Why Flag Versed (Midazolam) ?
Here is a list of the complaints about Versed we commonly encounter:
* Too often, the drug is used in a sneaky or furtive manner. Every manner of lying, cheating and BS-ing has been reported by people who unwittingly received this drug. Knowledgeable people, including medical people, have been given Versed after clearly refusing it.
* Versed is NOT a pain medication. The main effects are AMNESIA and patient compliance. Many patients feel they were mishandled, given inadequate pain management, or both. The impression is that the medical staff tries to hide behind the amnesia the patient is expected to have.
* Paradoxical reactions including anxiety, delirium and aggression. This includes patients attacking or trying to leave. They lose touch with reality, not knowing where they are or what is really occurring.
* Some patients experienced a distorted, nightmarish version of their procedure accompanied by feelings of abandonment and panic. This is often accompanied by the next item:
* A kind of sleep paralysis - patient is aware but cannot move and cannot communicate.
* Amnesia did NOT take place for some patients. Patients recall a bad experience!
* Some patients report a "creepy obedience" overcoming them.
* PTSD. Many patients report symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after having this drug.
* Weird panic or anxiety episodes ("flashbacks") for some time (weeks, months, years) post-op.
* Long term memory disruption. Memories formed prior to the use of Versed are lost. Some people are unable to retain new information or complete tasks.
What is Versed?
Versed (Midazolam) is a sedative that causes amnesia. It is commonly administered in combination with anesthesia before and during surgery. It is also commonly used for minor procedures like colonoscopies so that patients won't remember pain and discomfort. However, that does not mean that those sensations will not be experienced.
Why be concerned about Versed?
If you are a person who wishes to be involved in your medical care, want to interact with your treatment providers, and want to be as aware and alert as possible during procedures, then you will want to be aware of this commonly-used drug.
How would you feel if you were given a drug, without your knowledge, that wiped out any memory of events that occurred over a period of hours?
A person who is under the influence of Versed can function, and can even carry on a conversation, but will remember nothing once the drug wears off. The use of Versed can open the door to abuse. If there is mishandling of the patient during procedures the patient will have no memory.
We are not saying that people should never be anesthetized, or that sedation should never be an option, but rather that:
* One should be given a complete description of what is going to be done to them. If Versed (conscious sedation) is to be used, the patient should be aware of the amnesia that will result.
* When possible, you should have a choice about being awake for any procedure or part thereof. We take exception to being denied a choice in those cases where one exists. One reason we have this site is because so many people report being deceived.
* Attention should be paid to the fact that some people find anesthesia very upsetting and may prefer a few minutes of moderate physical discomfort to a longer period of mental discomfort. Versed appears to cause PTSD in some people.
* Having a bad experience blocked from long term memory is not the same as never having had the experience in the first place. We think that if they have to make you forget, then they are not taking adequate steps to manage pain and discomfort.
* Versed is not a requirement for surgery. Medical professionals should be completely honest about the effects, and not try to trick or coerce a patient into having it. It should not be used solely for the profit or convenience of the medical staff.
What can you do?
Watch out for these commonly used phrases:
* "I am giving you something to relax you." This is too often an understatement, given the frequent side effects. This statement also completely avoids mentioning the amnesia Versed causes.
* "You will be given Conscious Sedation." or "You will be awake, but won't remember anything." This means they probably want to use Versed.
* "You will be in La-La Land." How you can be anywhere you don't remember beats us! "La-La Land" would be more like having a large dose of pain killers - you would be awake but not care. With Versed you will be functional but won't remember a thing.
* Beware of "Most People..." When you have a choice with your anesthesia, you should not feel pressured to make a decision based on what "most people" receive.
* "You are not a Doctor " So what? That does not make you uninformed. For all they know other doctors (your primary care physician for starters) may have already told you enough to make an informed decision. Besides, this is no excuse for pushing you to have an amnesia drug!
Insist on answers!
* Remember that anesthesiologists are not employees of the hospital, but they have no problem hiding behind hospital rules when there is a problem.
* Keep in mind that they are working for you, so ultimately YOU are the boss. Most of them will not volunteer anything, so you must be prepared to ask them very specific questions, and be very assertive. A patient advocate, who can be a caring friend or relative, should accompany you to all appointments and procedures and take notes.
* Be sure to find out what your financial liability will be if you are not satisfied.
If you aren't happy, complain!
There are concerned people out there who will accept your feedback. At least we like to think there are a few. They can't read our minds. Complain first to the hospital. They may ask you to put it in writing. Do so. That way there is a record of your complaint. Then, talk to your anesthesiologist. Chances are, he/she works through a group. If the anesthesiologist does not respond, try going to the associates group.
If someone botches a repair job on your car people don't fault you for complaining. But many people feel bad about complaining to a doctor or a hospital, even though they are working on something far more precious - YOU. Don't be intimidated!
Personal Accounts
Kirt's Account:
I had bilateral hernia surgery with laparoscopy. I knew I was facing general anesthesia, but I fell hook line and sinker for the 'I am giving you something to relax you' line before the surgery.
I had what seemed like a good conversation with the anesthesiologist and was feeling like I could trust him, so I thought 'OK I will be a little groggy, but conscious until he puts me to sleep for the main event'. No mention of conscious sedation or Versed was made. Just after I reached the operating table I realized something was happening, and then my memory disappeared in a roar of static.
I awoke to discover that not only had I been put to sleep for the main event, I had even been excluded from the prep.
When I later complained, I was told "Most People are very happy to wake up and have the procedure over with". Well I wasn't, I was livid, and when I was told the above I should have said "that's fine for them, but what does it have to do with me?"
It has been eight months since the surgery and I still feel taken advantage of, treated as if I was a five year-old, and yes, raped of my memory. I cannot see how a trained MD or anyone can justify the withholding of fundamental information like this. Even when I confronted him several weeks after the surgery he still tried to avoid saying I had been given Versed, until I finally said 'you gave me Versed didn't you?' I can only think that there must be a problem with this drug if they don't want to tell you they are using it.
Worse yet, the anesthesiologist's response to my questioning him was to lecture me about how I had to 'trust those who know what they are doing', and told me that I was one of those people who wanted to know everything. Personally I will never trust another anesthesiologist in my life. I wish I had said that, but I was still so shaken from my original experience that I just listened, dumbfounded.
While the surgery was technically successful I will always regard it as a failure because of the above.
Mary's account:
I went in for out-patient abdominal surgery. I had had several surgeries in the past and am not squeamish about surgery.
Prior to being wheeled down to surgery, I was told that they were giving me "something to relax me." I recall getting in the chair and going part way to the OR, but that is where my memory stopped. I have no recall of meeting the surgical team, getting onto the table, etc.
When I awoke, I was very agitated and upset. I remember wondering what had happened to me, with the sense that something very bad had happened but I couldn't remember what. I had finger-mark bruises on my upper arms and several other, larger bruises elsewhere. My neck hurt so bad that I was unable to turn my head for 24 hours.
I was extremely distressed that the hospital had not told me about the effects of versed and experienced severe anxiety for months about the memory gap. I had to go to counseling and was put on an anti-anxiety medication.
When I complained to the hospital, I was patronized and treated like a little kid. I did not feel as if they took me seriously.
Weeks later, I went to use my instant cash card, put it into the machine, and went to enter the PIN number, when I realized, much to my shock, that I had absolutely no idea of what the number was. I had used the same PIN for years. It never did come back. No doubt there are other 'lost' things, but I haven't recognized what they are.
Tim's Account:
I had bilateral hernia repair in September of 2004. The original plan was to use MAC ("Monitored Anesthetic Care"). The anesthesiologist did not explain the effects of Versed and did not explain that the MAC would be initiated in the holding area before I was wheeled to the OR.
The drug was not named. I was only told that from my perspective, the experience would seem like general anesthesia. This did not make sense - it seemed contradictory. The "A" word (amnesia) was not mentioned. I have had numerous operations in the past and my experience led me to assume that the main event would occur in the OR. The anesthesiologist introduced the Versed into the IV while I was still in the holding area. I asked what it was and the reply was simply "benzodiazepines." I know what benzos are and thought I was getting something like Valium. I was shocked when, from my perspective, I found myself in recovery what seemed like a few minutes later.
After surgery I was told that I had a bad reaction to the Versed so they ended up putting me under. The nurse in the PACU said that my legs were shaking and this is why they used general anesthesia. The surgeon's report stated that I was moving my extremities and would not be still. I was also told that I was unable to follow instructions. This is disturbing since I am not squeamish about surgery nor have I ever been out of control like this.
When I later spoke with my anesthesiologist, she used a lot of euphemistic baby talk, describing the amnesia as "making you forgetful" and describing the general anesthesia as "we had to make you more sleepy". My surgeon dodged the bullet saying "We're always ready to do general when we do MAC". This is all BS. Looking back on the experience, my wife and I agree that the anesthesiologist was very deceptive.
I am an electrical engineer. In the weeks after my return to work, I found that I had no recall of certain details of my job. We are very procedure and detail oriented. I found that certain blocks of information seemed to have simply disappeared from my long term memory. What else have I forgotten?
For three years post-op I experienced flashbacks of anxiety that occurred randomly - while at work, while driving, while teaching. These were accompanied by an odd sensation of trying to recall a memory but it refused to come into focus. Very strange, very unsettling - and I never experienced anything like this before exposure to Versed.
I was in my 40's when this happened. I have had several surgeries, numerous emergency room visits and my share of dental work. I never had a bad outcome or cause to complain until my Versed episode.
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684 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 684 Newer› Newest»Beware of the patient relations dept. They are part of risk management for the hospital. They do not give a damn about you, they only are there to keep the hospital from being sued.
Yes, patient relations and risk management are there to protect the hospital. But if nobody ever reports problems that happen at the hospital, they will never know about that risk, and there is no hope that they will ever do anything about it.
So you should not expect to be anything but a data point to them, but if you say nothing, you are not even that.
That's true M! I filed written complaints after the patient relations person declared that "standard of care" was met in my case. That's when I discovered that this person's job description is one of risk management. This finding pissed me off even more.... I am trying really hard to believe that shooting Versed into unsuspecting people is NOT "standard of care" in all hospitals. Just the one I was unfortunate enough to at.
Unfortunately, "shooting Versed into unsuspecting people" IS the standard of care in most hospitals.
I have been lucky that most of the medical professionals I have talked to about my experience have been really understanding, and have even changed their practices in response to hearing my story.
My primary care doctor told me that she never really thought twice about Versed until she saw what it did to me. Now she tells all her patients, when making referrals for procedures, about the amnestic effects of Versed. If her patients don't want it, she will not send them to anyone who insists on using it.
You said it! CONTROL OVER YOU AND MONEY. I am writing a letter to the doctor who so glibly gave my husband Versed and just how angry we are over how sneaky they were and are about it. I was including many comments from this and other sites about how callously and cruelly people are treated thinking surely if he knows he will change, when it finally dawned on me -- he and they DO KNOW and DO NOT CARE!!! It really is all about the money and control.
Casey if you could do me a really big favor. Contact your elected representatives at the state level and the federal level. Call, e-mail etc. Health care costs are a big deal right now and we need to strike while the iron is hot. Explain the abuse, the helplessness, the attitude, the lack of oversight, the violation of patient rights, lack of informed consent, the enormous cost of frivolously injecting this poison. There is a senate committee in Washington DC that is looking into this trying to figure out how to bring down the cost, and make health care better! Senator Edward Kennedy is the ranking Democrat, but you better try Senator Chris Dodd. The ranking Republican member on the health care committee is Senator Enzi from Wyoming. Tell them how to do it!
http://help.senate.gov/About.html Here's the complete list of all the Senators on the health care committee from both parties. Maybe yours is on there for extra effect when you call. There is a formula these people use and its something like for every person who calls or e-mails they consider that ONE person is equal to 10,000 constituents! Keep in mind that the enemy (that's right, medical care has now become an adversarial relationship most of the time. My apologies to those who really do put the patient first)is also reading this. They may be calling too and saying how wonderful, relaxing, etc. the drug is.
Versed, well, before my wife was on no meds. After Versed she is on both Lexapro and Zyprexa. She takes it religiously and is afraid of what her life would be with out those two meds. She sees a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. There was no disclosure at all and the hospital can not find the records of the procedure. These professionals ? have no idea of what they are doing!!! Why do we allow it?
I'm saddened to read of your wife's experience, and I sincerely hope that she improves.
I am not a medical professional—and I hope you don't mind my saying this—but I do feel compelled to say that I think the best thing would be to get your wife off of any additional psychiatric drugs (such as the ones you mentioned), lest they cause her even *more* emotional problems. Especially since, as you indicated, she hadn't been on any before Versed.
My general viewpoint is that people who have had their mental health damaged by this terrible drug, should make every effort to allow their central nervous systems to heal from its effects naturally. Indeed, the last thing that I'd view as therapeutic in such circumstances would be to throw off the delicate balance between the brain's various neurotransmission systems even further with additional brain-disabling drugs. I obviously do not know the particulars of your wife's situation, but I don't view more drugs as a solution. Mental health does not come from a pill bottle, despite the tens of billions of advertising dollars spent annually to convince consumers that it does.
Recovery from Versed's devastating mental-health effects—specifically, recovery through non-pharmacological means—while slow, is certainly possible. It just takes time, effort, patience, knowledge, understanding, and emotional support. In short, the exact things that you're *not* going to get from today's medical profession. All you're going to get from them is more drug-induced harm, masquerading as "therapy."
I too live in fear of stopping medication. I kept trying to commit suicide before I went on meds. So I am unwilling to stop without my psychiatrist's recommendation. I do agree that the few meds you can maintain your life on the better, though.
I just saw this article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/health/12icu.html?pagewanted=1&fta=y
There are studies finding that over-sedation in the ICU can lead to PTSD due to hallucinations and delusional memories. Of course, we all know what drug they are using as a sedative, so it is good to see that there is evidence that it can cause harm.
M, thanks for posting this article. There is actually plenty of other scientific evidence that commonly used anesthetics and sedatives (like Versed) can be harmful to cognitive function.
Anyway, my favorite quote would have to be from Dr. Kress:
"My opinion is that maintaining some awareness of reality is better for your psyche."
Gee, ya think? No sh*t, Sigmund.
Yes M, thanks for posting this article. I went through it and contacted all the contributing doctors who are studying this mental degredation. It took a while, but I am determined that our voices will be heard in regard to this horrible drug. They MAY be interested to learn that it isn't just people in the ICU that are being harmed by Versed. It's all of us too that have only had it for a brief time and most of it only once. Anybody can contact me at nomidazolam@aol.com
Write to your insurance carrier and complain about fraud. Hospitals are injecting Versed without authorization, i.e "informed consent" for unecessary and expensive "conscious sedation." We are all paying for this via our insurance rates. Hospitals are the real winners. I am suggesting something like dentists have, where you can request "sedation dentistry" but the insurance will not pick up the cost. Watch how fast they change their tune about Versed, once insurance companies won't pay for it.
Here is a good read! Maybe some of the medical people are starting to get it! Sorry I,m not sure how to post a link to this page.
FEBRUARY 13, 2009, 7:51 P.M. ET 'Take a Deep Breath...'
Some doctors are pushing sedation-free colon exams. Really.Article
Comments (2)
more in Personal Finance »By LAURA JOHANNES
I don't enjoy pain.
But last year, when getting my first colonoscopy, I became one of a small group of people who have declined the usual dose of sedatives. The medication makes you drowsy, temporarily amnesiac and, often, unable to do anything useful the rest of the day.
The Journal Report
See the complete Encore report.The so-called unsedated colonoscopy is a nearly secret option. Few U.S. physicians offer it unless you ask them first. Yet I was astounded at how little pain I felt -- no more than indigestion after Thanksgiving dinner. Instead of sleeping after the procedure, I worked out in my home gym and got some work done on a story.
Later, I realized my unconventional choice put me smack in the middle of a growing medical debate. Sedation-free colonoscopies are common in Europe and Asia, but doctors estimate they make up fewer than 1% of the procedures done in the U.S. In recent years, a small but determined group of American doctors -- including the president of a professional society for physicians who perform the exams -- have begun to push to make the option more widely available.
"People don't understand you can do this comfortably. They think that everybody is going to hurt. But it doesn't have to be that way," says John L. Petrini, a Santa Barbara, Calif., physician who is president of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in Oak Brook, Ill.
The Benefits
Dr. Petrini and other doctors argue that sedation-free colonoscopies are safer, since sedatives have a small risk of serious complications, including death. Skipping sedation also saves money (although, at the moment, hospitals are often the ones enjoying the savings, as opposed to patients or insurers), and the procedure is more convenient. That's because patients don't need to arrange for someone to take them home. Also, many patients prefer seeing their colon (on a video screen), asking the doctor questions and remembering the experience.
But some doctors think forgoing sedation is crazy. In a study published in 2004 in the Southern Medical Journal, researchers argued that the mere thought of unsedated endoscopic procedures, including colonoscopy, "sends waves of chills down patients' spines."
Colonoscopy involves inserting into the rectum a thin, flexible tube containing a tiny video camera, and exploring five or six feet of colon. In normal-risk individuals, the procedure is typically done once at age 50, and then, if negative, every 10 years after that. If precancerous polyps are found, they can be removed; if one is found to be cancerous, the patient can be treated early while chances for recovery are best.
Sedation is widely used because "the majority of patients don't want to remember the procedure," says David A. Johnson, past president of the American College of Gastroenterology and chief of gastroenterology at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va.
Moreover, doctors fear that unsedated colonoscopies would result in unpleasant experiences. "We're very concerned about the public reputation of colonoscopy in terms of adherence to colon-cancer screening," adds Douglas K. Rex, director of endoscopy at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. He's had two unsedated colonoscopies himself -- mainly because he couldn't afford to miss a full day of work -- but thinks that only a minority of people, mostly busy, educated professionals, will want to do the same.
Sedation procedures vary a lot by physician and region of the country. Some doctors will put you to sleep entirely with a drug called propofol, sometimes with an anesthesiologist present monitoring your condition.
Another common option is "conscious sedation," in which you are generally drowsy but will wake up enough to cooperate as needed. This generally involves a narcotic painkiller such as Demerol and midazolam, a generic anti-anxiety drug (formerly sold under the brand name Versed) that often causes patients to forget what happened during the procedure. "A lot of people look at me when we're done and say, 'When are we going to start?' " says Dr. Johnson.
Quizzing the Nurses
Though I'm only 43, my doctor ordered a colonoscopy because my father had colon cancer. A few days before the procedure, I was told I would be given conscious sedation with midazolam. I knew midazolam causes temporary amnesia, and, being a control freak, I hated the idea that I would be seemingly awake yet forget the experience. I asked if there was another option. The nurse told me I could do it with no sedation at all -- but her tone of voice implied I'd be crazy to try it.
When I arrived at the hospital, I still hadn't made up my mind. I started quizzing the nurses. I learned to my surprise that many doctors and nurses choose to skip the sedatives. One of the nurses had undergone a colonoscopy unsedated, and told me it wasn't too bad once the instrument negotiated the first turn. There are four major turns and 10 minor turns, according to Dr. Rex.
