That's incredible. Especially since ketamine is used by all anesthetists in.....well in the world pretty much.
Just out of interest (and I hope you don't mind me asking) but was your arm OK after aforementioned ketamine shot into the artery? It's just I've picked up people before who have injected things into arteries before that and called an ambulance (they generally report an intense burning in their hand and fingers as the substance goes straight down the arm rather than the other way to the heart) and they were all very, very concerned they would lose their arms. I had no real choice but to say "no you'll be fine" but I often wondered if they were going to be fine. I asked a surgeon friend of mine and she said it very much depends on the volume of the shot, how sterile it is and .....well just luck since once the drug reaches the small capillaries in the hand that transfer the blood itself from arteries back to veins it can block them leading to cessation of blood supply and gangrene..but it doesn't automatically happen like that as there are several possible outcomes
Were you OK afterwards? Did they have to operate on your arm? It makes me shudder thinking about it. I really hope your arm (and yourself in general) were OK after that, it sounds awful.
take care mate.
Hope you don't mind me asking I'm just curious from a medical stand point.
It's not one of my proudest moments but am happy to tell the tale...
*removes modhat and watches hr leave the building*
On the night in question I was very, very drunk - bottle of gin down and decided in my infinite wisdom that the obvious next step should be 300mg of IM ketamine. This was several years ago when I had an excellent source for "pure" ketamine (powder but definitely not cut with anything) and as much of a tolerance as you would expect of a fiend with a shitload of cheap, high purity ketamine on hand. To be clear, 300mg is obviously a high dose anyway but was fairly standard with the tolerance level I had at the time and IM was my RoA of choice. Was still IVing ket sometimes but there's something very sexy about IM ket and it's far, far easier to hit up muscle than it is to try to find a usefully functioning vein amongst my ravished vascular system. At least it is when you're not a bottle of gin down and got a fat arse to aim for instead. What could possibly go wrong?
What did go wrong is that I somehow managed to hit an arse artery. This would be due to it being not within my immediate field of vision and me being all filled with the drunken confidence of experience to the point I apparently didn't think it worth actually checking there was no blood when I pulled back the plunger then pressed it home.
The first thing I noticed was a feeling of ice-water shooting down my leg which I was not expecting so I (somewhat belatedly) checked the barrel I'd just plucked from my right buttock and saw it had quite a bit of pink froth in it. There was no pain at all (unlike, say, heroin artery shots which hurt like a motherfucker) but there was a very clear and distinct feeling like I'd injected ice-water. It actually felt like it sobered me up instantly. This was also very noticeable - I was in no way feeling ketomised, I just had this sensation of ice-water running through my veins and a very sudden drop from drunkenness to the type of sobriety Douglas Adams describes in one of the Hitchhikers books - the ultrablack coffee that takes you from the most drunk you have ever been down to sober and then keeps going down to some form of ultrasobriety. Not that I'd've passed many breathalysers but is very much how it felt - very sudden, very dramatic, like a switch had been flipped.
I felt like I'd been dropped into a metafreezer - crisp and clean and clear and connected to everything whilst concurrently being disconnected from everything. I also realised that arterial injection was not in the plan but was pretty damn sure had just happened so - being only familiar with occasional accidental heroin and/or crack-type arterial shots (Bad Thing) - I did a bit of googling to see if there was anything specfic to ketamine to take note of. Apparently arterial ketamine is really quite dangerous - risk of blindness and heart attack are the two that I remember best as those were the types of symptoms I was beginning to manifest. My heart was racing - very skittish and fluttery - and I was getting pretty intense tunnel vision. None of the expected effects of ketamine were present at all - this was very, very different.
To be honest (and to be expected) I was becoming quite nervous after what I'd just read and with these very specific and unusual symptoms presenting (specifically the tunnel vision and the racing and fluttery heart feelings) and I do not have a deathwish so I got myself together as best I could and took myself down to the local hospital in town. I'm not quite sure what status this particular hospital has but it is essentially tiny, in a small rural Welsh town and it was around 3am. When I found somebody to speak to at the hospital I discovered that arterial ketamine also apparently freezes vocal chords because I was unable to speak. I was perfectly lucid in thought but I physically could not form words. They were all there, all in the right order, all made sense, all carried useful information but my voicebox was not playing along. If they'd spent less time asking me to speak up when I clearly could not speak but needed to tell them things and just given me a pen things would've moved nuch quicker.
I have to say (and I know this is very specific to my circumstance and would surely not happen in more populous areas) that the two staff on that night mostly seemed to think I was drunk (obviously I would've been stinking of gin at the time) and were more interested in - essentially - pissing about and asking stupid questions cos my voice was all croaky and weird which seemed to amuse them. Telling me over and over that I was just drunk. I know it was just two blokes expecting nothing unusual on a quiet night shift but they were basically having a bit of a laugh and telling me to go sleep it off and I'll be fine. I had to insist (mostly via the medium of gesticulation and the art of mime) that what I had done had actually happened - that I wasn't just there to perform for their amusement - and that there were quite specific medical consequences which seemed to be in effect and that time was of the essence.
Eventually one of them gave me pen and paper and started to take it a bit more seriously once he saw I could write down exactly what I had done and what was happening and that there is a time and place for performance and entertainment and maybe - just maybe - the fella in slippers, slacks and t-shirt who smells of juniper and ethanol is not there just to waste their time but perhaps is in a very risky situation that could be made a lot less risky if they'd just listen and stop asking stupid questions like "Well why would you want to do that then?". What bothered me most was that the knowledge of drinking culture
Thankfully, one of the two had just enough concern to drive me to the main hospital in the nearest bigger town. He still seemed to think I was wasting his time but at least there was enough of an inkling in there somewhere that he realised that perhaps there may be other people with more training and knowledge he could pass me off to. The other one never did get past the sure and certain knowledge that I was just drunk and wasting there time with some stupid story I'd made up. There was actually an argument between the two over whether it was worth the drive and petrol money to get me to the main hospital. Thankfully, one liked an early-morning drive whilst the other preferred to go munch his sandwiches and read the paper.
By the time I got to the main hospital I was feeling much better and my voice had returned. The doctors and nurses in A&E took samples and did doctor and nurse stuff in a more... actually doing relevant stuff kinda way. What a difference a few miles make.
I was very fortunate to have had nothing more than the minor annoyance of having to find my way home on the train in slippers and t-shirt with no money in the pissing rain. As far as I know, I've not damaged anything beyond repair but that seems to be more down to luck than judgement. Much as I
the NHS there's still some way to go when it comes to expanding knowledge and training in certain areas. I know folk don't walk in off the street with arterial ketamine injection concerns often but to not even know that people take ketamine recreationally and just tell them to go sleep it off was genuinely shocking even taking into account this is a very rural area.
/arseketramble
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
