I PROMISE YOU, HORENDOUS!  Suddenly the nurses and the surgeon, who had been having a meeting turned. The surgeon picked up the big clippers on a table to take my second tonsil and my adenoids out. Suddenly I heard one of the nurses shouting “He’s awake, he’s awake!” Surprised, the surgeon turned to see and he saw that my eyes were wide open.  The surgeon asked me with his big deep voice “Are you okay? Sorry we underestimated the time of the operation”. I tried to answer but my throat hurt too much, but I managed to croak “My throat hurts”. The surgeon told me it was normal that I had a sore throat, because they were still in the middle of the operation.  I saw a mirror in the room, I looked in it, it was horrible: a line going from the top of my throat to the bottom opened in half and completely red. The blood from my throat was dripping onto my stomach. The surgeon and the nurses were having another quick meeting to decide what to do with me. Meanwhile, the surgeon had called another nurse to sew half of my throat back up, so that I would stop losing my blood. After the nurse sewed my throat back up, the surgeon asked her to put me to sleep again. So she did it. Later on, when I woke up again, in the recovery room, the surgeon told me he decided to not tell anything to my mum, but I thought it would be better if I told my mum.

This was the most disgusting, disgusting and painful experience.