Just in Case
I was a bit scared, but decided to try it. An intravenous port was put in my arm, and the physician, Benjamin Smith, told me that I could have the sedation at any time if the pain became intense. I lay on my left side and was able to watch a video of the inside of my colon. Initially, I was so immersed in the television screen that I forgot it was supposed to hurt. Despite years of overindulging in Chinese takeout and underindulging in leafy green vegetables, my colon was pink, healthy and free of polyps.
During the procedure, air is pumped into the colon to distend it and make it easier for the gastroenterologist to see. I kept waiting for the pain and then -- ouch, there it was. It felt like a bad abdominal cramp after eating too much of all the wrong things. The nurse helped me breathe deeply to relax my colon and minimize the pain. As it subsided, I asked Dr. Smith if that was the first turn. Nope, "we're at the end," he said, pointing out the cecum, a pouch which marks the top portion of the large intestine.
After the procedure, while other patients were either sleeping off their medications in the recovery room or walking around in a dazed state talking nonsense, I took a quick bite of a muffin and went out to lunch.
One of those to launch the push for unsedated colonoscopy was Joseph G. White, a gastroenterologist at Scott & White Healthcare, a hospital and clinic in Temple, Texas. In data presented at the 2000 meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, he found that 72% of a test group of 158 patients chose unsedated colonoscopy when it was offered. Most completed the procedure successfully and would do it again.
At the meeting, Dr. White argued that unsedated colonoscopy should become the new standard in the U.S. But he hasn't had the chutzpah to actually do it in his own practice.
"If you go in stone cold and say, 'Hi, I'm Dr. White, let me try to do this without sedation,' that isn't going to come across real well," he says. "It's easier to go with the flow, and the standard is sedation." He offers the nonsedated option to some of the patients he feels he knows well enough to broach the subject, as well as to anyone who asks him about it.
At the Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center, a Veterans Affairs facility in Los Angeles, a continuing nursing shortage has forced a re-examination of the need for sedation with colonoscopies. Sepulveda didn't have enough nurses to administer sedation and monitor patients in the recovery room, so it gave patients a choice: Go to another facility, or go without sedation. Some 30% of 483 patients chose the latter, according to results published last year in the journal Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. The primary reason was a desire to be able to communicate with the doctor during and after the procedure. Another top reason: An escort wasn't needed if sedation wasn't used.
Of those whose procedure was completed successfully, 77% rated the experience as "good" and said they would likely do it again. "Some patients have discomfort but say they would do it again, because it was short-lived," says Felix W. Leung, the study's lead author and a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Some Say Stop
But Dr. Leung's work had a major downside. Doctors were successful in reaching the cecum only 81% of the time, even in patients with clean bowels. The others, who stopped the procedure due to discomfort, had to undergo a sedated colonoscopy at another facility or get screened for cancer using another method. In a new study awaiting publication, Dr. Leung reports that pumping in water instead of air to distend the colon is more comfortable for patients, resulting in a success rate of 97%.
Lawrence Cohen, an associate clinical professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, calls Dr. Leung's work "fascinating," but points out that the veteran population may have a higher pain tolerance than the general public. Dr. Rex points out that Dr. Leung's patients are also mostly males, whose colons tend to be less tortuous than women's.
Says Dr. Cohen: "This is a big country with a population that's incredibly diverse with respect to age, gender, risk factors and the anatomy of the colons."
"I'm not pushing this on everybody," Dr. Leung says, "but my experience since 2002 shows this is something that doctors ought to offer to patients."
—Ms. Johannes is a writer in Boston. She can be reached at encore@wsj.com.
If people were told the truth about sedation you would have a lot more people opting out. In this article they offer the patient "sedation" ie amnesia instead of a pain killer. Am I the only one who gets the creeps reading this?
In a recent converstation the topic of chemical restraint came up. If you Google that, guess what comes up?! It's not at the top, but it is there. Check this out: http://www.fpnotebook.com/Psych/
Behavior/ChmclRstrnts.htm
How do you spell control?
V-E-R-S-E-D
I would like to know where the author of this article works so that I can go there and if I am not 100% happy, I can "Complain, Complain, Complain". Doctors, Nurses, and Anesthesiologists are under a great deal of physical, emotional, and mental stress; they do the best with what they have. Unfortunately, they can not please 100% of the people ... 100% of the time. As a nurse, it blows my mind how much people "Complain, Complain, Complain." Firstly, when you are admitted to the hospital, you are not being admitted to the Seven Springs Resort and Spa. There will be no surf and turf or a manservant who is at your complete disposal. Nurses might have 10 other patients to take care of besides yourself. I've had patients having heart attacks while the family members of the sweet lady in the next bed were ready to "Complain, Complain, Complain" because their mother couldn't get a bedpan as the nurses and doctors were performing CPR. So ... where do you work? I want to come in and demand that you kiss my butt 100% of the time or I will threaten you that I will complain and then post to a blog telling everyone to "Complain, Complain, Complain"
Well, Nurse, a very basic concept that your above comments would seem to indicate that you do not grasp terribly well, is that somewhere inside each mass of live flesh that you tend to during your rounds, resides a soul: a sentient consciousness with its own moral and ethical precepts, emotions, and intellect. In short, your patients are PEOPLE. They are not inert objects to be manhandled, stripped of their dignity, and (all too often) injured, simply because you and your colleagues are too exhausted, overworked, or just plain inept to treat them humanely.
You, Nurse, are hard proof that contemporary nursing curricula should lighten up on the pharmacology courses and instead make more of an effort to teach basic people skills, which your comments suggest that you sorely lack.
If, as it seems, you're expecting a medal for carrying out the most basic job responsibilities of a profession that you chose, then you ought to consider that the readership of this site is probably not the most receptive audience for that sentiment.
Then again, given your obviously adversarial attitude toward patients, that's likely precisely why you chose to express it here.
To the above: Your fancy linguistic skills don't impress me whatsoever. Point is ... the next time you are in the hospital and you require CPR, please don't be offended if I cease chest compressions to get your roomate a bedpan, lest I live in fear that she will complain. End of story!
To Anonymous Nurse:
You came to the wrong place . . . to complain!
This site is for people who have complaints about Versed and/or how it is sometimes (mis)used.
This is not supposed to be a forum for black-brushing the entire medical community. Or for complaining about people who do so.
I totally agree with you that you people are way too stressed - everyone from the chief surgeon to the janitor. You are required to work too many hours and your shift could be any time around the clock.
I see this every time I enter a hospital. Who's looking out for YOUR health and sanity? This is a serious issue like the economy, etc.
Respect and courtesy should be mutual. Everybody's life sucks, so why make it harder for the other person? For what it's worth, I know I always try to be nice to strangers, medical or otherwise.
Back to Versed for a moment. I have heard of many instances where Versed has turned otherwise normal people into some sort of monster. Apparently it freaks out some people. Not good for anyone involved!
Now have a nice day - and I'm serious! Don't let the bastards grind you down. And please, for the sake of my posters - shun Versed!
One more item:
You and I both know that the "Bedpan Family" are morons.
(Perhaps the staff should be suing *them*. Or, more realistically, the family of the person getting CPR sues the Bedpan Family if they interfere enough!)
To the anonymous nurse. We are not complaining about being 100% happy. We are complaining about being injected with a psychotropic drug against our will, or without proper explanation, or both. We are complaining about the anesthetist BREAKING THE LAW! Versed is not in the same catagory as bed pan changing. Can you grasp the difference? If you guys don't have time to treat us a human beings and not just automaticlly turn us into zombies so you job is easier, why then are YOU not complaining? I would think that you nurses could gain some attention if you mentioned what was being done to your patients in the name of making your job easier! Please nurse, if you see that we are being drugged against our will, can you speak up? We are not asking for spa service. We are asking not to be drugged into submission. We are asking that informed consent LAWS be followed. This is not a site for bed pan changing (is there a law about that?) or not responding to calls from the patient although in the hospital I was at this is a big problem. It just wasn't my problem. My problem is the absolute disregard for my very precise instructions not to dope me up to the point of oblivion. My instructions are well within the law as to what I proposed and well within the ability of my caregivers to supply. They CHOSE the easy way out against my will. I was mugged at the hospital. Kicked in the head with Versed and violated. This is a little bit more than complaining about a bed pan not being changed. By the way, whoever the anonymous is that has such a superb grasp of the English language, KUDUS! You convey our message gloriously. I wish I could write so well!
Just one more thing, nurse, if you will... If you feel you need to give me Versed before, during or after the CPR, please go change the bedpan. Come back when I am dead.
I will agree with Jackie, if there is ever a situation that I would die without Versed, please let me die. And I hope that if anyone feels the need to give me Versed again, they will do me favor and give me a lethal dose of morphine as well.
ALL OF THESE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT VERSED,AND HOW IT MESSED UP THEIR LIFE,MAKE ME THINK THEY ARE LOOKING FOR MONEY????
No, that would be whichever pharmaceutical companies still manufacture midazolam—they would be the ones "looking for money." At the continued expense of people's well-being, unfortunately.
Whereas the people on this site, they are simply trying to raise awareness to this issue so that other unsuspecting people can be spared the horrors that they went through.
And how about you? What are you "looking for" in your above effort to smear and discredit total strangers engaged in a discussion about adverse reactions to a drug?
Granted, I haven't read all the posts on this site, but I don't think any of them mention looking for money.
I think most of us are trying to understand why so many clinicians love versed to the point where they refuse to follow the prescribing instructions that are provided by the manufacturer and approved by the FDA, and give it to patients even when the patients have refused it.
I am looking for JUSTICE! I was viciously attacked at the hospital with a drug known to cause serious mental degredation, long term. You medical types can't fool me. You know all about this reaction and you don't care because not only does this drug make your job easier, but you can also charge a fortune for its use. For proof look at how much extra Dentists charge for IV sedation with the same drug. These dentists must be salivating at the thought of getting the same "standard of care" as hospitals have. Imagine being forced to endure this horrible drug just to get a cavity filled. This is already happening at the hospital with the most minor of procedures, so it isn't beyond the range of possibility. Versed is used so that hospitals can make more money. Isn't it almost always the case where the accuser is guilty of the behavior he/she is accusing the victim of? I want the hospital and all its little minions to be held to the same standard as anybody else is. I said *NO* to Versed and all of the general anesthetic drugs. I want there to be SERIOUS penalties for this kind of forced treatment. I imagine the state will get that money. I want to be able to deduct from my bill any drugs and services that I declined. That way I won't have forced treatment so that the HOSPITAL can rake in the cash. If the hospital wasn't making so much money on Versed they wouldn't be forcing it on us would they? In a perfect world I would be able to criminally prosecute the hospital personnel responsible for the assault. I would hope to have victim restitution for the assault, enough to cover the counseling and drug therapy required after the assault. Why should I have to pay for this out of my pocket when the defiance of my wishes by medical "professionals" is the cause of it? This is YOUR FAULT you medical people! You are the ones who want that easy money! The tide is starting to turn medical people! They are already starting to create laws where the hospital can't profit from the "preventable illnesses" you guys carelessly cause! The outrageous salaries you people make are being looked into. Forced drugging will be next. Along with "Universal Health Care" will come some accountability for what you medical people are doing. It can't come any too soon.
Earlier today I randomly came across the below-linked discussion thread from the Web site of an online community called the Student Doctor Network. Note that the discussion is not specifically about Versed, but Versed does actually come up (horrifyingly so, coincidentally, given the nature of the comment made about it) on Page 2 of the thread, in Post #65.
An interesting feature of this discussion is the entry into it—nearly four years after the thread began—of a person who suffered serious long-term injury as the result of having been administered the drug being discussed. This occurs on Page 1 of the thread (see Post #44).
It is, however, the replies that follow, posted by the various medical students, residents, and practitioners who make up the membership of the site, that I find most striking. Many of these folks apparently routinely administer to their patients (and, evidently, think quite highly of) the drug being discussed, and—as if on cue—proceed to basically tear the "complaining" person apart, discount his suffering, demonize him, question his knowledge of the subject, and (for the most part) ignore everything he says. Page 2 of the thread, in particular, borders on barf-worthy in terms of the metaphorical high-fiving going on among the other participants in the discussion, over their apparent belief that their various smug (and largely non-responsive) replies somehow function to "disprove" the adverse effects described by the aforementioned person.
The overall dynamics of the discussion are so eerily, shockingly, and sickeningly similar to those usually encountered whenever an anti-Versed sentiment is expressed to a medical practitioner, that I thought it might be of some constructive value to post a link to the thread here, as it is yet another clear example of the seemingly deep entrenchment of a certain robot-like, arrogant, unbending, and patient-unfriendly mentality in the medical profession these days—something to which I think patients' awareness ought to be raised. The thread is also a sad reminder of patients' urgent need to educate themselves thoroughly before ever entering a medical office nowadays.
Here is a link to it:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=180249
Nice post. We encountered the same phenomena here:
http://www.nurse-anesthesia.org/showthread.php?p=20651#poststop
Someone also provided this link (same web site):
http://www.nurse-anesthesia.org/showpost.php?p=26921&postcount=24
Same attitude but nobody ran with this one.
Anonymous: How did you make your link clickable???
Hi Tim,
To do that, copy and paste into your comment the URL that you wish to link to (including the "http://" prefix), and then precede the pasted URL with the following HTML:
"less than" symbol, followed by:
a href="
Then, immediately after the pasted URL, type a double quotation mark, followed by a "greater than" symbol.
In each instance, there should be no spaces between the URL and the above-specified HTML.
You then need to specify what text is actually going to be linked, because the above HTML only serves to specify the URL that a user would go to if he or she were to click on the linked text.
If you simply want the URL itself to be the linked text, then just paste the URL again immediately after the last HTML given above, with no space between the two.
Alternately, if you want some other text to be the linked text—for example, "click here" (or something to that effect)—you would type that text immediately after the last HTML code given above (again, with no spaces between the two).
Finally, regardless of which of these you choose, you then need to follow the second pasted URL (or newly typed linked text of your choice) with the following HTML:
"less than" symbol, followed by...
/a
...followed by a "greater than" symbol.
That should do it.
Thanks anonymous! Too bad we can't identify those dentists who play fast and loose with their drug of choice. Scary. I already refuse to enter a dentists office that uses Versed as conscious sedation. Clearly if they gave me the drug in the hospital, they could use it orally in the dentists office with none the wiser. Until later of course. I will add this to my list of things to ask the dentist. Wow. We have to be experts in order to get treatment. A 20 guage needle full of Midazolam? Using Articaine? There is hope! Here is an article from the NY Times about lawsuits against drug manufacturers who use the excuse that the grossly incompetant FDA approved the drug. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/washington/05scotus.html?_r=1&lk=7052189-7052189-0-35571-2SbXHe8OtkPzt0TQ3SGodPhN/3TYtHXZ
I found this article entitled "Docs trying gag orders to stop patients' online reviews".
http://www.komonews.com/news/national/40712527.html
A bit off topic, but I'm sure of concern to us all.
Thanks, Casey, for that link.
Interesting comment in that article (made by a doctor ?) :
"... Such postings say nothing about what should really matter to patients - a doctor's medical skills."
So all we should REALLY care about is a doctor's competency ? What about honesty, compassion, ethical behaviour, and good bedside manner ?
Since my Versed experience, I rate a doctor's honesty evey bit as important as his competency...
I've had versed administered several times for various injections in my c-spine to diagnose and treat pain symptoms. I also had versed administered for a colonoscopy. I haven't had any problems with the drug, although I do wonder about some of the things I might say. You really don't remember anything later on, but you certainly can carry on a conversation!
That doesn't bother you Jack? The fact that you were blurting out your deepest secrets for the amusement of the staff is fine and dandy? Making an a$$ of yourself so that their job is easier is OK?
So now we're known as the "Midazolam Maffia"
http://hypocaffeinemia.com/2009/03/the-midazolam-mafia/
Yikes. That thread is quite possibly the finest example yet of medical people's seemingly across-the-board belief that status as a doctor, nurse, or medical student immediately confers total intellectual superiority over people not involved in the medical profession.
The guy's comments are, of course, more of the (pathetic) same. Basically:
1. Since I am a medical practitioner, I know everything.
2. Since you are *not* a medical practitioner, you know nothing.
3. Midazolam is in no way unsafe.
4. If you think midazolam is unsafe, you're obviously crazy or suffering from some kind of pre-existing personality defect.
5. All persons who have been injured by midazolam and who (worse yet) dare to post comments critical of the drug online, are completely interchangeable, and—because they are therefore all somehow mentally defective to begin with (see point 4 above)—should be ignored.
6. In addition to being ignored, they should be ridiculed, discredited, and demonized, too.
...you get the idea.
In a way, it's good that idiots like the author of the above-linked thread have blogs and see fit to post such comments, as it puts on continual public display the lack of empathy and near-complete social disconnect embodied by many members of the medical profession nowadays. Of late, medical schools seem to be cranking out only robots—the days of freethinkers in medicine appear to be long gone.
Nice post by Anonymous "Yikes".
I would add that it is "fishy" that this person even bothered to blog in defense of his beloved Versed. He is hoist on his own petard.
The fact that the drug is "one of the most-utilized drugs in the country" does not automatically make it good - this is a basic logical fallacy we learned in high school.
It is odd that he finds the volume of similar stories odd.
He calls US the Mafia (thugs) when it is the medical folks who are clobbering US with the drug. I just don't see how he is the victim here.
He quotes a versed victim who, among other things, stopped breathing. This is no surprise since this is one of the dangers of Versed. I did not make this up - this is what the medical folks themselves say. Given this person's experience, it is no wonder they want to avoid versed. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but so what?
What is truly odd is that they pushed the drug on this person even after they refused - due to past experience. How calloused and unprofessional is that?
I could continue to rip this blog apart, but I'm sure the rest of you have some good points to add.
I did have to laugh when Matt of the hypocaffeinemia blog posts:
"Hyperbole, much?
There is no reasonable discourse path to take with such people. Each and every single one of them will claim that midazolam causes irreparable retrograde amnesia and post-traumatic stress disorder (discounting that midazolam and related drugs are actually used to treat PTSD), and significant chunk of them will claim they nearly died."
He accuses us of hyperbole, and then engages in it himself.
As for benzodiazapines being used to treat PTSD, I doubt that an ICU nursing student is an expert on the subject. I have talked to several experts on PTSD who feel that Versed is a "no brainer" to elicit a trauma response in someone with a history of PTSD. You can read what Dr. Jonathan Shay (someone who is an expert on PTSD) has written about benzodiazapines at http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?contentID=50§ionid=4
I'm a "medical professional" and credentialed to administer midazolam, which I have never done since I'm not a surgeon nor do I perform office procedures requiring sedation.....I have heard from many reliable patients that they have had horrible experiences with midazolam, and I believe them. There is no erason that midazolam MUST be used, for anything, there are tons of alternatives for sedation. If you don't want it, don't rant, just list it as an allergy (you once got it at the dentist and you got hives and had trouble berathing and they gave you benadryl is a great story)...this will keep you from getting midzolam and probably other benzos (which can have similar amnesia properties if given IV in a high enough dose). I tried midazolam once for a bone marrow biopsy, 4mg IV and I felt so depressed an creepy that I rescheduled the biopsy; which was done the next day with nothing. The amnesia is NOT short term.
