A Terrifying Experience For A Little Girl

@jaboUK No the Italians hospitals are not very kind toward the children. My Mom was not there, I waited hours in a small cold room before they took care of me. I was so scared.

@LadyDuck It seems a terrible way to treat a small child, doesn't it?

@LadyDuck Nowadays I think parents are allowed to be present when a child is anaethetised, but I'm pretty sure that didn't used to be the case. I've no recollection of my mother being there, but I'm not 100% sure. Your mother obviously wasn't there either.

@just4him You aren't as old as me, so perhaps things had improved by the time you had your operation.

@jaboUK True. Eight years can make a world of difference in medicine.

Ice cream was common offering in those times

@Daljinder Sometimes I wish they would not explain the step by step process, it can give nightmares.

@GardenGerty It's so much better now isn't it? I was bewildered and terrified, and nothing was explained to me.

@pgiblett Lol!! I wouldn't even manage to make up to that stage...You can always ask the doctor to just "rip it off like a band aid". It will be quick surely...

@GreatMartin A lot of people have mentioned the ice cream - I have no memory of that at all. Regarding old people having a problem going 'under' - as I said in the post it was no problem to me, either the actual anaesthetic (English spelling!) or any time afterwards. Just lucky I suppose

@JudyEv

I was promised ice-cream after but it never eventuated - another very sore point (no pun intended).

@Inlemay My husband had his cataracts done and he said it wasn't too bad. Like you though, I'd hate to have anything done to my eyes.

@AnneEJ They used to think taking tonsils out was a cure-all for everything in those days, didn't they? I don't know what the difference is between ether and chloroform, but they both did the same job.

@jaboUK I was very sick the winter before I had mine out, so it was a necessary operation.

@AnneEJ I don't remember being ill, but I may have been. It's just that nearly all children had this operation, in the 1940s anyway.

@Tampa_girl7 It really does make having an operation more comfortable.

@amnabas Did you have chloroform for your surgery?

@bluesa Yes, it's a piece of cake nowadays, as compared with when I went through this.

@DaddyEvil You be careful or I'll get my pet dinosaur to gobble you up!

@jaboUK When I was young(er), Janet, and mom talked about things of yesteryear, I would ask her if dinosaurs still walked the Earth when whatever she was talking about happened.... I am curious if you can catch me to smack the back of my head if I ask you the same question, ma'am? OH! You might ask @bluesa who put me up to this, if you want another target!?

@sol_cee You can learn so much here . It's good to see you again, I've missed you

@antonbunot Cripes - did they really use chloroform for that??

I remember seeing that on TV. Mustached goons with hankies and pretty girls going UNDER in no time. (Learned that new expression today.)

Too true Gary - I was only about 6 years old, but I really do remember struggling. It was a horrible experience.

@poehere I suppose we were too little to understand things properly, so it was natural for us to be scared. At least you didn't have that horrible cloth over your face.

@poehere Oh poor you - and a net over the top of the crib? That must have been horrible. I can't remember much about after my op.

@jaboUK I just remember they gave me some shot to put me to sleep. I woke up in some large size crib is what I called it with some net over the top of it. It was horrible and not a good place to be. I recall this one for sure. I also remember them asking me to talk and I couldn't. My tongue was swelled up in my mouth and I couldn't move it at all. It appears that it got cut somehow during the operation from what they said. It two a few days for the swelling to go down and they made me stay there in the hospital until it did.

@nanette64 You would have benefitted from the modern technology if you had that burst appendix only 5 years ago

@nanette64 Three days! Did you not realise that you were seriously ill?

@jaboUK I thought I just had gastritis until the full bloated feeling relegated itself to the lower right quadrant and I was vomiting bile. I think what made it explode was me having to take one of the 65-pound dogs off the roof of his 6-ft tall enclosure back in the kennels.

@JudyEv Oh my goodness - a chloroform cloth would be better than being awake. (You are the only one of my commenters to spell anaesthetic the same as me!)

@JudyEv I wonder why they were so keen to remove them? Nearly all of us had it done in those days, didn't we?

@jaboUK It seemed to be standard procedure back then. I read, in a novel, a terrible description of it being done before the days of anaesthetic. Horrifying stuff.

@jaboUK But I did not feel anything as the doctors and nurses were very friendly and joking with me while at it

@allknowing I wouldn't have liked local anaesthesia - eek!

@allknowing I'm glad about that, but I don't like the idea of it. They offered me an epidural when I had my hip done, but I didn't fancy hearing them sawing through my bone!

@jaboUK I come out too soon and my lungs don't work, or I throw up, I felt the cut when they did my caesarians even though I was under and I remembered it when I woke up. I have never had a good experience which is why I will never have it again if I can avoid it.

@BelleStarr Oh, in those circumstances I don't blame you!

@BelleStarr - They just seemed to whip out the tonsils at the drop of a hat in those days. (I've just realised that figure of speech looks a bit odd when written like that - drop of a hat!) When you say it never goes well, do you mean you feel bad when you come out of it?

@lokisdad That shock therapy was awful, you are right. I never knew anybody that had it fortunately.

@jaboUK i keep thinking of course it worked you fried their brain now that part doesn't work its off so they won't be doing whatever it was that annoyed you if you didn't kill them.

@lokisdad @jaboUK Oh, my! I do know a lady who was in an asylum after she was shot with a .22 caliber bullet straight into her brain. The bullet didn't kill her, but it did split her brain into two separate lobes with no ties between the two halves... The doctors gave her electro-therapy treatments trying to get her brain to bridge the gap between the two halves again. It didn't work... She slowly relearned how to feed herself and dress herself, but when you spoke with her, you were talking to a four year old child. She couldn't stand seeing socks when she was released from the asylum... She was my brother's mother-in-law. My brother and his wife finally decided that a sock with a bar of soap or an orange in it was the way the people at the asylum punished her if she made any mistakes while relearning things! How barbaric was THAT?!

@Dropsophila It had better not or I would suspect you of nefarious intent

@jaboUK Be careful there, Janet! @Drosophila probably DOES have chloroform on her handkerchief! She's trying to kidnap you and hold you for ransom! Do you know how much ransom she could demand and receive if she took you from myLot and people here didn't get their "fix" of your poetry? OMG! She could demand everything we all make here and probably would get it, too!

@jaboUK lol..yep, but what a horrible experience at the hospital

@TheHorse That's a brilliant thing to do with those children, it must make it so much easier for them.

That is a really great thing to do for them, @TheHorse ! I am glad I am not the only one who has done that! (Sometimes my nieces and nephews ask me questions they are scared to ask their parents or their parents are too busy to answer for them. Now, my great nieces and nephews come to me to ask questions, too.)

@jaboUK I do think it helps.

@VivaLaDani13 It's so good that we can learn from this site, isn't it? I'm fortunate in that I've hardly had any surgery apart from what I describe here, and for my hip last year. But believe me, if you need surgery you are far better to be asleep!

@Daljinder I didn't know that until reading about it in the comments here.

Chloroform is very popular among kidnappers LOL!