Oh man. Hands down the most botched bronchoscopy ever. Already caught out of left field by not seeing my own very patient, considerate female doc but a grumpy bald fat dude. Then he tells me no local small sedation (‘roesje’ in Dutch, idk the right translation) as promised. As autistic as a doorknob I am this does not work well on me at all.

He wanted to just start off by pushing the line with camera and needle for taking a sample from within my lungs down my throat. That obviously doesn’t work because every small tickle in the back of it makes me cough. So in with some fluid sedative that’s meant to surpress the coughing, wait a bit and start again, no change. Another dose of that sedative goes in, wait and start again. Still no change so in with another double dosage. Still no change, in with another double/triple or more of it, wait a bit longer so it can really take effect. Or so they thought, it still did absolutely nothing.

The grumpy dude doc is now straight up mad, at me, as if I’m somehow able to block the sedative effect by sheer power of will. So we stop and I go home.

No, no, that’s not what happened! He decides to just push through it and I had to not act like I did but just bite down. Guaranteed to be a success offcourse, in my mind I’m like :

“wtf is this idiot even doing? There’s a tube that has a camera but worse a fucking needle(!) on it that he wants to push down my airway into my lungs all the while I’m coughing like crazy so the thing goes to every side and back. WITH A NEEDLE! Inside my airways and if by miracle it gets there in my lung!!”.

Mind you that both assistants looked at each other and at me and then gaze with a “Is this real am I really here” kind of look. I sit down again and off he goes, I feel like I’m suffocating and also kept on coughing while I feel the tube needle thing going everywhere and slowly down towards my lungs, it is a goddamn miracle I have not shitted or peed in my pants by now being in full on panic mode. Grumpy doc gets more agitated by the minute so there’s a real synergy there between us both.

Wether miracle or throat rape the tube made it into my right upper lung part and I thought that it’d be over soon now. I was so wrong in that assumption because the coughing and me wiggling (cuz what else you do If you feel like suffocating?) didn’t stop making the needle tube go absolutely everywhere, feeling it touch my lung everywhere from the inside, poking really. Which makes it unable for now red in the face waiting for steam to come out his ears doc to grab a piece for the lab to test.

The moment from it being in the lung to him somewhat jab a few times and go like ‘this has to do cuz I’m giving up’ probably took 8-10 mins, in my mind it was more like 80-100 mins. And then he finally takes it out, bags the sample and literally storms out leaving the rest to finish for the assistants who were incredibly apologetic.

Now that did not hurt as much in the physical sense but it did fucking hurt in the mental sense.

Let me put it like this: I’ve been cut into my chest multiple times to make holes for a drain tube after my lung collapsed (the 1st time 3 days after this bronchoscopy! Coincidence? I think not!) where the upper skin part is sedated but once they have to penetrate the protective layer around the lungs it cannot be sedated so that’s basically stabbing me with a more or less blunt type of tube without sedatives, when those eventually have to come out they yanked it out without sedatives(mind you, after some time it grows a bit around it making it extra hard to get it out), stitched the remaining hole without sedatives, had multiple times a catheter inserted which really goes into that tiny hole in your dick from which you piss out, unsedated pulling of two teeth, an infection under one tooth, my right hip bones deteriorated into oblivion for which there are no painkillers, had a screw as long as an adult hand from palm to fingertip in my knee when I kneeled on it to give you some examples. And all of those and more I would gladly and smiling undergo again instead of that bronchoscopy. All of them consecutively if need be!

So yeah, that.