Dear Anonymous "Medical Professional",
I am sure you are a thoughtful, conscientious and caring person. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other medical professionals out there that don't really care what you list as an allergy.
Some don't even bother to check your chart, or decide that your allergy is silly. It is not just with midazolam, but all medications that errors happen.
So, while we would like to think that we can prevent this drug from being given to us, sometimes all we can do is rant after we were lied to and drugged against our wishes.
The thread that the mental-powerhouse medical student posted on his blog is absolutely classic "don't listen to so-and-so because they're a conspiracy theorist" stuff. Not surprising, of course. I mean, whenever anyone tries to protect something near and dear to himself or herself from being exposed as the sham that it truly is, it's not too long before the whole "label as conspiracy theorist" tactic gets backed out of the garage.
It's simple. The first thing you do is, you identify a common characteristic shared by the people who you'd like everyone else to ignore. In the case of the above-linked thread, that common characteristic is disapproval and/or criticism of midazolam. Once identified, the common characteristic serves to establish interchangeability among members of the whole group. This way, you can conveniently dismiss the viewpoints of lots of people at once, without the pesky need to actually listen to (or individually respond to) the various valid things that each separate person is saying.
The author accomplishes this step in his first paragraph (and even before that, actually, in his thread title). He does so by deliberately choosing words and phrases that reduce any and all persons who possess anti-midazolam sentiment to a single homogeneous entity—for example, "mafia," "movement," "such people," "this society," etc. It's worth noting that this same mentality, when applied to skin color, is the very *definition* of racism—i.e., that all people who possess a particular attribute are exactly alike and can be thought of as a "whole," rather than as separate individuals. The author also reinforces the idea of interchangeability in his successive paragraphs, with statements like, "Each and every single one of them will claim...," "[their] story always seems the same," etc.
Hot on the heels of establishing interchangeability among all persons who disapprove of midazolam, this future medical fascist wastes no time in satisfying the next basic criterion of good propaganda—namely, to link negative and/or undesirable attributes or terms to the group being discussed. That is, to demonize the group. He does this throughout the thread, in a variety of ways.
For starters, by including a still image from The Simpsons to depict the group (before the text of the thread even begins, no less) the author is implying that the group about to be discussed—i.e., those who disapprove of the use of midazolam—is not a group to be taken seriously. Alternately stated, it is one to be laughed at, as a cartoon might be laughed at; a joke, if you will.
Then, not even out of his first paragraph, he ups the propagandist vibe of his thread exponentially by italicizing the word "against" in the phrase, "There seems to be an underground movement against the use of midazolam"—pretty much implying that such a sentiment amounts to out-and-out heresy. The italics basically say, "Can you believe that a viewpoint as ridiculous as this could even exist?!?" In the same phrase, the adjective "underground" likewise serves to demonize. It says that anyone who possesses an anti-midazolam sentiment is not mainstream, or reputable; rather, he or she is "underground," or disreputable. The author gets a lot of mileage, as well, out of the five letters of the word "mafia," because the word simultaneously serves three purposes in the thread—specifically: (1) as already explained, it pools all of the anti-midazolam folks together into a single, uniform blob; (2) it demonizes said folks by carrying a negative connotation, i.e., it equates them with a criminal organization; and (3) since, in this instance, the word's "criminal" definition is not actually being applied in its literal sense, the word instead carries a certain lightheartedness that is more or less a reapplication of the "Simpsons cartoon" tactic already discussed above—i.e., it is a subtle statement that the group should not be taken seriously.
Some other demonizing phrases that the author applies to the group include "not quite articulate," "fishy," as well as his statement that there is "no reasonable discourse path" to take with people who are against the use of midazolam. The implication being, of course, that all such people are unreasonable. The same holds for his reference to the "less dramatic members of this society"—which in turn implies that all persons opposed to midazolam are somehow "dramatic" to begin with (translation, yet again: not to be taken seriously). Each and every one of these demonizing phrases serves exactly the same purpose and says exactly the same thing—basically, "this viewpoint is so stupid that I'm not even going to grace it with a response—and neither should you." Which, of course, is an extremely convenient approach to follow when you have a ton of perfectly valid questions to answer, or points to respond to. In other words, simply sidestep responding altogether. Indeed, if one clears away all of the thread author's personal bashing of folks who disapprove of the use of midazolam, it quickly becomes evident that he does not offer a single piece of authoritative information—not a one!—to refute any of their claims.
He also does not stop merely at demonization; he extends his propaganda to include outright ridicule. Many of his "editorial" comments, such as the parenthetical one in his following statement, illustrate this ridicule:
"...causes people to forget their children
growing up (actually claimed!)"
So, with a single adverb and exclamation point, this jerk casually denies the validity of (and, in a fine testament to his apparently low level of social and emotional maturity, makes light of) a complete stranger's very real and very deep mental suffering. Suffering that he—despite the fact that he, himself, I am quite certain, has never consulted its bearer about—is somehow completely sure could NOT have been caused by a potent brain-disabling drug. Now, to me, THAT sounds a little, uh, "fishy."
In the end, this medical student's thread begs a fairly obvious question. Namely, if the whole idea of being against midazolam is such a "fringe" sentiment—that is, one possessed only by a small group of "psychos" who want to "ruin the party" for all the people (patients and medical practitioners alike) who supposedly "love" midazolam—then exactly why would the guy feel any great need to attempt to discredit said psychos' claims? After all, if midazolam's supposed status as a great and safe drug were as ironclad as he and many other medical practitioners evidently want the world to believe, what need would ever exist for this type of damage control?
"[A]fter one absolutely horrible experience with Versed (Midazolam), I would never consent to that drug again. The long-term memory loss and the depression has to be experienced to be believed."
—recent quote from clinical
pharmacologist who formerly
thought that the horror stories
about Versed on Askapatient
and Versed Busters were "a
little exaggerated"
His entire post can be read here.
Got a call today from a friend whose wife is a nurse. She is adamantly opposed to anybody in her family getting Versed. So anyway their little boy went to the dentist and was given a small cup of something to "relax" him. It never occured to them that it was Versed. The words Versed, amnesia, benzodiazipine, none were mentioned. This was discovered by having an $85 charge on the bill, coded. They found out that the code was for Versed. The boy seems to be fine, but this is the extent of the deviousness used to get this drug into everybody.
My stepdaughter's little boy broke his leg a little over a year ago and got a cast. AFAIK he got no meds for placing the cast (there was no reduction or "setting" of his leg needed). The dr. told his mom that he would need to be sedated to remove the cast b/c the cutter would upset him. Of course that meant drinking Versed in a cup 30min beforehand. Now granted, the kid was just short of age 3, but come on now! My 2yo twin girls put up a fight every time I cut their nails, should they be taken to a medical facility and sedated prior to the clipping?
One of my twins had a febrile seizure in Jan. that lasted 30min and it was recommended she get an MRI. I decided not to go through with it at that time, but if she had it done she would have been sedated with a barbiturate, Nembutal. I made it a point to ask what she would be sedated with. I'm fine with that, she would just sleep for the duration of the test, but no way would I let them give her Versed.
As far as Versed in dentistry goes, it's almost universally given for wisdom tooth extraction anymore. Most patients think they were put under, they have no idea! I had my wisdom teeth + 4 more extracted in 1985 when I was a teenager. I was given nitrous, an IV was placed, then I was given a barbiturate (not certain but I believe Nembutal). I drifted off to sleep, which was the intention. As soon as I was out I got enough needles to numb my head from my cheekbones to the tip of my chin before the teeth were cut out. I don't think I could take that amount of local injections in the mouth totally unsedated, but if I had it to do over again I would take just the nitrous.
There is a lady on askapatient who is saying something about getting 4 wisdom teeth pulled. She NEEDED the sedation. I had all 4 of mine done at one time with only novocaine shots and went back to work. I was a little puffy, but fine. The idea that Versed is necessary to do routine dental work is shocking to me!
My first experience with Versed went well, and I was out within seconds. For my sencond colonoscopy,and endoscopy I was administered Versed, and I did not go under. I was awake the whole time for both procedures, and I can remeber the pain of the biopsies and everything. I told the doctor I could feel everything,and all he did was baby talk and make fun of me. I felt violated. Versed can work sometimes, but when it doesnt it can be a horrible experience.
I caught a piece of a PBS show NOVA yesterday, and I just happened to turn it on where a young intern was talking to a elderly lady about her upcoming hip surgery. She asked him to his face if he was going to be doing the surgery on her. His reply was "no I will probably be handing the tools to the surgeon". The next shots were of the older surgeon and the intern all smilely with this older lady reasuring her as they were taking her to surgery. Well it didn't take long after they had her put under for that intern to be up to his elbows in her blood. I changed the channel. It never ceases to amaze me how medical people tell patients what they think the patient wants to hear because they know they have anesthesia and amnesia to hide behind. They learn at a young age. I was lied to by the surgeon about sedation and his way of handling the problems I had with it afterward was to never return my phone call. They wonder why we don't trust them!
I am scheduled to have Septoplasty and Turbinate reduction surgery this upcoming Monday, April 13th, 2009. I had my pre-op consult and met with the anesthesiologist (or their proxy)earlier in the week.
During the consult, I specifically asked the ENT who will be doing my surgery "will I be given valium to relax me prior to the inducement of general?". He nodded and said "yes, we will probably give you Versed". Needless to say, I was extremely frightened but have yet to say anything.
Some back story: My mother passed away about eleven years ago from cancer. During her treatment at Loma Linda Medical Center in Redlands, California, she was scheduled to have a Broncoscopy. During the procedure, she went into respiratory arrest and had to be intubated for one full week in which she had to have her hands tied down ostensibly to prevent her from pulling out the tube. I remember her being able to write down bits of information to me when I visited her. Here's where the "alien abduction" part comes in:
A week after she came home, I received a call from her. She was completely terrified and distressed. She asked me what the date was. I told her and she screamed out to me that the last thing she remembered was that it was such and such date and that a FULL WEEK had disappeared from her life without her having any memory of how it happened. She then relayed that she was informed by her doctors what had happened and they explained the whole incident. She was utterly traumatized by this event. She passed on about a month later from the cancer, but I also believe the nightmare of the experience had an impact.
Cut to the present: When my doctor mentioned Versed, I froze. I have yet to say anything because six years ago I had umbilical hernia repair and do not know if I received Versed or not. I remember being wheeled into the OR and told to get onto the table. I remember talking to the Anesthesiologist and him explaining some things. I then remember waking up in the recovery room. I was in pain, but not really traumatized. I assumed that this experience was normal. It is possible that they used Valium or some Benzodiazapine but not Versed. I need to find that out...STAT.
I will call the hospital tomorrow and see if my records can be pulled up to date. If they did not administer Versed during my last surgery, then I need to have a further discussion of the situation. I plan on contacting my doctor by e-mail and expressing my concerns as well.
Watch for the "bait and switch". My wife went in for knee surgery a few years ago and asked the anesthesiologist for some valium ahead of time because she was a little nervous. Not 20 minutes after he agreed to the valium, a nurse showed up with a syringe and just before she put it in the iv she let it slip out that she was giving her VERSED. Needless to say the nurse was stopped and the anesthesiologist was brought back. His excuse was that he couldn't "find" any liquid valium. He proceed to almost argue with my wife to try to make her take the VERSED. Even if he some how talked her into taking the shot they were going to have to get past me to get it in her. She didn't take anything ahead of time, and afterward said she did just fine with nothing. To this day I ask myself why I allowed a person to give my wife a general for the surgery who had the gall to lie to our faces not 20 minutes before. You can never trust a lier and I will never let it happen again.
It amazes me that so many medical people claim that Valium is the same as Versed. So why aren't they using Valium which does NOT have web sites (plural) devoted to people who have had severe and long lasting reactions to it??? There are a lot of chemicals that adding just one more molecule to it changes the substance from inert to deadly. Versed is not the same as Valium. They know it and we know it.
It has now been a year since I was given Versed. Maybe I am not as bad as I was at first, but I can't really tell. I have done all the things I "should", going to therapy, taking medication, talking to whoever will listen, etc.
Does it ever get any better? Or is this how I am going to feel for the rest of my life?
I told them "no", but they did it to me anyway. They raped my mind (and who knows what else). I just don't know how to ever get over that.
M, I don't think there really is any way to "get over" what you described. The closest that one can get to achieving that goal, I think, would be something along the lines of what a friend of mine once recounted to me, of his own experience. You see, he once experienced a long-term adverse reaction to midazolam, very much like many of the ones described here. Anyway, according to him, you never really get over it—what instead happens is that over time, you simply adjust to your new reality. Not sure if that makes any sense. At any rate, I think that your analogy of having had your mind raped is a valid one. Unfortunately, many medical practitioners do not see the use of midazolam in that light, whatsoever.
Getting back to what this friend of mine said, though—his thinking on this subject is basically that your mind adjusts to its new "state," for better or for worse. I don't know if this is true or not, but he does seem to have gotten back to being "himself" over the course of a few years, and he is a guy with an extremely demanding, detail-oriented job, and a very complicated family life. I've known him for years both before and after his midazolam experience, and by some miracle he hasn't allowed it to ruin his life.
One analogy that I can think of to describe what midazolam does, is that it would be like living in a single room for decades, and the only actual things in the room (besides yourself, of course) are dozens of neat, five-foot-high stacks of tens of thousands of unnumbered printed pages, each with some different, very specific text printed on it. Over the course of residing in said room, you reach a point, after decades, at which you know exactly where each page is—e.g., what particular stack a given page is located in, how many pages down that page is located within a given stack, and what exact text is printed on the page. Anyway, I think that receiving a large dose of intravenous midazolam is akin to having someone open the doors and windows of the room without permission, and allowing an extremely strong breeze into the room, which then blows the tens of thousands of pages into complete disarray. Then, after everything is scattered about, the doors and windows are once again closed, leaving you on your own to reconstruct the original stacks of pages, in their original order—a process that obviously took a lifetime of careful work to accomplish. My own guess is that all the pages still remain—i.e., none actually flew out of the room. The herculean problem in light of the newly established disarray, though, is figuring out how to retrieve specific pages as quickly and effortlessly as they could be retrieved when you actually knew where each one was located.
Now, the above is obviously just an analogy, in which the individual pages are meant to represent one's thought processes and cognitive functions. And to have that happen to the pages (particularly when there are so many of them, and their order is not easily defined), is nothing short of traumatic. Traumatic to an extent that most medical professionals simply do not comprehend. Or, as it unfortunately seems, even want to comprehend. Which leaves the process of "mental cleanup," sadly, to oneself.
Toward that end, I realize that not everyone would agree with me on this, but I do not think that more (or, actually, even any) psychiatric medications are the way to recover from midazolam-induced damage. After all, midazolam is itself a psychiatric drug. Anyway, that is just my own opinion. I instead think that the way to recover is to simply try to reduce as much anxiety in your life as possible, and spend as much time engaging in introspection as possible. One thing that makes the process extraordinarily difficult is that the very apparatus with which one would perceive a defect in one's own mind, is obviously one's own brain. And the brain is precisely the thing that midazolam seems to damage. A computer can run anti-virus software, but to try to quantify changes in one's own consciousness when the very same physical apparatus (i.e., one's own brain) is the tool being used to make that assessment, is almost a perfect recipe to drive oneself crazy. And to exhaust oneself intensely. So I think the way to reach higher mental ground—or, at least, to "restore" one's pre-midazolam "feeling"—is to simply not think about it. I realize that that may seem impossible, because when one is painfully aware of one or more of their previously strong mental faculties (be it short-term memory, or the ability to feel a particular emotion vividly) having somehow been reduced or completely lost, it's not something that the affected person can simply ignore. But what I mean, in terms of not "thinking about it," is simply to not think consciously about it. I do, however, think it's beneficial to subject oneself repeatedly to emotional cues so as to reexperience actual feelings the way you remember feeling them (i.e., before midazolam). Those cues can take the form of putting on a particular song that has traditionally made you feel a particular way, or a movie, whatever.
Anyway, getting back to the assumption that none of the pages were actually blown out of the room—I do personally think that they're all still there, but I think that extra effort needs to be expended to retrieve them, which is a process that obviously used to be a lot more effortless. Sometimes to not be able to retrieve a particular memory (be it of a piece of factual information, or of how a particular emotion felt) can feel very much like the memory is simply not there, but I don't think that midazolam actually removes or deletes memories that were encoded *prior* to the drug's administration. I just think that it can make it extraordinarily difficult to access and/or retrieve particular previously encoded memories. Anyway, I think that consciously subjecting oneself to as many emotional cues as possible, goes a long way to rebuilding and repairing whatever brain circuitry midazolam evidently disconnects. It's as if a ton of conscious knowledge remains intact in your mind (e.g., phone numbers, names, places—whatever), but midazolam seems to attenuate the connections between those things and one's actual feeling for each of them.
Like the experience of looking at a landscape, for example. The physical components of the landscape itself obviously never change, but the observer's feeling about it can change. I think that that's what midazolam does—specifically, it deadens the vividness of one's subconscious impression of sensory stimuli. It's like seeing the world in color and then waking up one day and it's in black and white, devoid of any of the rich feeling it used to have. And that is a positively horrifying, disconcerting feeling. Especially when it goes on for months. But I think it's a feeling that one can recover from, just as long as you master your own thought process, and not be frightened or traumatized if one day you randomly have something happen that reminds you that you have a different underlying "feeling" for things, post-midazolam.
One of the better and more succinct expressions of what I'm trying to say here can be found on a Stevie Nicks album called Street Angel, from 1994. Oddly, the album came out at the height of her own addiction to Klonopin (another very strong benzodiazepene), which Nicks has since said in more than one interview, wrought havoc upon her life for years afterwards. Anyway, the first song on the album is called "Blue Denim," and one of the last lines of the song's lyrics is as follows:
So I'm going away for a little while
to remember how to feelAnyway, I think that that's roughly what is necessary to regain your pre-midazolam feeling. It takes work, but I think you'll get there. There's only so much you can talk to another person about it. I think the real breakthroughs to be experienced in the way of mental repair happen during extended periods of quiet, solitary introspection. Not sure if this helps, but I do totally think there's hope for you getting back to how you used to feel. Personally, I think psychiatric drugs should be entirely avoided in that process, but that's just my opinion.
Thank you for that. I am fortunate that I didn't have much retrograde amnesia, except for the hour before the procedure where the memories are kind of jumbled and each time I have to piece together the order they must have happened.
I would also rather not have to take medications, but my pain was so great without them that I was engaging in dangerous behavior in the hope that I would die from it.
I guess a life of trying to recover is better than dying, but sometimes I am not so sure.
