BMBx #10

BMBx - Bone Marrow Biopsy. Thursday 6/28/2012. 

Tomorrow will be the 10th time I have to endure this procedure. Hands down, this has been the single, most painful of all medical procedures for me, because even though it lasts about 5-15 minutes depending on the technique and experience of the doctor or nurse performing it, there's a baseline for the amount of pain you'll feel.

In comparing all of the painful events that have taken place in the last 2.5 years, there are two different types of pain: acute and chronic. Acute to me means an extremely unbearable instance of pain and chronic is mostly long-term pain, which in the recent past has also been largely unbearable as waking up everyday with the same feeling of something destroying your body adds up to a burden more than one can handle. A BMBx belongs to the acute category and the only way for me to convey how deep into your bones they reach with that needle is through this video. It's one thing to try to put into words what exactly they do, which I don't think I can even fairly accomplish, but a whole another to have a video of the entire procedure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfOeGWRmyl0&feature=relmfu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_marrow_examination

 I don't exactly act like this girl when I'm in there anymore as I'm well aware of what is to come, but the first time they performed it on me, I felt as if I will never be able to walk again due to this giant hole being drilled into the back of my hip. My bones were so strong at that point that the nurse practitioner couldn't even insert the needle deep enough into the bone marrow to be able to take an aspirate sample. She drilled me for 10 minutes as I laid there wondering when this is going to be over and screaming in pain. Eventually, I was sick of screaming and started to cry, because I didn't know why I deserved torture of that extremity and started a  mental list of the darkest moments that I knew I would experience in the months and years to come. She finally quit and left to ask the doctor what she should do and he told her to just start over and try the left side. I do not understand why they did not choose the left side to begin with as I'm a right handed person, so my right side is much stronger than my left...She came back and told me this, but gave me a 30 minute break in between the two tries.

Those 30 minutes were eternities to me. The darkest eternities. Imagine having felt that degree of pain for the first time and thinking that wasn't even as deep as they want to go. How much worse is that going to feel? How much longer is that going to take? The worst part, repetition of the entire procedure, one more hole in the hip and soreness for months on both sides. Thankfully, she succeeded in cracking into this one and took the aspirate. They use a hollow needle as the base so that they can insert another one to pull out the aspirate sample. When they're doing this,  it feels like someone is pulling the life right out of you. I never knew what bone marrow really was, but when they took an aspirate from it, I knew exactly deep they went in and wondered how that part of my body will ever repair. Older people probably faint when they're experience this step. If they have a sufficient amount of aspirate, they move the base in deeper to get the actual biopsy, meaning a chunk of your bone. All of this ideally is done within 5-10 minutes, but most of mine have taken longer. At Hopkins, they did a very in depth biopsy, where the aspirate was taken about 4-5 times. Usually, having this done once during the whole thing is painful enough, but that day, I was very, very close to losing consciousness due to pain. These days, I barely make a sound when the pain hits me, but it takes a tremendous amount of self control to not beat the crap out of the person doing this to you. I just try to grab onto the bed I'm laying on or whatever else is within reach when the pressure along with the pain starts. 


The best strategy is to just not think about the pain until it actually comes, because that is a complete waste of time.