I just had a spontaneous pneumothorax and drove myself to the ER (I live right next to it). I learned about this during my EMT-Paramedic class but I never thought I'd see it in person, let alone have one myself. Within 5 minutes of arriving in the ER, I had an IV in my right AC and was given, in sequence, one after the other, Zofran, Tramadol, and then 1mg Dilaudid. I turned to the nurse after the third injection and asked her, "Was that the Dilaudid?" ... "Yep." WOW. That was my first time ever having opiates via IV. I can vouch for the rush, it hit me by about the same times it takes to say "Dilaudid." I've never tried heroin so I cannot comment on that, but Dilaudid IV was something I wouldn't mind trying agian... though not being able to breathe sucked balls. They gave me a Dilaudid pump, which I could press every 20 minutes and get 0.2 mgs of Dilaudid IV for 4 days. I set a recurring alarm on my blackberry to go off exactly every 20 minutes. They let me go with 30 Norcos and a lot of Tramadol pills... interesting experience. They also gave me Ativan 1mg IV twice while I was there... I have been prescribed it in higher doses but IV Ativan is a completely different story than pill form from my experience... like really > completely different. I was hallucinating. I saw an 8 foot tall chicken walk into a cave in my room that did not exist... I shook hands with a young man that wasn't there... I asked my parents if the 8 foot tall chicken freaked them out like it had freaked me out and it turns out they were never there then... they walked in not long after and I questioned them about it... let's just say they were quite confused and laughed a little... I saw a friend I haven't seen in over 7 years standing behind my dad who was seated in the corner of the room... he just stood there and looked at me for awhile... I didn't say anything to him... I can't remember a lot of what happened during those 4 days, but those moments stand out in my mind. They gave me 1mg Dilaudid IV three times while I was there. The norcos turned out not to help my pain much at all because my chest cavity had been stretched so much and my whole body (joints/muscles and all) ached badly, so I saw another ER doctor who I had been referred to by a doctor-friend, and he prescribed me 100 X 4mg Dilaudid (Hydromorphone) pills, which I read, and found out, do not work well when taken orally, and the other ER doctor gave me 15 Lortabs. That was a few weeks ago. My chest still hurts. Oh yeah, when they first wheeled me up to the room after I was in the ER for a few hours, they gave me 2mgs of Morphine IV twice... I let the nurse know that I felt absolutely nothing, and I wasn't bending the truth or lying about it one bit... 4mgs of Morphine did not affect me at all... so she brought in the 1mg of Dilaudid again.
and the 8 foot chicken wasn't your normal chicken... it had metal, mechanical legs and was like half-chicken half-robot... it turned to look in my eyes before it disappeared into the cave and it's eyes were blazing red... NOT cool.