M it took years before I felt "normal" again. I still have the racing heart, sweating and bizarre nerve jangling reaction when I think about speaking to my Doctor or anybody connected with the Versed experience. I didn't even get the amnesia so its not the amnesia that bothers me. It was the DRUG which caused my brain to misfire somehow. It didn't help that I had a birdseye view of the total disintigration my personality as a result of this drug. I am not the strong vibrant woman I thought I was. These people turned me into a compliant zombie and lit my neurons on fire for their own subversive reasons and there was nothing I could do about it. I was given drugs, Amytriptiline and Prozac in an attempt to return me to normal. These drugs did NOTHING! Fish oil helped and I took OTC sleep meds. Another bizarre thing that anonymous touches on is the ability of the brain to run a "virus scan" type program. Mine does this for me. However identifying the problem and seeing the destruction that this drug caused was not real helpful. It seems that I am always arguing with myself now about extreme reactions. I am watching my mind do its "fight or flight" thing for NO DAMN GOOD REASON! I drive past the hospital, have a panic attack. I see that this is unreasonable and unwarranted, but it persists. My mind does seem to be busily trying to put this experience into a room, just like the computer quarantines a virus. I guess it is trying to remove the emotional attachment to the memory. (Hard if your brain is still on fire and have ongoing issues with a botched surgical procedure) 3 YEARS later I am feeling mostly normal. My head doesn't feel like 10,000 volts of electricity are running through it and interfering with my thought processes. I'll bet if the word Versed was mentioned while I was hooked to an EEG my brain would light up like fireworks. Anyway, it does get better, it just takes forever and I think maybe the experience was so traumatic for your brain that it may never completely go away, but it will become more bearable.
Jackie makes a good point. While most of us are intensely bothered by the Versed amnesia, it is actually the DRUG ITSELF (with or without amnesia)that causes a whole myriad of psychological & physical symptoms.
(I don't know why it's been so hard to convince the medical community of this.)
It's been a year since my Versed experience, and I now feel normal most of the time...
But every once in a while the anxiety & obsession comes back. I will NEVER allow that drug to be given to me again.
M, hang in there. It will get better. God bless you.
BTW, Consumer Reports is doing a survey about patient safety and medical errors. They are asking people to submit stories of medical errors. The site is
https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=spp_petition and the location to submit stories of medication errors (i.e. being given a medication without proper information about side effects, being given a medication you refused, etc.) is
https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=spp_share_medication_errors>
I hate to sound like a broken record, but this drug Versed and its useage is a symptom of a greater problem with health care and that is a singular lack of enforcement of informed consent and patients rights laws. NONE of us should have received Versed. We were lied to about it and forced into having it.
Health care "reform" is being debated RIGHT NOW in the United States Senate. Even if you have never been an activist, please call your Senator and urge them to stop the use of this drug as routine. It costs too much!
Versed also violates all kinds of patient rights laws and we need for this to stop. Just think of the BILLIONS of dollars a year that could be saved if they stopped using this drug except in severe cases where the patient REQUESTS IT!
Senator Max Baucus(Montana)is the reigning member of the health care committee through the Senate Finance Committee. His Washington DC number is (202)224-2651. Ask for the "Senate Finance Committee" and they will put you through.
There is absolutely no good reason that we are all being given this particular drug. We need to be able to decline it, we should be fully informed as to what it is, BEFORE we get it.
Versed needs to be ELECTIVE and if you want it, you pay extra out of your own pocket. (just like sedation dentistry) I don't want to pay exhorbitant taxes to pay for the use of Versed as mandated by the government, do you?
I want the right to decline this poison without repercussions like refusing to treat me. I want power over my own body and mind, and to have my wishes treated with respect, just like the law says to do. WE deserve to be able to contain our health care costs, and just say NO!
Mechanics can't just do whatever expensive, unnecessary things to your car without your consent and we need to be able to hold health care workers, Doctors, anesthesia nurses, etc. to the same standard as auto technicians.
I would also like to see random drug screening and psychiatric testing of health care workers as well, but that's another story.
Here is another article about benzodiazepines being linked to depression and PTSD due to memory loss and delusional memories.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/701732
There is a new and excellent post on www.alnurses.com, here;s the link. http://allnurses.com/nursing-articles/concept-analysis-patient-389357.html
You people are idiots. Remembering a scaple slicing your abdomen would be a hell of a lot worse than being sedated for the procedure. Key Word, Anesthesia.
To the latest Anonymous:
You better hope the heck that if you have to have your belly cut open, that you receive anesthesia, not sedation. There IS a difference.
To Anonymous, May 12:
This is why Versed Busters is here. READ before you rant.
Versed is not a pain killer. It's main effect is amnesia. It is NOT anesthesia, ans you suggest. Yes, key freakin' word. And Versed ain't it.
Too often people recall events: they are rendered immobile, in pain, unable to communicate.
I don't know what color the sky is on your planet, but here, I don't trust strangers with a drug like this.
I could go on, but if you don't appreciate people trying to warn you then don't bother reading.
At least I know how to spell scalpel...
I understand that most of you have had bad experiences with versed. I deal with versed, ativan, diprivan, fentanyl, demerol, morphine, and all other types of pain, sedation and paralytics agents on the unit that I work. I have never had anyone complain to me about the drug (probably bc they are sedated at the time) so its interesting to hear your perspectives, although it sometimes sounds like nurse and MD bashing. I understand that most of you would like to remember your experiences but most of the pt I work with are incredibley sick (fresh post op CABG, emergency triple A repair, emergency chest tube placement, intubation at bedside, crack open your chest and fix a disecting aorta at bedside....tubes and lines everywhere) and when they are put on those medications they generally need to keep them hemodynamically stable, to keep them from pulling at tubes and lines or trying to hurt themselves in other ways. Drugs react different in every individual and effect individuals differently. I have recieved versed and had a wonderful expereince during my surgery (I was ridiculously anxious and more scared about having an IV than the actual surgery....lame I know). But its difficult to know how someone will react to any drug, whether it be a normal side effect of the drug or an adverse reaction. Whatever you do in the future with any procedure you have just be adement with your care providers about what you want and be sure that your family is aware of your wishes bc I have seen families do the complete opposite of what the pt wanted.
Hi Anonymous:
My issue is NOT that I want to necessarily remember a surgery. I just never want a drug in my system that causes amnesia. If I have to be put out for some procedures that's fine. But when you folks have a range of options, then I want the least amount of drugs in my system that any honest, evidence based provider can give me.
For the denser readers of this blog, let me state the obvious:
I also do not want a drug that I have already had a bad reaction to.
One of the reasons for this blog is to warn others that this drug exists in the first place - but more importantly, there are plenty of people out there who seem to have a zeal to use this drug on people - and they will lie and obfuscate and whatever to get it into you.
We have taken a lot of heat from people who get very upset when we dis this drug. I find this reaction very odd, amazing and disconcerting.
Dear Anonymous,
I think the problem most of us have is not with Versed, per se, but with how it is administered, either without giving the patient the information about its action, or willfully giving it when the patient refused it.
I don't think anyone here would say that sedatives should not be given in the cases you describe of emergencies or extreme measures.
We are mainly talking about conscious sedation procedures that are elective, where the patient [should have] the right to both informed consent and the right refuse any portion of the treatment, to the point of canceling the procedure if the drug in question is deemed essential.
As for being adamant about not wanting a drug, I stated that I would not have the procedure if it required being given Versed. I was told that I did not have to have Versed, but it was given to me anyway.
This is certainly unethical behavior--the willful disregard for a patient's refusal. If it happened outside a medical setting, I could have the person who did it charged with assault and battery.
In a medical setting, there is no recourse for a patient but to sue the provider, something that is much more difficult than the average person would believe.
This is part of a larger issue of patient safety, where patient rights are mearly a soundbite in hospital advertisements, but have no bearing in actual clinical practice.
There is a good discussion going on at a site called "Science Based Medicine" about "Is IV sedation over-used"
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=461
I have a girl friend whose husband recently had knee surgery. Due to their like of prescription medicines she allowed her husband to be injected with Versed. She asked "is that Versed?" and they answered yes. She states that the reason she feels that they give Versed is because "they don't want no trouble with you." I think she nailed it. By the way, he suffered no ill effects. He never was the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway and nothing has changed... I guess.
Jackie, I think what you just recounted raises a point central to this whole discussion. Namely, that a good portion of the world—in particular, the U.S.—has, over the course of time, adopted a prescription drug−happy mentality that is in full swing today. Never before in history has prescription drug use been like it is now. Nowadays people don't think twice about medicating themselves for anything, no matter how minor an ailment nor how unnecessary the given drug may be. So in a sick way, that's become the norm. To the extent that a lot of people (especially medical practitioners) will look at you like you're nuts if you express an unwillingness to take a given medicine. I think that over time, the last few decades of consumers having been bombarded with nonstop pharmaceutical advertising, and doctors being babied with all sorts of perks from pharmaceutical companies, have both inspired and allowed this new mentality to take hold. Nowadays it's evidently become a requirement to feel happy and feel good all the time, and if you ever do not (even for a minute), it's apparently a reason to be medicated—similar, actually, to the vision of the future that Aldous Huxley presented in Brave New World. It is not surprising, then, that a drug like midazolam (brand name: Versed) has advanced to being in such widespread use as it is now. Billions of dollars of Roche profits put it on the map, and billions of dollars in sales keep it in use. Combine that with a group of consumers that has been desensitized to taking drugs, and this is the situation you wind up with—basically, unsuspecting people showing up for medical treatment and being summarily injected with heavy, brain-disabling drugs, for procedures that a mere two or three decades ago would never have involved sedation. Combine this further with a crop of twenty-something medical students who have been born into a prescription drug culture unlike any previously seen in human history. Their quickness to prescribe drugs and overreliance on administering them as a quick fix even in the most innocuous of medical situations know no bounds—but really, they don't know any better. They are the Prozac generation and that's what they've been born into—basically, you feel unhappy, you pop a pill. Years ago, to take psychiatric drugs had a social stigma attached to it. Nowadays, it might as well be the norm. And that's precisely how the pharmaceutical companies want things. It's no accident that three of the top-selling prescription drugs as recently as 2004 have either been antidepressants or antipsychotics. Many medical people also seem to assume that everyone is either on such drugs, or at least likes them and approves of their use. That's why midazolam (brand name: Versed) is everywhere. Evidently nowadays medical students spend a lot more time pondering pharmokinetics than something as obvious as human dignity. The adoption of this new mentality has been a slow, incremental process, but with billions of dollars of profits fueling it, it does not surpise me. In the end, I suppose that the best thing one can do is simply be aware, and I commend this Web site for helping to raise people's awareness about this horrible drug, midazolam (brand name: Versed).
Anonymous, I have some existential thoughts about Versed due to my bizarre obsession. Sort of like "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it did it make a noise." If you don't have a brain like a computer to start with, do you notice a change in cognition with Versed? If your brain is accustomed to many other scrip drugs does it analyze itself after Versed? If your mind was never a steel trap to begin with does Versed adversely affect it or does it seem like business as usual? Does Versed turn bright brains into a more normal brain such that bright people are affected and average people aren't? Is self analysis of brain function a symptom of high IQ? I guess what I am trying to do is figure out what the hell happened to me, (and the rest of us here) and why are so many others unaffected? My doctor's lawyer has questioned my "drug use." LOLOL I think it's druggies that like the stuff. I don't use mind bending drugs even if they prescribe them. An Aleve works better for me than Oxycontin. Did this aversion cause my brain to overreact to a sudden and unexpected assault with a poison like Versed? Does this kind of brain which declines to be medicated have an underlying structural difference that creates the aversion to drugs? Too bad doctors won't admit that Versed causes severe problems. I would love to have a brain scan and find out what the hell is going on. These medical "professionals" are unwilling to "suspend disbelief" for long enough to get to the bottom of this...
Jackie, I don't know exactly what midazolam does to the human brain, but it has been shown to produce neuronal apoptosis in laboratory animals. And I, for one, do believe that it causes some level of neurological damage in humans. Perhaps the drug's potency causes damage to the GABAA receptor complex, similar to that seen in people who have taken benzodiazepines for years. But I think the larger issue is that science is still quite far from being able to definitively map individual cognitive functions to particular brain anatomy, with any real level of specificity. I think many researchers would like to think that they can do that, but contemporary understanding of the human brain remains (from my view, at least) in a stage of relative infancy. Given this circumstance, I think it's a huge mistake for the medical profession to make such frequent use of drugs that are purported to either disrupt or enhance specific brain chemistry. My point being, if one doesn't understand how a machine is supposed to work when it actually works properly, I think it's a bit naïve to disrupt the function of that machine and not at least consider the possibility that said disruption could damage the machine's parts. I mean, since you're not altogether sure of how the machine worked in the first place, exactly how can you be sure that the disrupting stimulus won't cause damage to it? And yet, many doctors and nurses continue to scoff at the idea that midazolam can cause brain damage.
I think that different people's brains emphasize different neurotransmission systems. That is, there is no "single" brain, obviously brain chemistry varies from person to person. Therein lies the problem with something like midazolam, I think. Since it (and any other drug, for that matter) is a fixed entity, I think it stands to reason that the drug will exert different effects on different people. This is because the "organ" on which the drug works is the central nervous system. By contrast, if fifty people were to each get a bad paper cut, and each of them poured some hydrogen peroxide onto a cotton ball and then pressed the cotton ball into his or her cut, I don't think there would be any enormous amount of variation among the physiological reactions caused by the peroxide entering into each person's cut. That type of drug mechanism is fairly easily quantifiable.
But when you start tinkering with one of the most delicate chemical environments in the universe (or, arguably, the most delicate chemical environment in the universe)—i.e., the human brain—you're asking for trouble. Contemporary medical science has, however, reached a level of arrogance so positively stratospheric, that it has deluded itself into thinking that certain drugs can actually work on higher cognitive functions with specificity. I personally think that this belief is delusional. The human brain (and its equally important relative, the human mind) are obviously not one-size-fits-all entities. And since they are not, medical science will typically point to the example of "most people" whenever a psychoactive drug appears to not work the way they expected it to. And who exactly are "most people"? Well, in 2009, "most people" seem to watch American Idol. In 2009, "most people" are lucky if they can compose a coherent sentence. In 2009, "most people" can't spell words consisting of more than three syllables.
My point is, it is hugely problematic to administer drugs that are known to affect higher cognitive functions, when there is no real "norm" for any cognitive function. This is the basic problem of contemporary psychiatry, as well. Psychiatry has shifted these days to an almost exclusively biopsychiatric model. The basic flaw of such a model is that it requires "normal" brain chemistry to be defined. And that is something that simply cannot be defined, because it is an arbitrary and subjective assessment. Whoever is given the power to make such an assessment is, at best, playing a guessing game. That cirucmstance would be bad enough on its own, and it's also way too much power for any entity other than God to be given. But when you combine that power with the power to synthesize and administer powerful brain-disabling drugs (as a so-called "remedy" for brain chemistry that has been arbitrarily deemed "not normal"), you've got a near-perfect recipe for patient abuse.
I also wonder—at what point do medical practitioners treat a given brain with respect, and not vandalize it with something like midazolam? For example, if Albert Einstein were alive today and needed an appendectomy, would he be given intravenous midazolam preoperatively? Or would doctors, who obviously know full well the problems associated with the drug, spare Einstein's brain? Who knows. Given how widespread midazolam's use currently is, the brains of "most people" evidently don't warrant that type of respect. There are, however, plenty of doctors and nurses out there who steadfastly refuse to be given midazolam themselves, or to allow their relatives to be administered the drug. But everyone else, I guess, is on his or her own.
I have gotten a couple of emails from a very nice woman who doesn't mind the Versed. However, she was unhappy that the amnesia didn't work to her satisfaction and mentioned "agitation" as the drug wore off. She also states that an aquaintance of hers also reported "agitation" but not enough to keep them from having the drug again. So I have to assume that "agitation" is a well known and common side effect of this drug. So once again, why is this concealed from the public? Don't the medical people think that warning us that we may feel agitation would be a good thing? Or do they feel that even that little tidbit would be enough to prevent us from allowing the drug? What the hell happened to informed consent anyway? Agitation is such a minor detail compared to AMNESIA and FORCED OBEDIENCE. They can't even tell us that? I have a hard time equating my homicidal rage, anxiety, insomnia, PTSD etc. with agitation, but it is in the same family...
When you go to a hospital and tell them that you do not want versed and we give it to you anyways, that is wrong. Every pt has a legal and ethical right to refuse treatment of any kind. However I have never given versed and had a complaint afterward. If I did, it would not be given to them again. Although this sounds like nothing more than a bitch fest and a nurse/MD basher I'm gonna give you some advise. Just list any medication that you dont want as an allergy with severe reaction and it will not be given. I do agree though, this shouldn't have to be done if you said in the first place that you didn't want it, thats B.S. on their part.
It does seem like Versed pusher bashing doesn't it? Sorry. The problem is this undisguised hatred and disdain for those of us who have had a bad reaction to this poison!
Our mental health is impugned, we are told that nobody ever has this reaction, it has to be something else. (you are even suggesting this) We are not told about this drug other than the sanctimonious, self serving "something to relax you."
This drug is far from relaxing, but it does make people uncoordinated and flaccid. This is not the same as relaxed. I wasn't relaxed in the normal definition of the word, I was trapped and helpless in a body which I no longer had control of. My CRNA said I was "VERY relaxed." So what is he psychic? If he knew what I was thinking he would have been scared.
I have read that even if you decline the Versed pre op you are going to get it in the OR! Excuse me? Leave me awake for the entire duration then so that I can speak if I feel pain, and so that I can object if you are going to do things to me which you do not have permission for.
I am trying to figure out how to have open heart surgery without general anesthesia. I don't trust you guys any more. I was betrayed and drugged into submission by a person masquerading as a normal person and a healer. My surgeon was careless as well. (Would he have been more carefull if I wasn't knocked out?) Just like aquaintance rape, I was violated by a person in whom I had complete trust.
The reason you are not hearing of the problems with Versed is because you are not asking questions designed to get any answer other than the one you want. A few questions about the feelings after surgery would tell you different in many of your patients.
Ask if they felt any anxiety, agitation or depression following the procedure. Find out if they knew that they were not knocked out, but were awake and verbal. Do they know they had amnesia instead of anesthesia? Even if they had general anesthetic during the procedure this still applies to the preop area.
This is easy to do if you are not absolutely determined to use Versed. Ask "Do you want amnesia or are you fine without the amnesia?" Or say "We want to give you amnesia instead of knocking you out, that way you PROBABLY won't remember any of the pain you will feel during your procedure, and/or you will obey us, is this OK with you?"
I am trying to couch this in terms that you guys would actually use. Not "We are gonna give you amnesia, laugh at you, learn your innermost secrets, torture you and hope like hell the amnesia works or you are in for a rough ride. We will not stop hurting you no matter how much you scream. And by the way we are going to do whatever we want to you, like it or not, because we feel that you won't remember trying to stop us AND we can say that you gave permission by not objecting! We want you to shut up and obey us. Are you up for this?"
GREAT post, Jackie !
What I find strange is that Versed seems to be the only drug in the world where people giving it "have never had a complaint afterward".
Ever other drug created has some people who can't tolerate it for whatever reason. That is why there are usually many different choices for treating the same condition. So maybe the issue is the "hearing" part of the equation.
If the people giving the drugs ignore patients who say, "Why can't I remember? What happened? How did I get here?", then yes, there might not be any complaints that they "hear".
And since patients leave the hospital while still sedated (which is why they need someone else to drive home), they may not be able to really understand what happened until they are home the next day. Does anyone call patients a week later to ask how they felt about versed then?
BTW, my doctor had never "heard" of anyone having a problem with versed, until my case was reviewed with a team of psychiatrists who were outraged that anyone would be so cavalier about prescribing a mind-altering drug without understanding how it works.
M, it IS *WILLFULL IGNORANCE* that causes these people to never hear about the downside to Versed. Selective hearing, denial, and a woeful lack of empathy are hallmarks of a lot of these guys. It's a scary nation we live in isn't it?
Ever wonder why Obama won't release pictures of the torture in Gitmo? Could it be that they all got Versed first and don't remember any torture? Releasing photos of torture that the prisoners don't recall could be a disaster.
For those of you who have been harmed by callous medical providers, and those of you who think that this site is just for medical provider bashing, I invite you to go over to http://ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q5=medical%20center&q1=ALL&q4=&q6=&q3=&q2=&q7=&searchtype=0&submit2=Search%21&Search=Search and look at what is happening over there. If that's too much address, go to www.ripoffreport.com and type medical center into the search engine. This is exhaustive reading, but its enough to make you NEVER WANT to avail yourself of medical treatment.
You people are STILL idiots!!!! Guess you would prefer a shoe to bite on during surgery.....
No we're not idiots, the real idiots are those who don't read the original post and comments before commenting, and who also don't know the difference between sedation and anesthesia, yet still want to spout off comments.
Anonymous, let me get this straight. If we don't like amnesia and being forced to endure torture by medical professionals then we are idiots? If we take exception to the use af an erratic amnesia and patient control drug like Versed, for no good reason other than the gratification of the health care PROVIDER then we are idiots. If we decline a psychotropic drug which has long lasting and very unpleasant mental disorders afterward, then we are idiots. You suggest that an amnesia drug is the only pain relief drug that you have... (and it is useless for pain relief) then YOU are the idiot. Amnesia is not the same as pain relief so yes give me the G#d d*&^n shoe instead of Versed you moron! If you don't have anything to offer me besides a chemically induced psychotic fugue state, I'll do the "Surgery For Dummies" that Tim facitiously indicated. We would be idiots to accept this drug!
Normally I would delete the comments that this latest Anonymous posted, but yes, let's hang this person out to dry.
Versed is NOT a painkiller. It is not even a reliable sedative - I can attest to that.
The shoe comment is stupid, and misses the many points people have posted here.
I have had good results with other procedures that involved either a local or general anesthetic when required. No Versed, no shoe. No problem.
Sooner or later one of YOU idiots will have a bad experience with Versed. I doubt you will have the balls to come back here and admit you were wrong.
Tim, I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Don't allow anonymous comments (require all commenters to give their email address)
2) Create new posts with new, related thoughts to ponder and comment on.
I especially recommend new posts because the issue of yours and other contributors' bad experiences with Versed are part of a larger problem that needs to be expounded on. There is an overuse of sedation in general that is not really for the patients' benefit and this needs to be addressed. The lack of proper informed consent and compassion in health care. These are just for starters and I feel they're related.
Here are some excerpts from an article in a Discovery Magazine interview with Gerald Edelman. "Interviewer;...I'd like to know how you define consciousness. It's hard to get scientists even to agree on what it is." Edelman;"... It is a PROCESS and it involves AWARENESS. (caps mine) It's what you lose when you fall into a deep dreamless slumber and what you regain when you wake up." (So with amnesia it would seem that we are NOT conscious by this definition.) From another part Edelman says that "Consciousness allows you the capacity to plan." Another "Humans are conscious of being conscious, and our memories, strung together into past and future narratives, use semantics and syntax, a true language. We are the only species with true language, and we have this higher-order consciousness in its greatest form." I use this to illustrate the falsity of the term "conscious sedation" and to say that this form of sedation is actually relegating us humans to the animal realm of primary consciousness, defined by Edelman thusly; "There is every indication that a dog is conscious...It acts as if it's conscious, Right? But there are two states of consciousness, and the one I call primary consciousness is what animals have. It's the experience of a unitary scene in a period of seconds, at most, which I call the remembered present.... Yet there's no consciousness of consciousness, nor any narrative history of the past or projected future plans... If you kick a dog, the next time he sees you he may bite you or run away, (This sounds like what many of us experience post Versed.)but he doesn't sit around in the interim plotting to remove your appendage does he?... He does not have consciousness of consciousness like you."
I had a colonoscopy 5 years ago and am due for another one this year. I am already having anxiety episodes! Conscious sedation is what I was given with versed. When I was wheeled into the room, there were 4 people in the room which made me feel extremely uncomfortable. When asked if all the people in the room were really necessary they all kind of chuckled and laughed. The nurse gave me the drugs which placed my body into a relaxed state but my mind was screaming no. I couldn't talk or move but was very aware of everything. I cried for two weeks after and couldn't have intercourse for 3 months. I felt SO violated. To this day I remember everything, even what jewelry I wore that day. It was far from pleasant. I thought I was alone and it was all in my mind. thanks for the insight
Hi Sage,
You are not alone! Have you talked to your doctor about your experience to see if there is any way you could be given a different sedative, or something? Or maybe you can find a more compassionate person to do the procedure?
I understand your anxiety completely. I hope you can find a way to make your next experience less traumatic.
I don't think there will be a next time. Would anyone knowingly lie down and let someone sodomize and rape their body and mind (again)? I don't think there are enough meds for that!
Imagine a dream where you are running in fear from something. Your heart is pounding...you are trying to run...but your legs feel so heavy. You try to scream but can't. Just before you are to be caught or injured, you awake with a start, covered in sweat.
That is what it felt like on Versed. It took a couple of months, but I was ok for a few years. I kept it in the back of my mind thinking of it only occasionally. A few months ago my husband has his first and I got a reminder to schedule my next one. Now find myself obsessing about it all over again.
After reading the posts, I am sure there are many people who have had similar experience but don't speak out (like me), because of embarrassment, afraid the doctors will dismiss them, or they will be rebuffed by their peers. A few of my friends actually said they felt "refreshed" after their colonoscopies...lol
This answer was given to a person that wrote to "Allexperts.com/Anesthesiology" on 6/22/09 in regards to not wanting sedation for a upcoming surgery because of the amnesia .
Answer
I really don't understand why people hate the amnesia. The fact is, if you needed (or received) general anesthesia, you would also be amnestic to what happened in the operation. People don't seem to have a problem with that but they do when it is a sedation. I like to think of sedation as general anesthesia without being asleep. The reason providers want to give amnestics is that we don't like to see people suffer because of misunderstood problems with anesthesia. Our job is to make you comfortable, both physically and psychologically. I will always recommend amnestics and explain why but if the patient insists on not having it, I will comply with their wish (unless thee is a medical reason not to).
Ronald Levy, MD
Professor of Anesthesiology
UTMB-Galveston
Since when did GA become amnesia? If GA is sleep, but is also amnesia, is he saying that amnesia is the same as going to sleep? They are not even close to the same thing! Not remembering during GA because you are asleep and don't have any sensation of the pain is not the same as going through the trama and pain of a procedure and then having your mind erased. I like the very last sentence that once again shows that anesthesiologists don't know what the word "NO" means.
I have already talked to my doctor about the fact that I will not ever have a colonoscopy, even though it would be several years away for me. I have no family history of colon cancer, so for me the risk of the procedure is greater than my risk of cancer.
You can also have a CT scan instead, if that is a better option for you. Prep is the same, but no sedation or invasion.
I cannot believe this blog has been here since 2007 and I never knew. I am an educated person and I never knew about this drug until it was given to me in advance of hysterectomy surgery June 24, 2009. If only I had known - if only I had known! I was absolutely NOT informed about this drug or its effects. They brought me the anestheologist's form to sign *before* I saw him, and because I "trusted" I signed it - then they gave me (I discovered later) Versed at the door of the surgical suite and all is lost until I awoke, after they gave me reversal medication from the general anesthetic, gasping for air, with full body shudders, which continued for hours. Further complications (Versed???) kept me in the hospital a full day longer than anticipated, and I was horribly rude and angry to everyone - I felt so violated!!! NONE OF THE STUFF I WAS INFORMED WOULD HAPPEN TO ME HAPPENED because of this drug - I NEVER met the anestheologist, I did not get my spinal, I was not catherized, I did not count down to surgical oblivion - all because of this drug. I cannot remember it, so it never happened. I feel so mentally raped. I will ask my doctor if his procedures are audio or video taped, and ask to hear or see mine if it was - I feel so raped. Were my bad reactions to the medications because of the Versed, or one of the others? WHY did the not tell me about this drug? I will plaster my body with signs stating no VERSED or other amnesiac drugs - consent for them is emphatatically NOT GIVEN!
This is an excerpt from "The Nurse's Story" by Carol Gino published in 1983. This is refering to another amnesia drug, Scopalmine, but still applies. She was given it for childbirth...woke up bruised bitten (by herself) and battered.
"It was incomprehensible that so much time had passed that I had no recollection of. First I was frightened, then I felt robbed. Anything could have happened during that period. I could have done anything, but more important, the thought that others knew things about me that I didn't-that I could never remember no matter how hard I tried-was scarier than any feeling I had ever had. They could accuse me of anything and I could never defend myself. Because I had no perceptions, I had to accept theirs. It made me feel crazy.
Throughout my nursing career, the knowledge of how fearsome that feeling was made me explain to all my patients, in great detail, everything they did or had done to them while they were receiving medication that could alter or block out perceptions. I tried to give them back some of the control they had been forced to forfeit..."
I was given Versed before oral surgery.
I asked if it would cause dizziness. The anesthesiologist said no. About a minute after injection through an IV I had massive Dizziness for what felt like ten minutes.Also Vision problems.I told the Anesthesiologist. He said it does not cause dizziness. I told him that I was experiencing it.
I feel I should have been told the possible side effects before-hand.
-Sylvie
To Sylvie,
Any drug that causes drowsiness or has a sedative effect can also cause dizziness. That anesthesia provider knew that, and outright lied to you. Why he felt the need to not be honest and say it was a possibility I don't understand. He probably didn't tell you that you might have amnesia (that's the effect they want more than sedation), but it sounds like the effect that was intended didn't happen, and you got an unintended effect instead of which you can recall.
some nurse and doctor comments on versed use:
http://www.voy.com/87178/30945.html
I wish this information had been available back when I had a D & C about 25 years go. YES, it's been around that long and the same lie was used then, "something to relax you." No mention of amnesia or "conscious sedation."
I had nightmares, flashbacks to childhood sexual abuse and panic attacks that began the day after the procedure and lasted for over six months. I had to go into therapy. I still have post-traumatic stress disorder.
If I had not managed to get the truth out of my doctor about the fact that I had received an amnesiac and that I was talking, feeling and, in fact, telling everyone in the operating room about the abuse, I doubt I would ever have pieced my sanity back together.
When I needed a hysterectomy, in 2005, I insisted on an epidural ONLY. I had to beg my primary care (same doctor) to find an anesthesiologist who would agree to this. He wanted to give me something to make me drowsy but I refused. I knew that anything below the diaphragm can be done with epidural anesthesia.
The epidural provided complete pain control. I laid there and talked to the anesthesiologist and my doctor, who sat in, for three and a half hours. No nausea afterward, no PTSD (beyond what I already have from the first experience.)
I need to know what is happening to me. I do not fear the surgery, I understand it. I want to see MY doctor in the operating room. How would I know who worked on me, otherwise?
If I had been "out of it" when I got to the operating room, they would have been able to skip telling me there were students there. I had the opportunity to refuse those students doing anything but watching. Interesting how those students were never mentioned in pre-op!
I recently had a sigmoidoscopy (all clear) without any kind of pain killer. Only once was it uncomfortable. Definitely, not worth any kind of drug. No way are they getting me to do a colonoscopy if I can't get it without drugs.
Every time I tell a doctor about the Versed after-effects, they seem surprised. Given how many posts I see here, I'd say that enough people are having this experience that it should be well known. KEEP TELLING, or this will go on and on.
Correction, my exposure to Versed was 16 years ago. Sorry, slip of the fingers.
Artwinged,
"Every time I tell a doctor about the Versed after-effects, they seem surprised. Given how many posts I see here, I'd say that enough people are having this experience that it should be well known."
As discussed in the link I provided two posts up this thread, it seems doctors, often motivated by a misplaced paternalism, have a strong bias towards minimizing negative outcomes based on their belief that patients will run for the door if they tell them the truth.
In 1990, I had a vasectomy and was never informed that chronic post-procedure pain was one of the risks for this procedure. Unfortunately I developed post-procedure chronic pain and went two urologists about it. Both doctors acted surprised about my complaint and never suggested that this was a known complication of vasectomy. Fortunately, after about nine months, the pain ended. I never thought about it again until a few years ago when there was a news story about how chronic pain in post-vasectomy men was so common, about a third of men experiencing it, that it should be made known to all men seeking a vasectomy. Here is a link to one of these studies:
http://www.vasectomypain.org/McMahonChronicTesticularPainafterVasectomy.pdf
Much like the Versed Busters site, there is a website devoted to men with this problem:
http://www.vasectomypain.org/home
Given the common occurrence of this problem, why did the two urologists I saw after my vasectomy never give me a hint that this was a complaint that approximately a third of men experience? Given this level of occurrence, they HAD to have had prior patients with this problem. So I am not surprised that you get the same reaction when asking about Versed problems.
My experience with Versed sounds very like your own (although I did not have the additional burden of sexual abuse). After a Versed colonoscopy, I also developed symptoms consistent with PTSD and went to therapy which was very helpful in my case in resolving my acute symptoms of insomnia, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, and depression.
Two months ago I went to a GP for a routine exam. He noted that I was due for another colonoscopy in a couple years and I informed him it was the most traumatic experience of my life because of the Versed and I would never have another. I told him I was aware of studies that indicated people were generally OK with non-sedated colonoscopies and he proceeded to tell me that it was absolutely necessary because of the pain (notwithstanding that Versed has no analgesic properties). He then informed me that he would ensure I got another colonoscopy even if they had to use general anesthesia. So good luck finding someone to do it un-sedated. It seems the doctors believe it's absolutely necessary, regardless of what some studies might indicate otherwise.
John
Here are some of the conclusions from a few of these studies. Unfortunately, it seems patient preferences about sedation are going to take a back seat to those of the doctors.
"Ninety-two (92 percent) preferred nonsedated to sedated procedures. Average procedure time was 13.7 (range, 0.5 to 85) minutes. CONCLUSIONS: Several series have studied nonsedated endoscopic upper and lower gastrointestinal evaluations. None, however, have evaluated patient comfort and satisfaction. In our prospective series of 258 consecutive nonsedated colonoscopies, we found the procedure to be safe, effective, and well accepted."
http://www.springerlink.com/content/jj6q07033332744x/
"Colonoscopy without sedation may be completed successfully in most patients and does not undermine many patients' willingness to undergo a similar procedure in the future. Sedation by choice is more cost-effective, may be safer, and should be offered as an alternative to routine intravenous sedation."
http://journals.lww.com/jcge/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=1998&issue=06000&article=00013&type=abstract
"Conclusions: The vast majority of patients undergoing colonoscopy procedures conducted by an experienced endoscopist do not require sedation. Male sex, segmental colonic resection, and probably experience in lower gastrointestinal endoscopy on the part of the patient, are predictive factors for successful colonoscopy without sedation."
http://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/abstract/endoscopy/doi/10.1055/s-2000-9027
"Intravenous sedation is routinely used during total colonoscopy by most practitioners and is considered the standard of care in most communities. However, the need for sedation during total colonoscopy has never been proven and is probably not necessary in most cases. Furthermore, when sedation is necessary, most patients are probably overanesthetized. This is significant, as it may make total colonoscopy more accessible, less expensive, and safer."
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h75r219105l837t1/
"CONCLUSIONS: Colonoscopy may be well tolerated without systematic administration of sedation and analgesia, which could be administered selectively."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=11126034&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus
"He then informed me that he would ensure I got another colonoscopy even if they had to use general anesthesia. So good luck finding someone to do it un-sedated. It seems the doctors believe it's absolutely necessary, regardless of what some studies might indicate otherwise."
Well, John. I'm not looking for someone to do it unsedated. I have no family history, no polyps in the rectum, sigmoid or ascending colon and I am satisfied I don't need a full colonoscopy. (I'd be finding another doctor, if I were you.)
Not only is sedation not necessary, colonoscopy isn't either unless you have documented high risk.
I don't disagree that removing polyps may prevent some colon cancers. However, for me, the risks outweigh the benefits. The general lifetime risk of colon cancer being 1 in 17, I'll take my chances with other screening techniques.
There are, in fact, several acceptable screening regimens:
" A collaborative group of experts convened by the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research has recommended screening for average-risk persons over the age of 50 years using one of the following techniques: fecal occult blood testing each year, flexible sigmoidoscopy every five years, fecal occult blood testing every year combined with flexible sigmoidoscopy every five years, double-contrast barium enema every five to 10 years or colonoscopy every 10 years."
http://www.aafp.org/afp/990600ap/3083.html
Furthermore, "The risk of perforation of the colon is 0.2-0.4% after diagnostic colonoscopy and 0.3-1.0% with polypectomy. A higher rate (4.6%) is associated with hydrostatic balloon dilatation of colonic strictures. Perforation is more common (1) in patients who are oversedated or under general anesthesia, (2) in the presence of poor bowel preparation, or (3) with acute bleeding, and generally results from mechanical or pneumatic pressure or from biopsy techniques."
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/185097-overview
Sorry to hear about your vasectomy experience. They didn't tell my husband, either, and he had pain for several years.
Artwinged,
Finding another doctor? You'd better believe it. My first and last visit to this drug pusher.
I agree generally with you about the colonoscopy need as well. I do get the impression they are potentially overdone for individuals not in a risk group. I read a thing last week about the overuse of diagnostic tests when the referring doc had a financial self-interest. It looked at a practice of urologists who increased referals for CT scans from 7-8 per month to over 40...as soon as they owned their own scanner. Not sure if this is also an issue with GI practices, but it would not surprise me.
And not that I don't appreciate your expression of sympathy for my post vasectomy complication, but my post-versed PTSD was only about a thousand times worse. And I'm still troubled by it to some degree.
John
Years ago, I was given the responsibility of writing a procedure for a large hospital/clinic company with many clinics using conscious sedation. The effort of the hospital group and their anesthesiologist heading this up was to eliminate the RNs from the procedure and use medical assistants with minimal training in healthcare. I fought the administration, even bringing this to the attention of our state's nursing board as well as Joint Commission who were either unable (in the first case) or unwilling to mandate compliance that would help to safeguard patient's lives. Versed, which is now a generic drug manufactured by: Abraxis Pharmaceutical Products
Baxter Healthcare
Bedford Laboratories
Hospira Worldwide
Paddock Laboratories
Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals
Roxane Laboratories
was used as part of conscious sedation protocol and during a presentation to our physicians, the anesthesiologist spoke of the several post versed incidents where patients were discharged home and , in their amnesic stupor, went shopping and spent thousands of dollars in purchases discovered by their families, were found naked in their neighbor's backyards in the middle of winter..and other horrific anecdotes. But never did they explain that Versed, particularly in combination with other medications, can cause cerebral hypoxia or severe emotional side effects.
The safety issues in hospital and out patient clinic care are enormous and have not been addressed adequately. Sometime in the early '80s, RNs were given the choice of keeping their jobs in companies or serving as the vocative protector of patients, a role that all conscientious RNs once took up.
Many of the horrific anecdotes read here should be litigation material but when Mr. Bush decided to severely limit malpractice suits for physicians, suitable redress had disappeared for the health care consumer. One acquaintance who was a long term malpractice attorney stated a few years ago: " I have a patient who had complications from diabetes and was to have a foot amputated. He had surgery on the wrong foot and now is missing two feet." The lawyer told me that she was looking at this file with the inability to file the malpractice litigation that would have been possible prior to Bush's presidency. We have a healthcare crisis of gargantuan proportion which began when hospitals became corporate settings with MBAs creating business plans and profit schemes that placed patient care in the back seat and profit as the main objective. The physicians and RNs who conformed profited financially.
The FDA should hear all of these anecdotes but this agency is enormously overburdened and understaffed and often barely capable of protecting Americans when the complex issues of health and profit collide and often clash.
We have a new president and he should hear of these issues that are both current and past. Consumer power has an enormous potential..use it collaboratively with like minded consumers and get government agencies involved, including licensing agencies for physicians and RNs.
I was given Versed when I was being treated for burns. I was not given Versed during my first 2 debreeding (damaged skin removal) sessions and I clearly remember every detail including the extreme pain. By the 3rd or 4th daily session the doctors started to give me Versed. My wife witnessed the procedures and has said I was in pain, however I really don't remember anything except being taken back to my room. That was fine with me... I'm glad not to remember those sessions. BUT, I have also lost blocks of past memories. I was 30 (7 years ago) when I was given Versed and felt like I had good memory. Now I can't remember a lot of my teen years, specifically my last two years of high school. It is not that I have completely forgotten those years, it just seem that huge blocks of time are missing.
My symptoms of colonoscopy a month ago are similar to others in this blog: I was very nervous the next 2 days, and had insomnia for well over 2 weeks.
I still feel very strange (sorry, but I just can't describe it), and have done a great deal of investigation .. but I couldn't really tell anyone why I have such an obsession since having the colonoscopy procedure until a couple days ago.
Here's the point of Versed: It's about trust.
The phrases used for Versed by health professionals which are noted so many times in these blogs are all "true", but that's similar to describing a car by saying: "it keeps you warm when it's cold, it can keep you safe in a crash, and it keeps you dry if it's raining". All these things are "true" about a car - but they certainly don't describe the car or what it does.
Versed is a mind altering drug, which gives the user control over your mind. Period. All other effects are side-effects, but which are highly useful to the health professionals.
Trust is the issue.
When I go for an operation, I place complete trust in the health care professionals for my BODY - I give them control of my body - that their experience, knowledge, and background are going to "pull me through" without complication. Virtually everyone does this, because they trust health care professionals; they have been trained, and they usually enjoy what they're doing. They are to be treated with a great deal of respect.
The problem is, with Versed, I ALSO now give them control of my MIND - that they do not abuse it. This is an entirely new level of trust which I've never heard of before.
Besides the nervousness and insomnia, which have more-or-less gone away I think, the recurring theme is TRUST. This drug was not properly described. Period.
I don't see why it's necessary to have a drug which takes control away from me and places it in the hands of someone else.
I have no desire to be a compliant zombie.
Thank you for posting this blog. I am familiar with Versed, both as a patient, and also as a nursing student.
I had an upper endoscopy a few years ago, before I was in nursing school, and I feel that the explanation of "conscious sedation" was satisfactory. It seems like I was lucky. They did explain that I would be "out of it," and that I would not remember what occurred during the procedure. I was ok with that, and I still am. However, I understand that this is not the case for every person. Also, I was not administered this drug until just before the procedure, as I remember being wheeled to the OR, and talking with the nurse-anesthetist and physician before the procedure. Maybe this is another reason why I have peace of mind.
As a nursing student, I appreciate reading this blog, although I'm so sorry for your negative experiences. I agree that you all should have been explained exactly what Versed would do, and given a choice as to whether you wanted to take it in the first place. Of course, nobody can guarantee exactly which side effects you will have, but it is the job of the healthcare professionals to explain it to you. I remember in my OR rotation now how many of the patients I witnessed receiving Versed were given it in pre-op holding, and told they were receiving something that would make them "relax," but that was about it. I didn't think anything of it before, but I sure will from now on!
Thanks Shan, this is something *I* was hoping for! This is a very dangerous drug which use should be reserved for the medically PHOBIC, not just so that the medical personnel have an easier time. I can't get over the fact that I deliberately spelled out what was acceptable to me, explained my prior experiences with anesthesia drugs and these people went right on ahead, against my will, and after being told NO! What kind of people would do such a thing? I still don't understand. I would NEVER, EVER treat somebody like that especially since the nurses, doctors etc. occupy such a position of absolute trust. This crap Versed ruined my life along with all the rest of the carelessness that went on! I especially liked how the CRNA went on about how he knows what's best for me, in that sanctimonious tone. While I am sobbing and hysterical! Yes, it's always best for the patient to be distraught! Also, maybe you can answer a question... WHY was I given 4 mls MORE of Versed at the end of surgery???
I have a question. Has anybody else ever seen a medicine cabinet in an operating room? I have wracked my brain and I don't recall seeing a medicine cabinet in the operating room. Did I miss something?
In the latest askapatient post, this person mentions a medicine cabinet containing labeled drugs. Other Versed sufferers have mentioned this oddity as well. As far as I know, the anesthesia provider orders what they need from the pharmacy and it is placed on a cart. At least that is what my last CRNA told me. That's why he could assure me that Versed would not even be in the same room with me...
So I get it - Versed sucks. What is the alternative?
I've had two experiences with Versed as a teenager (14 and 18 years of age, respeictively) - a very good one and a very bad one. The first experience was a good one. I didn't remember what happened and I did not care either.
At the age of 18 (year 2005) however, during an outpatient surgery I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic medication I was administered due to a pre-existing heart condition. I was in the OR, and they shot my I.V. up with something to counteract the allergic reaction. I do not know what it was. Anyway, that particular medication gave me severe acute hypertension, tachycardia, and I was beginning to seize ---- with no history of seizures (at THAT point in time) ---- and the nurse said, "You seem to be very agitated; we are going to give you something to calm you down." I was in so much agony that I wanted ANYTHING to just knock. me. out. Anyway, while I do not remember anything after that, and I woke up okay, I have since had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of an unknown variety. It wouldn't be a problem but the PTSD shows its ugly face whenever I go near a hospital, diagnostic center, etc.
BUT.
Those things I can usually meditate my way out of...
However ever since I was given Versed I have an irrational panic reaction whenever I need to have my blood drawn. I actually was so screwed up for a routine blood drawing procedure that I had to go up to the lab technician's office so that the head lab tech could prick my finger and collect a blood sample that way.
Ok, so that problem was solved - finger pricking. It was the alternative.
But I have a new problem.
I can not go near a dentist's chair.
I do not know why because I have had many dental procedures in the past with no problem; fillings, cleanings, X-rays, etc.
I have a very bad impacted molar that needs to be extracted ASAP as it keeps getting abscessed.
I scheduled an appointment with a comfortable-setting dentist who "caters" to phobics. I didn't even think I was phobic.. until I got in the chair and freaked the hell out..
My alternative?
Oral surgery with twilight sedation - more Versed.
I don't really care that I don't remember what happened in that OR when I was 18 because I can't remember and I will NEVER know as that doctor now has a pending lawsuit with someone else in the area.
What I DO care about is how I am going to get my bad tooth extracted now!
Thanks to all these horror stories, I won't be calm at all unless I have GENERAL ANESTHESIA?? What the hell? That has more risks associated with it than jjumping out of a moving vehicle! You can easily die under General Anesthesia, that is why sedation is used. But , now that I made a thorough connection between the Versed and my PTSD with dental work and phlebotomist blood drawing appointments, I do not know what to do.
Not to mention that I am a recovering benzodiazepine addict (although it was an iatrogenic adddiction; basically my doctors made me dependent on benzodiazepines without my knowledge of them being addictive).
So .....
WHAT IS THE SAFE ALTERNATIVE?!
Thanks..
Leeandy Nova
I have a question for David -
David, I am a very phobic patient and I never really had a major problem with Versed in the past. Blink my eyes and it's over - just the way I wanted it ---- but, that was before I became dependent on Clonazepam, a benzodiazepine; as of 2 years ago I am a recovering benzodiazepine dependent, and I am still on Clonazepam and I am tapering down. HOWEVER, I have become cross-tolerant to other benzodiazepines. I have heard that Propofol may be used as an alternative to Versed, just that I need to be monitored by an Anesthesiologist. I am afraid because unlike most of the people here, I truly do want to be unconscious for my procedure - I am having oral surgery and I am extremely freaked out about surgery - particularly in my mouth.... Anywho, is it possible that the Propofol may be used without Versed and still have effective anesthesia, without the need for worrying too much about all of the horror stories of hypoxia, cardiac arrest, and hype regarding a certain pop star who was abusing it?
Thank you so much for your reply; please email me if you hppen to see my little SOS message here - comisado @ gmail d0t c0m
My experience with midazolam (Versed) for "conscious sadism" is posted here - http://colonoscopyblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/on-conscious-sedation.html?showComment=1257877809467#c8776509443983176471
Last mo.10/15/09 I had outpatient rectal surgery. Here's my story. I was in pre-op and I was completely relaxed. I received the "something to relax you" line and remember saying I didn't need anything, I was already relaxed. (I understood the procedure would be with GA.) I don't recall anybody giving me anything in the I.V.poof im in post-op aftersurgery. now staff making comments like "oh, you are wake, do you feel ok? Do you remember anything?" after the third person said this type of comment, i realized something happened that wasnt"typical" for these people to be marveling that I'm O.K. I ask the nurse "what did happen"? He said "Oh your Dr. will be along shortly, she'll tell you". She is surprised as she comes in the room, says "you're looking really stable. I'm surprised you're recovering so quickly. You had us all going. Do you remember anything?" Now, I'm beginning to feel really not ok, and waves of panic.me, "No, but from listening to all the 'glad you are o.k.' type statements I can see something happened. what?" dr. "Wehadacouple 'events' with you, your surgery was performed on your stomach and we had to intabate you. we were all prepped and as soon as I touched you your pulse, heart rate fell so we had to call everyone in. after we got you stablized, decided to go ahead with the surgery. As we were finishing up were starting to take out the tube and suddenly your eyes snapped open and you clamped down on that tube and became a bulldog, I've never seen anything like it! This tube was your source of oxygen so the concern was getting you to let go!(smiles and like she's telling me a joke) when we couldnt get you to release your jaw we had to put you back under, and pry your jaw open and then GIVE YOU MORE VERSED SO YOU WOULDN'T REMEMBER ANY OF IT. I've never seen ANYTHING like that in my whole career, you were seemingly completely awake but you weren't letting go of that tube!" She's sorta making light of it, and like"phew, you had me going there" and that was basically all that was said. In the weeks that have followed I have become a differentpersonmentally/emotionally...I thought I was loosing my mind. I keep saying to close friends and family "I am NOT o.k. something is not right!! PARANOID huge, grasping for words, conversing has become a chore. I'm usually very articulate and enjoy communicating in depth with others. I'm self-employed, Beauty industry. I've noticed I'm very forgetful of where Iam,i.e. next step in the pedi I'm doing, etc. Plans I've committed to...poof!anxiety.insomnia,3-4 hrs. of sleep and even this is full of sweat and jerking up, full of fear. last week I lookupAnesthesia and versed" see what it says, cause I had at least 2x what was anticipated?maybe there was a connection? Little did I know what I was going to uncover. I have read thru this whole thread and now ready to post my nightmare. I see my primary dr. on tues.for test results (two weeks ago I told her how I was feeling, how somthing is not right, so she ordered tests) and I will be sharing research with her. I'll post my visit. I've called and requested that a copy of my op report be ready for me to take home (post-op appt. with surgeon this fri. nov. 20th). I'll post an account of that visit as well. I've had to start seeing a chiropractor because of the severe neck pain that has almost taken me to the e.r. 4x since 10/15. I can't stand to be touched very much, extremely hyper-sensitive to sound and touch. Mood swings that are so random extreme that I get scared I'm cracking up, and trying to single parent a 14 yr. boy. Poor kid, he's really stand-offish. I don't blame him. I've explained it as best I can, showed him parts of these blogsthe "Point of Return" website which lists the side effects very well, but he's still gotta to live with the breakdowns of tears and confusing speech, trying to find words etc. He's afraid too. He said to me "I thought they were fixing your bum, why did they mess up your head? That makes no sense. That's just rediculous" right...rediculous, but makes ALOTof cents?
can i also add my spelling has gone to the dogs too? Now, what do we do to get better??
following up on primary dr. visit today. test results came back all normal, which confirmed to me absolutely 100% my issues are VERSED induced. She totally listend to me copied my info. I'd brought and said she's very interested in this. she heard me and that felt great. now, I see surgeon on fri. called her today and was told yes, you'll have the op-report but the meds and doses won't be on there. long story short, the receptionist " has to hunt them down on some hand written piece of paper that is left at the hospital, and she will need a few days to get this info. because it won't be easy"? seriously? It's left on a piece of paper handwritten by the anasthesia doc. and just left...where? no copy to surgeon or my primary? Is this really normal procedure? WIERD!
Leeandy, what has helped me is Lexapro. I take it before an "event." Any time I am around ANYBODY who has access to Versed, I go into melt down. Racing heart, sweating the whole nine yards. Doesn't matter if it is merely my daughter's trip to the dentist. Lexapro is highly addictive and will actually INCREASE your anxiety level if you take it every day. Then it causes an dread of running out of it. It only works for me if I take it occasionally when I am facing medical personnel.
Kathy, your experiences post Versed are pretty much typical for some one who has had a reaction to this poison. It does get a little better with time, but I feel that the damage is permanent. Too bad medical people are dismissing our concerns because this poison is such a money maker and it is so easy to "make us forget" any bad problems caused by their own carelessness.
I had a colonoscopy a couple of days ago. I asked what anesthetic they used and was told "Versed". I had never heard of it, but I have no complaints. I was nervous that the procedure would be painful as I knew one was generally only sedated and not put out completely. I was given the drug via my drip, and the next minute I was awake and the whole procedure was over and done. I had no pain, no sickness, got dressed and left in record time with no ill effects. As for suffering PTSD, PLEASE give me a break, it would have stressed the hell out of me to be aware, if the procedure hurt I have no recollection of it and that's fine with me. The whole thing was a breeze thanks to Versed, I will be having an endoscopy soon, and hopefully they will use Versed again. I have no memories of the surgery good or otherwise and that suits me fine. I remember everything up until it was administered and everything from the moment I woke up. Who wants to be awake and feel pain when they don't have to?? I can't understand all the complaining on this page.
well Jhatton, I'm glad you're versed was a pleasant experience, I wish everyone's was as yours was...however, that's simply not the case. You stated you can't understand what all of the complaining is about? I have a question for you to contemplate if you would please. Why would there even be a site strictly designed for those of us who have gone in for surgery and have come out of totally different in our psyche? Common demnominator being administered Versed??? Which is an amnesiac? We are talking about the brain, very complex and it's very simple to me...This drug tampers with delicate processes and you and the medical community can't guarantee that everyone's processes are going to return exactly the way you found them. I don't get why that is so hard for people to wrap their heads around?! What, the Versed side effects suffers are just looking for some band wagon to jump on and complain about, to what end??? YOU GIVE ME A BREAK! I can think of way more issues of renown and kudos if that were the case. We aren't even really heard, so spare me the drama of giving you a break!
and another thing to think about. This country has given other drugs to the population for one thing and have later found it caused irreparable damage...e.i. the drug they gave pregnant women in the 60's, or 70's that was prescribed for morning sickness, and caused the permanent physical deformities to the babies they carried. That's just one example. Why is it so unbelievable that a drug, which disconnects a part of the brain, doesn't always put the brain back exactly the way it was? We talking abstract stuff here, not "put the organ back in, or whatever physical things. THE BRAIN!!! That's not rocket science. What' so difficult to understand?
I have stated in many posts that Versed seems to affect the bright mind the most. By stating that you loved it, it seems to me that you are saying that (1) you are not very bright and didn't notice the difference in cognitive function after receiving Versed AND (2) that you are such a wuss as to need amnesia to deal with some discomfort.
Let me also point out once again, that this is a site for people who have had a very bad reaction to being poisoned with Versed. Did you really believe that your inane statments would make a difference to us? Not very bright was it? Give US a break! I rest my case.
Dear Joseph, (and anyone else who thinks we're just whiners)
We thank you for your service to our country and appreciate the devastating nature of your loss of limb and eye.
You may be handling it so well because you made a conscious choice to enter the military and knew the risks you faced when you went into a war situation. You were aware of how your injury happened. Your pain and anguish are taken seriously. Your injury is not invisible.
I'm sure you have comrades in arms who suffer PTSD. They have the same invisible kind of injury we suffer. I can never even imagine the terrible things they experienced. But, I know they have the certainty that there is an identifiable, recognized cause for their problem.
Worse for us is that we were supposed to be in SAFE situations in the care of people who told us the truth. Surgical risks get explained but Versed is the dirty little secret of the medical profession. We had no choice.
Just as post-war illnesses and mental trauma were once dismissed as unreal, the deep psychological/neurological injuries this drug is causing are dismissed or disbelieved.
I assure you, waking in the night to a nameless terror, or never being able to go to sleep in the first place, is just as hard on people injured by Versed as to those injured by war. PTSD, no matter its source, is hell.
It's time the medical profession faces up to the damage this drug is doing and be up front about the risks. Most importantly, they must listen to those of us who know we NEVER want it again and offer us viable alternatives rather than belittling us or sneaking it into the IV anyway. To give this drug to people who specifically refuse it is assault.
I would not recommend for anyone to use the drug Versed otherwise named Midazolam. I was given this drug during a simple ankle surgery.
I felt like I was drunk when I entered the operating room. I remember someone telling me to pretend like I was angry with the doctor, as a joke. Next I remember following along with the joke, and totally loosing control. For reasons that I do not understand, I remember threatening everyone in the operating room, cursing, yelling racial slurs, and telling them horrible stories. It was like I mixed together the most horrible and frightening content that I could from movies, news, TV shows, stories people had told me, and things I had learned while studying criminal justice. I am not sure if I was trying to use the stories to scare/threaten them or to entertain them with horror stories.
Next, I remember having done such a good job with the crazy stories that I convinced everyone that I was some kind of psychopath. They were asking me questions from a psychopath test form and somewhat leading me with the answers. I kept returning the worst possible things as answers trying to “pass” the tests and "trip them out". Eventually, I realized this was serious and told them I was joking, but they no longer believed me.
I also had memories of being hit in the head by a black person because of the racial slurs I had yelled. (I am not a racist, and I do have respect for all types of people.) Additionally, I had memories of the doctors trying to kill me, falling off the operating table, and trying to fight a doctor off who was trying to stick a needle in my head saying that I needed a lobotomy so I would not be a psychopath anymore. Next, I remember someone coming into the room to take info to start a criminal investigation on me and to cover up what had happened with the doctors attacking me in the OR. They also told me about a bunch of events that would happen in the future to prove their case.
When I finally gathered up the courage to ask the surgeon about this later, he said that I had not flipped out during the surgery. He told me that my surgery was perfectly normal without any complications or anything strange happening. Based on that, I am guessing that I had a horrible and vivid nightmare during the time I was out, sedated, or whatever you want to call it.
The big problem is that I had anxiety for months after the surgery and feel like I have lost some intelligence. When I was working out of town a few months after the surgery, I started experiencing things that were like Déjà Vu from what the doctors had told me during the surgery nightmare. This scarred the heck out of me, and I started having panic attacks. I ended up being hospitalized for a week, given medications, and had to be driven back home since the psychiatrists did not feel that I should fly back.
This versed/Midazolam nightmare has caused major problems with my job, family, and overall since of well being. I now pray that I can one day get back to normal again.
Before the surgery, I was a very calm and level headed family man who was very good at his professional career. I had never hurt anyone or wanted to hurt anyone. After the surgery, I was left with an uncanny fear that I could hurt someone, and/or be arrested for things that I had never done.
I would not recommend using this Versed/Midazolam drug to anyone. The risk is WAY too great in my opinion. If one person can be saved from the horror that I have experienced, it is well worth the time of writing this thread.
I'm with J Hatton!!! No problems here!! Have had Versed twice. Once for dental surgery and once for a procedure where they had to stick a camera down my throat!!!! No issues at all!!!! I think sometimes people are just looking for a reason to blame symptoms on someone else....
It's so nice to know that there are informed people out there. What you wrote here seems to me like common sense, but I've met so many people who don't care. They trust doctors as if they were gods, and certainly doctors pretend that they are. . . .
Thanks for the article and I agree wholeheartedly.
I had a bad experience with Midazolam administered by a nurse for a colonoscopy at the VA. They skimped on the anesthesia and the Midazolam didn't work as well as they thought. I did remember pleading with the physician to stop the procedure. I was not happy.
I just wanted to let you know that your website was instrumental in my decision to investigate the Midazolam issue further.
See my Letter to the Editor at: http://www.giejournal.org/article/S0016-5107(08)02320-1
(full text is free)
No, I don't expect they will be jumping through hoops here. The wheels of research work really slow.
I am a (retired) Sr. Systems Engineer, not a physician. For health care advice, consult a health care worker. They are good people and could use the work. But be informed. Ask lots of questions.
I had a bad experience with Midazolam administered by a nurse for a colonoscopy at the VA. They skimped on the anesthesia and the Midazolam didn't work as well as they thought. I did remember pleading with the physician to stop the procedure. I was not happy.
I just wanted to let you know that your website was instrumental in my decision to investigate the Midazolam issue further.
See my Letter to the Editor at: http://www.giejournal.org/article/S0016-5107(08)02320-1
(full text is free)
No, I don't expect they will be jumping through hoops here. The wheels of research work really slow.
I am a (retired) Sr. Systems Engineer, not a physician. For health care advice, consult a health care worker. They are good people and could use the work. But be informed. Ask lots of questions.
Tim -
I noticed on several posts that when some folks described their Versed experience as somewhat positive during their procedures and when they said they had some recollection of the procedure and no immediate side-effects, you referred to them as "liars". I am just two hours from my colonoscopy where I was given Demerol and Versed. I do remember several events during the procedure and had virtually no pain. Yes, I wish had been told that Versed would induce amnesia during the procedure - but to be honest, my experience was positive. Now, please don't call me a liar.
Steve:
Just where are these posts? I just did a quick search and didn't find any.
I am an anesthesiologist let me tell you what happened to me. My only settlement!
I had a patient who requested no sedation only pain meds. I explained the danger of this and the surgeon also discussed how the procedure could be uncomfortable ( hernia surgery ) under only local. The patient stayed firm saying they would be fine and any sedation would be assaulting them.
We agreed to proceed -- I gave a big dose of moriphine for its calming effects and pain control 20mg . The surgery proceeded. when they got to the spermatic cord a difficult area to 'numb up' the patient had a major panic attack. They were screaming the pain was intolerable. I gave more moriphine more local was given. Nothing. They pulled the drapes down. The surgeon urged me to 'knock them out'. I refused concerned that I would be assaulting the patient. Well we couldnt continue. The patient was left open and packed. Infection and bleeding and then 6 weeks later the patient left the hospital.
Well for doing what you guys also wanted. I settled a suit 3 years later for 6 figures. Ptsd, wound infection, pain and suffering. Big regret. What should have I done? Think about this before you put huge demands when you go for surgery.
Just read the last post from anesthesiologist.
I am also fully trained, board certified , anesthesiologist.
You ask - what could I have done. Use an anesthetic
technique appropriate for henia repair and
medical condition. Give you advise as a consultant
anesthesiologist to the patient and surgeon.
Then cancel the case or have the patient and
surgeon find another anesthesiologist.
The hernia repair seems like the everyday
elective general surgery. You should have
used much better judgement and not done
the case with a substandard anesthetic.
You should have called you dept. chief and
gotten a second opinion.
Hi David and deepsleep. I would like to know what Versed has to do with the poor outcome. All this drug did to me was make me obedient. Would this patient have been obedient with Versed as in "Stop screaming and quit moving?" Or is the motive in giving Versed to conceal from the patient what happened so as to prevent lawsuits? Would you have sneaked a general anesthetic into him if he had been sedated already? (Assuming that this man was adamantly opposed to such.) I am trying to read between the lines and get to the reason that VERSED would have prevented the poor outcome.
Deepsleep the anesthesia requests from the patient SHOULD have been well documented and you SHOULD have been protected. There is no excuse for this. You did exactly as the patient, your boss, told you! I am truly sorry this happened to you. Since I can only speak for myself and for others like me, I know EXACTLY what I can handle... When I say no Versed, I mean it. I don't relish the thought of screaming in pain and you guys laughing and nodding sagely to each other saying "the patient won't remember this anyway so who gives a damn." Keep in mind that if this man was so resistant to Morphine, he may well have retained memory even with the Versed. (I did) So he may have had an even worse experience if he remembered the whole horror of the surgery ALONG WITH physical restraint or forced general anesthetic and the afore mentioned cavalier disregard for his pain while under Versed. You still would have been sued is my guess.
The inguinal hernia patient should have had
spinal anesthesia
davidj, I am a HUGE fan of spinal anesthesia!!! Thanks for mentioning it. I had this for the last 2 of my open femur surgeries and had no problems with it. Even the bone graft from my iliac crest during one of them was completely comfortable. No Versed, no general. LOVED it! I also want to mention again that the Beir block anesthesia worked perfectly for my distal radius fracture pin and plate removal. No Versed, no Axillery block, no general anesthesia.
In the hands of a competant anesthesia provider, these blocks work miracles for people like us who react badly to Versed and general anesthesia.
I like blocks when appropriate for extremity surgery.
They have several advantages over general
anesthesia. Among them, less post operative pain
and need for opiods in the days after surgery.
Reduced risk of developing long term pain syndromes like
CRPS (formally reflex sympathetic dystrophyRSD)
Especially for total knee replacement , femoral nerve block either single shot or catheter help patient during the surgery and recovery. Our group hired a fellowsip trained specialist in regional anesthesia and the patients
have benefitted from his expertise. We do most of our
block under direct ultrasound visualization.
It is the gold standart.
WOW davidj! There is hope for us! This sounds like EXACTLY what I wanted when I had my distal radius reduction the first time. I had a horrible outcome (surgery AND anesthesia) and researched my surgery and found out that this surgery is BEST done like *you* say. Better results without general anesthesia. The Versed thing is still troublesome to me though. If I am pain free and the surgery site is draped so that I can't see what they are doing (which annoys me) then why do I need my fantastic, high IQ brain tampered with? After the Versed incident I am highly anxious about surgery. Not because of the surgery itself, but rather I am deathly afraid of Versed being administered to me stealthily and the resultant mental disorder that it caused. (I need an arthroscopy on my right knee and I have a heel spur on the right, I am thinking because of my left femur being snapped in 2, years ago, and compensating... Luckily these areas have now gone numb.) I just can't have them giving me Versed! You can't refuse an IV! These people could blindside me again...
Anesthesiolgist, I am also sorry about what happened to you. Since I am not a doctor, I cannot comment on what other options you had for the surgery, but you absolutely did the right thing by honoring your word to the patient about not using Versed ! My guess is that the patient must have had a previous bad experience, or he would not have said it would be "assaulting" him to use Versed. Maybe you can tell us why most doctors/anesthesiologists do not give full disclosure to the patient about side effects of Versed (amnesia in particular) ? I don't just feel my doctor "tricked" me by giving me Versed, I truly feel betrayed. Patients deserve nothing less than 110% honesty from their doctors.
If you have general anesthesia with traditional gas and injectables (propofol), you have no recall after the procedure either so why is this a problem with Versed? Why do you want to experience and remember being cut open and burned with an electrocautery (Surgery)? That really WILL induce PTSS. You're not being "raped" with Versed,you are being spared pain and agony. Versed is a wonderful and safe drug. If you don't want general anesthesia, then hope you never need a procedure for which it is necessary or do not elect any such procedures. Choosing your own anesthesia is foolish.
mjmangino, trust me, if I had known about Versed or if it had been revealed to me IN ANY WAY I would have been gone like a shot. Versed is NOT safe. It wasn't safe for most of us here. It caused cognitive damage and PTSD-like symptoms. The difference between being UNCONSCIOUS and simply having amnesia is PROFOUND! Do you not recognise this? You are supposed to be a DOCTOR and you don't recognise this? On top of that you take us to task because we have had a very bad reaction to a "safe" drug. Why would you insist that it is safe? Because YOU like it? I have never seen anything like this about any other drug. I want to know why medical people love this drug and are so desperate to use it that they would actually come on a site like this and pretend to be omnipotent and omnicient about ONLY *this* drug. We were not spared pain and suffering at all. We experienced it anyway and you only HOPE that we can't remember the barbarism that we were subjected to! Are you telling us that Versed is only used so that you can cut us open and cauterize us without any other drugs? Just rely on AMNESIA? I didn't get amnesia despite mega doses of this poison. (I assume I wasn't OBEDIENT ENOUGH so they gave me more and more and more.)What would you say to me afterwards? "Oh sorry I thought you wouldn't remember being cut open, cauterized, ridiculed, strapped down, and laughed at while you were screaming and writhing in pain?" Using your own words about general anesthesia, why would we need Versed exactly if we are going to be unconscious for the event? The pain and suffering would be mitigated by being UNCONSCIOUS! How is an amnesia drug prior to induction to save us from pain and suffering PRIOR to surgery, exactly? FYI my sibling begs for general anesthesia and keeps getting the "Versed is safer" line. Each and every time she is awake and aware of the pain, despite assurances that "this time will be different, I'll give you MORE VERSED." They insist on using it on her KNOWING FULL WELL THAT IT DOESN'T WORK! They choose to subject her to torture instead of doing the right thing for her, because they LOVE this drug. Does it surprise you that the resistance to amnesia may run in families? Do you even care? My stepfather Dr. Mahrer didn't get amnesia from Versed either. You want to argue with him? He won't have it again either.
It is sad to hear that people are having bad experiences. Personally if you do not speak to the doctors beforehand then get up and leave before the IV is in place. If you want to know what is going to happen then you need to find out. It is up to each and everyone of us to ask as many questions and do as much research as possible. I have had Versed many times and have been lucky. I do not work in the medical field so I am not saying this to be mean. It just seems that some people have talked about not knowing when they could have chosen not to sign any forms until their questions have been answered. Hind sight is 20 20 after all.
We did ask questions. We were LIED to. The so-called "informed consent" fails to mention amnesia and/or obedience from this poison, if Versed or sedation is even mentioned at all. There is no way to protect yourself other than not drinking anything these people hand you and NOT having an IV. Since you can't have surgery without an IV, this is not possible. ASK WHAT THAT VERSED IS FOR! See what kind of answers you get. It will NOT be the truth. Try it!
to LovableLittleButtercup - Read the posts again. Many of us DID ask and ask and ask and we naively believed those in the medical profession would never lie to us, would tell us everything we needed to know in order to make an informed decision, and had our best interest at heart. We learned only after the fact we had been misled and outright lied to!
First of all, thank you for creating Versed Busters. The information I found here helped me decide that there was NO WAY I would ever consent to allowing conscious sedation with Versed for my colonoscopy.
I had my colonoscopy on 5/28/10, with only analgesic (fentanyl 150 mcg) used. The nurses and doctor initially tried to convince me that I should agree to the Versed-fentanyl combination, but I refused and made sure that I had written "no conscious sedation with Versed; analgesic for pain only" on the informed consent sheet.
Two things bother me greatly about the push to consent to conscious sedation with Versed:
1. The informed consent sheet has language that removes the surgical center from all liability in the event of any adverse effects from the procedure or sedation;
and
2. The OR nurse tried to tell me how painful and traumatic the procedure would be without the sedation. She also initially tried to convince me that the Versed and fentanyl needed to be used together (which I know isn't true) and that if I didn't agree to the Versed, I wouldn't have any painkiller administered (which also know isn't true).
With respect to #1., there is no way that I will consent to a procedure that uses a drug with well-documented risks and that also requires me to let the facility off the hook should there be any adverse effects from the sedative.
Regarding #2, colonoscopies are routinely performed in Europe and Asia without sedation, and I fail to see why it is necessary to be sedated for the procedure here in the US. After all, Katie Couric had a colonoscopy without sedation. When I told the nurse that, she shut up and quit trying to get me to change my mind.
As for the procedure itself, although it was pretty uncomfortable at times (like passing really, really bad gas), the pain was transient and I could work through it okay.
The one thing I would like to know is WHY and WHEN the Versed-fentanyl combination became the "standard" for colonoscopies. Versed was originally marketed as a pediatric sedative, and I'm very curious to learn more about how it came to be used for this procedure.
Please feel free to e-mail me at mt.state@juno.com if you have any information about this.
I am new to this site, and after having read many (not all) of these posts, have yet to come upon the problem that I encountered with Versed.
I have suffered with a cardiac arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation for many years. Some years ago I was referred to a major University Medical Center to see a Cardiac specialist called an Electrophysiologist regarding a procedure called Pulmonary Vein Isolation Ablation. I was referred to this center because of the renown, experience and purported success of this doctor, who was the head of cardiac electrophysiology at this university hospital. After taking some time to consider (6 months), I felt that I would be in the best of hands, and was willing to take the "minimal risks" that I had been advised of. I signed consent for the EP who was the head of the department to perform this procedure on me on 3/24/2002.
On the morning of the procedure, I was wheeled from the holding area into the cardiac cath lab and immediately administered Versed, even before moving onto the cath lab table. All I remember is being wheeled through the doors. I remember nothing of the procedure. I am a member of various forums for people who share my afib problem and who have had Pulmonary Vein Ablation. Some people report remembering nothing. Some report being mostly awake. Some report being "in and out."
My procedure went very badly. The lasso mapping catheter was lost into the wrong heart chamber and became entangled into the mitral valve muscles (chordae and papillary muscle). Apparently no amount of manipulation could free the lasso catheter. Finally one doctor pulled it, and freed it, resulting in papillary muscle rupture and a destroyed Mitral Valve.
I had to be rushed to open heart surgery for Mitral Valve replacement. Unfortunately there was too much time elapsed between the injury, and the repair, and post op course was CHF---->coma, long term ventilator (2 1/2 weeks), and a stroke.
After the fact, my husband and I wanted to know exactly what happened to me in that cath lab. We sent for records, which were slow in coming. In fact, it took us years and the assistance of the States Attorney to get the full records. In a chart requested some years later, a memo was found that was accidentally placed in the chart, which stated that a student (EP fellow) was doing the job, and lost the catheter into the wrong heart chamber.
My point is that teaching hospitals most certainly do not want to have to do away with Versed. This allows them to do "Ghost Procedures", and "Ghost Surgeries". Had things not gone wrong in my case, no one would have known the difference since I had been given Versed. I could not look up at the face above me and say "Wait, you're not Dr. C."!!
"Who are you?"
I have found out that EP fellows have to perform 30 procedures as the "primary" operator in order to become certified. Now we're not living in the dark ages. When I verbally agree, and agree in writing to a certain person operating on me, I consider it assault to be given an amnesic drug and then become the victim of a "bait and switch", premeditated as it was. If the fellow needs 30 experiences under his belt, then the patients need to be asked and sign consent for that fellow. Incentive? Dental schools offer reduced rates for dental students to do procedures, don't they?
My insurance was billed the standard rate for Catheter Ablation, and in addition they were billed for open heart surgery for Mitral Valve Replacement and for an extended stay in SCCU ~ 3 1/2 weeks.
Use of Versed is allowing the practice to go on.
Here is my story in full:
http://adventuresincardiology.com/
Anon, on your post at #2 the nurse tells you how painful and traumatic the exam will be unless you have Versed! This is hysterical! The exam will be just as painful and traumatic WITH Versed, the difference being that they HOPE you won't remember it. That's funny in a purely ironic sense!
Pam, every once in a while some legislator tries to pass legislation requiring hospitals to pay for their screwups. I guess that rich Dr's and their lobbyists quickly nix any idea like that, but keep an eye out. I think it is mostly in response to MRSA, kidney infections and the like, but clearly you and your insurance company should not have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs because the hospital and its minions screwed up. I and my insurance company should not have been responsible for the costs incurred trying to fix what happened to me either. If they knew that there would be no profit in medical mistakes, maybe they would be more careful?
Versed didn't work.
I was given Versed for macular pucker surgery. Not only was I awake, alert and in pain, but I have total recall of the entire surgery. I told my doctor twice during the surgery that it was not working. He just had them give me more Versed. It makes be furious that doctors allow patients to experience pain during the procedures because they assume they will have amnesia. I never want Versed again.
In August of 2008, I had an EP study with a cardiac ablation. I was told that I could not be put to sleep, since I needed to be able to let them know when I felt my heart "flutter", and was told that I would be given "something to relax me". The surgery lasted for 5 hours and 45 minutes, and those where the WORST hours of my life! I remember the surgeon getting my heart rate as high as 339 beats per minute, and I was screaming and begging them to give me something to ease the pain, or to even knock me out with a hammer, but,more Versed was given, along with Fentanyl. The horrible thing was, that I was completely unable to move any of my extremeties, I became very short of breathe and felt like my heart was going to explode right out of the top of my head. For 6 months after the surgery, I had alot of problems with my memory, and became extremely anxious about everything. I later went to the hospital and got a copy of my medical records from the surgery. I was shocked to find that during the surgery, my heart was stopped and restarted 29 times, and during that 5 hours and 45 minutes, I was given a total of 16mg's of Versed. The morning after my surgery, the nurse came in and told me I needed to get up and walk some, then left. I tried to do so, but ended up falling, resulting in the femoral plug coming loose, and a huge ball of blood formed under my skin over the incision. I vaugly remember laying in the floor, screaming in agnoy. What was done? Nothing other than picking me up, removing my IV and cathetor, and sending me home! I am scheduled to have yet ANOTHER EP Study and Cardiac Ablation this coming Monday, and i'm absolutely terrified! It is being perfomed by a different cardiologist and at a different hospital, and I was told that I would be completely asleep. I plan on asking the anesthesiologist what exactly is planned to be used to put me out, and if it is Versed, I will refuse it! Even though it has almost been 2 years since the first surgery, to this day, I still have moments when I will get very anxious for no reason at all, or have trouble remembering something as simple as wether i've taken my heart medication or not. I am only 30 years old, and up until I was given Versed, I had never in my life experienced anything like this. I feel that Versed is VERY dangerous, and the long-lasting effects should be explained to the patient, and I advice anywho who is having a procedure to talk thoroughly with their surgeon & anesthesiologist about what medications will be used. As a patient, it is our right to be informed about this dangerous drug!
I would definitely ask to speak to the anesthesiologist well before surgery. Make sure you have a real Dr. not one of those CRNA nurses. I would make sure that every single piece of paper that you sign says: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AM I TO RECEIVE VERSED/MIDAZOLAM Medical people have such a love affair with this poison it's like you are personally attacking them if you so much as SUGGEST that Versed isn't for you. Good luck. I was able to prevent Versed from being used on me in this way. I was very firm, so firm that the CRNA didn't even have the poison called Versed in the same room as me. I still can't believe how BELLIGERANT I had to be, just to stop them from wrecking my mind. It can be done. Get mad. Gain their respect. Tell them that their little control and amnesia drug is not going to be used. Period. End of statement.
After 19 years of getting Versed for the endoscopy from hell....I STILL go into a panic attack when I hear the word Versed....I doubt I'll ever be the same again. The PTSD, depression, anxiety and paranoia never left after I was given this drug. I've made it my life's goal to tell anyone who will listen to NEVER accept this drug under any circumstances, and I want the FDA to ban it's use on humans and animals.
Why would anyone actually WANT to have amnesia? If the idiots depensing this poison actually told the TRUTH about what it does to people, I bet 99.9% of patients would refuse it....and they'd actually have to WORK for a living with real patients and not compliant zombies. I'm breaking out in a cold sweat just writing this post.....
This site has done a wonderful job documenting the ill effects of this horrible drug. Venting is good. But is there a more effective way to influence constructive change? Anyone familiar with MedWatch
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/default.htm
To Never Again, I deffinatly plan on speaking with both my surgeon & the anesthesiologist before my surgery, and have it written on my chart and signed by both of them stating that I DO NOT want the Versed! I have also told my husband, grandparents & my mom my wishes as well. During my last ablation, I vividly remember the poor nurse who stood by my side holding my hand and trying to comfort me, and I also remember her telling my doctor that he needed to give me something for pain or even put me completely out. The worst part was that I was completely unable to move at all, and barely able to talk because of the emense pain. I was screaming and begging them to give me anything to ease it up. My heart rate became so erratic and beat so fast from the pain and the fact that I was so aggitated that the nurse told him if he didn't give me something soon that I would either stroke out or have a massive heart attack. I wish to God that I knew her name, because she was the only one in that OR that actually gave a crap about me, and tried to get something done for me. I found out that a week after my surgery, she quit her job, because she said that she couldn't be a part of the horrendous pain and torture of seeing the patients go through that anymore. As my next surgery gets ever so closer on Monday, I'm becoming more terrified with each passing day. The nightmares of laying there unable to move screaming in agony are getting more intense. My anxiety levels are through the roof. I've been battling the side effects of this evil drug for almost 2 years now, and will probably continue to do so for many more to come. I've never had problems with anxiety or nightmares or memory lapses in the past, and now, I have to take an anti depressant every day to help cope with the stress that Versed has put upon my life. This website has been a God send, and it has helped so much to know that there are other people out there just like me who have went through this terrible ordeal. It's a great feeling to know that i'm not alone in this everyday battle. I want to thank everyone who has shared their experience's with this horrid drug, and pray that maybe someday, someone will finally listen to us, and do away with its use all together!
The informed consent is a legal document. The way they get past that is sneakily NOT mentioning the true nature of Versed. However YOU are on to them. They won't dare give it to you now. There is a person on Brad's blog who is getting a lifetime benefit from them giving Versed after he had clearly declined it. The big problem that remains is that they could try COERCION, as in refusing to treat you unless you allow them to further ruin your life. That's why I say to speak to them well before hand to make sure that they are not totally intent on damaging your brain and TORTURING you...
I was given Versed 8 weeks ago , and not told what it was. I thought it was IV sedation, I did not know it was consious sedation, and it did not cause amnesia for me. It did cause the drs, and hospital to tell me what they were going to do , and they did not do it. I agreed to a procedure that I dread (MRI) and was told my husband could go with me. I was given the drug before the procedure in the prep area and not told I was given it. They then took my husband and did not ask me. I saw him leave but seemed unable to stop him from leaving or to be able to stop the procedure. They then took me to the MRI and I was there in sheer terror for an hour. I never had amnesia, and had to endure the horrific procedure. I was not treated with a bit of respect, and they never were going to allow him to go with me. I have had nightmares, become afraid of things that I was never afraid of , like being alone, or away from home, and the dark. I have lost a great amount of weight, and it does not seem to be slowing down. I never heard of this drug and I never will have it again. I have fears that I may not survive this time
Why , why, why would an anesthesiologist feel a nned to "sneak" in a medication? This blog is full of paranoid people. Take a break! I've used this drug in the Peds ICU for years without a single complaint. Get a grip.
John the pediatrics anesthesiologist, you hit the nail on the head! Why, why, why ARE you people sneaking the Versed into people??? That's the 64 million dollar question.
I suggest that being "paranoid" is only a problem if our fears and concerns are not reality based. Versed is being forced on people. Versed IS being used even in the face of patient refusal. My sister just had this done to her on Wed. Jan 26th 2011. In spite of her absolute and FINAL rejection of Versed, which was agreed to in advance and which was declined ON the "informed consent" she received it anyway. This isn't paranoia at all sir. This is what HAPPENS! Even if you have severe reactions to Versed, you ARE GOING TO GET IT ANYWAY, REGARDLESS.
I also want to question your statement about your pediatrics practice. First of all since you didn't identify yourself other than a generic "John" I wonder whether you are a real anesthesiologist or merely a CRNA? Since when would you expect that a CHILD would call you to complain OR that their parents would call YOU to complain? If there are complaints, here are the general rules for them...
The parents would complain to their surgeon. Usually this would mean a PA and NOT a surgeon. Maybe even just a nurse, or the front desk! Would the surgeon even hear of it and would they then respond by tellin YOU about the calls? Surgeons and their ilk LOVE Versed being used on their patients, and won't hear of any criticisms of their drug of choice anyway. Whenever we complain about Versed and point out the drawbacks and harm it does we are uniformly dismissed by statements such as your "get a grip," and "paranoia."
My suggestion is that anesthetists "get a grip." Come to reality and know that Versed IS an evil poison for many patients and that you guys aren't HEARING us complain. Turning a deaf ear, so to speak. Obviously you have read our experiences and choose to dismiss them. So why would your own patients and their parents expect anything different if they WERE to complain? You wouldn't care or listen anyway, would you?
Answer; no you wouldn't, instead you would denigrate the person who had such a bad experience and blame them, impugn their motives, lie about every having prior complaints, and call their mental health into question, EXACTLY as you demonstrated here! It's called BEING IN DENIAL...
I'd like to mention something that I find VERY interesting. If you ask any doctor, nurse, CRNA, oral surgeon if they would ever allow Versed to be used on THEM....Every one I've asked has said NO......that in itself should be major alarm that this drug is dangerous!!!!
John, check out this poor child's experience with Versed :
http://www.freehelpforcancer.com/manages-meds/sedation
I ha d epidural to my L4-L5 vertebrae to stem a bout of sciatica that has lasted over 11 weeks now. It seems I have a herniation at L2 and compressed discs at L4-5.
I too was explained that versed would be used to help me relax and that some patients experienced a almost amnesiac quality when using it. I probably wouldn't want to remember the two injections I would receive on either side of my spine.
I agreed that pain was my enemy and had the procedure. I received 1.5mg. of the drug and still felt every bit of the injections,with no memory lapse at all.
However I seem to have developed a trembling in my hands which my Doctor says is due to getting older and that many people are like this. I am 53.
I am to have another two rounds of treatment before we know if it cures my sciatica. Should I continue to accept Versed as part of this regime?
Prince of Peace, the short answer is NO! Don't let them give you this medicine. They will use the excuse of age when you find that Versed has damaged your cognitive function as well. If you don't want pain, then have them give you something like FENTANYL which is a pain medicine. It also has a very calming effect, and is quite effective as a sedative, better than Versed which causes amnesia and zero pain relief. You will probably have quite a fight on your hands by refusing the Versed. You may find that they give it to you anyway, despite refusing it! I don't buy that it's "sudden" age related trembling immediately after Versed injection either. That is their fall back position... It can't be the Versed, it's ALWAYS, ALWAYS something else that is YOUR fault.
I know lots of folks had bad experiences w/ Versed (midazolam), and I'm sorry about that. :( I know what you mean b/c I had a horrid/odd reaction to an antibiotic (Bactrim/Septra) that has turned me off to EVER using it again!! (Not an allergy, but rather a weird side effect).
Anyhoo, I just wanted to chime in with a VERY GOOD experience :) lest this blog & its comments make prospective Versed patients too scared of the drug.
Versed was used on me (along with some type of pain killer, I think Fentanyl) when I had an endoscopy. The Versed gave me such MAJOR amnesia about the event that I have no recollection of the procedure at all, except for one tiny, split-second snippet of remembering the gentle feel of something being removed from my throat, and hearing funny air sounds.
The next memory I have is putting my clothes back on in the restroom. The next memory I have is standing like a zombie in the hospital gift shop while my mom checked out a sale & finding it amusing. The next memory is being home in bed, but not even knowing how I got there!
So yeah, I'm 100% happy with the Versed because even though I was conscious enough to follow the instructions during & after the endoscopy, I don't remember any of it. And I'm very glad that I don't remember it. :) I also had NO bad side effects physically (nausea, etc.) or mentally, emotionally or cognitively.
Also, my mom's had 2 colonoscopies with Versed (and Fentanyl for discomfort) and she had no bad effects either. Oddly, however, it did NOT give her the amnesia it gave me. She remembers almost every last detail that went on, altho she describes it in a positive and mellow way, so obviously it took away all her anxiety and perhaps even some memory of the worse parts of it. All GOOD things for a drug to do!
You're welcome to write me if you want to talk further about this. I'm at shari516 at yahoo dot com
Cheers,
Shari :)
Hi Shari! I hate to tell you this, but no amount of "talking" about what happened to me because of Versed will make a difference... Just because YOU liked it, doesn't mean that sying so will make *ME* like it. It's odd that you would come here, a site for people who have had bad reactions to Versed, to inform us that you like it. Weird.
Also, just so you know, I had Bactrim/Septra and I found it a wonderful drug. No side effects at all. I don't think your reaction was to this drug. I wouldn't want you to frighten people about Bactrim and get them too scared to use it. I'm sure that if you talked to me about it, you would feel better and let them use it on you again.
You can find ME at nomidazolam at aol dot com.
To NEVER AGAIN:
I did not mock anyone here.
I did not try to make fun of anyone.
I did not try to invalidate anyone's feelings.
I did not libel or slander anyone.
Yet you are mocking, taunting & invalidating me like I'm some idiot and/or a jerk who deserves it. :( NOT classy!!
ALL I wanted to do was respectfully show that there is more than ONE side to every story. And in fact, there are often more than TWO sides. But that doesn't mean ANY side deserves to be mocked or invalidated.
For example, when I was researching the purchase of a particular digital camera brand, I appreciated reading ALL types of feedback: the good, the neutral, and yes, the bad. It's important to learn about ALL sides of a topic, that way one can make the most INFORMED decision. And choosing a medication is certainly one of the most important times that someone should be informed about both good and bad.
All I wanted was to let possible readers (who stumbled upon this blog as I did) know that NOT 100% of people's experiences with Versed are bad, lest this blog make prospective Versed patients think that the drug is 100% bad & scare them to death. I just wanted to respectfully share a DIFFERENT side of the story. I didn't think that my well-meaning post was such a horrible or offensive thing. And I'm sorry that for whatever reason, you felt the need to take it as such. That makes me sad and confused.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." (Plato)
Peace,
Shari
I'm sorry, it is astonishing to me that you thought that none of us had heard how wonderful Versed is!!! I didn't know that you meant to be kind and informative. Have you read the whole site? Have you read the other posts which also try to explain that Versed is wonderful? Have you seen where we are vilified by medical people who extol the virtues of Versed? We already know that we are part of an approximate 10% of patients who have a very bad reaction. We are WARNING PEOPLE TO BE VERY AFRAID IF MEDICAL PEOPLE WANT TO INJECT YOU WITH THIS POISON! Too bad nobody warned *me* ahead of time. Then here you come, all concerned that other people might not want Versed after they read our experiences. What difference does that make to you? If I can save ONE person the horror that I've been through then it was worth it. If you love it fine, but why would you WANT people to allow Versed, knowing that fully 10% (that they will ADMIT) have a PTSD like reaction? You are encouraging people to risk this? Why? That's not very nice is it? Did you think that your good experience with the drug would change my mind, make me think that "Oh, yeah it's a good drug, an anonymous poster says so. My own experience means nothing?" Come on now, you can't get all defensive when you are called on it!
Many of us who have posted here have not just experienced "weird" reactions to Versed, we have had devastating side effects. It is one thing to break out in a rash or feel nauseous after being given a medication, but an entirely different thing to experience severe anxiety, depression, rage, insomnia, etc. (sometimes for months) after being given a drug that we're told is supposed to help us "relax."
But I do agree with the comment about informed consent:
" And choosing a medication is certainly one of the most important times that someone should be informed about both good and bad."
The fact is, however, many of us had NO INFORMED CONSENT ! It is the legal responsibility of the medical people treating us to explain things, NOT the responsibility of the patient to do reseach ! (This is the law!) Speaking for myself, I was not even informed that Versed would cause amnesia, even though I requested to be awake, and the doctor agreed - an important detail to leave out, don't you think ??
I agree with NeverAgain that I would also like to " save ONE person the horror that I've been through."
It has been three years since my Versed ordeal, and I am still fearful of being given that drug again in the future, and will continue to warn others about it.
Shari,
Sorry you are feeling attacked here. I think you missed the point of this site.
This is a support site for people who have been harmed by Versed to discuss their experiences. It is not a place to get impartial information.
So, posting that you had a good experience with Versed is like going to an alcoholic's support page and saying that alcohol doesn't have the same effect on you.
Or, if you went to a support site for domestic abuse and said that you have never been beaten by your spouse and not everyone is in a bad relationship, you may get the same reaction.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!! I am 59, had surgery at 58 for hip replacement, versed hasruined my life and I am getting worse all the time.
When does it STOP???? I am having alzheimers like reactions, can't read like I used to, can't write, everytthing turns to something lijke a 2 year old turned loose on a keyboard & I can't tell right away that it is not English.
How long will this continue, will it stop before I am a full time alzheimers patient? Can some drug stop this? I am looking for a class action attorney
----on one site a nurse said that we are supposed to be told everything about6 this drug and she said we are supposed to be told about the side effects ACCORDING TO FEDERAL LAW! This was a nurse saying this but I haven't looked it up.
If you can help me please write to wolfbytez@aol.com
Where is your blog now? Can I get tio it? athere are so many of these posts that sound ike me and what I went thru!!! The nurses being vicious with me physically as welkl as verbally telling me to shut up cuz I was screaming in pain and disturbing other patients
According to my medical records I wa supposed to be getting pain shops in my iv and did not so that means a nurse was taking my shots, period! The PCA buttons do not work when your mind and body are disconnected and you can't find the button. Thjey used tghe polar ice machine on me even tho every single warning attached to the machine says it should not be used on me and one nurse even wrote I was screaming it was burning me and she just noted it and walked out!!! I am lucky I am not having plastic surgery around my complete body now.
Also, a ? I really need to know: I wrote to the polar ice company and pretended that I just got a prescriptopn for the machine and asked about how to use it properly, no extra info, no hosp or surgical or ss#, etc. yet the nurse just told me 2 days ago that she has that letter----is this against the law? I gave no permission for the polar ice co. to pass on my info or to search me out to see if I had surgery and it was used on me, how did the surgeon get the letter?
I feel violated in so many ways! The "hat" they use in the toilet to measure output of urine was used by 2 other patients besides myself and all written in MY chart, it was never emptied, just continued to overflow and my gown fell into it and i was still never given a wash cloth t6o clean myself when I asked, I had these peep's piss all over me!!!~ I have lupus and MS and am just so glad I got out of that hosp w/o mrsa or some other disease. I want to talk to other peep who have gone thru this hell! please write to me at:wolfbytez@aol.com
Thanks for having this web page.
My wife had her broken bone(Femur)set in the emergency room just before surgery to repair it. They gave her versed and I waited outside of the room and could hear her screaming in pain,they did not appear to be concerned as they told me she would not remember anything and she did not. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT DID NOT HAPPEN AND THAT SHE DID NOT SUFFER. An hour or 2 later they brought her to surgery.I can't help thinking how cruel that was...Arnie Gerber
Thanks for having this web page.
My wife had her broken bone(Femur)set in the emergency room just before surgery to repair it. They gave her versed and I waited outside of the room and could hear her screaming in pain,they did not appear to be concerned as they told me she would not remember anything and she did not. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT DID NOT HAPPEN AND THAT SHE DID NOT SUFFER. An hour or 2 later they brought her to surgery.I can't help thinking how cruel that was...Arnie Gerber..
Sorry about what your wife experienced Arnie! I had a broken femur back in 1986 and the EMT's had to reset it. Luckily they didn't have Versed back then, so they had to at least try to be careful. It did not traumatize me to be in that much pain. I KNEW my leg was snapped in 2 and EXPECTED to live through it.
It may interest you to know that there are some studies out there that suggest that putting patients though absolute Hell using Versed alone without pain meds is causing patients to have heart attacks, due to the dramatic increase in BP after injection, and/or during whatever torture the medical workers deem "necessary." Probably strokes as well, due to the dramatic increase in ICP after injection. (That's what causes the vision problems post Versed.)
The problem is that Versed destroys your ability to resist medical workers while leaving the patients pain receptors alone. So the whole time that the medical team is congratulating themselves with that "won't remember it later" comment they are TORTURING THEIR PATIENT! Some do remember it later. They also remember the singlular lack of empathy on the part of the "care-givers."
Versed is euphamistically called "CONSCIOUS sedation." This means (for medical people) that the patient IS CONSCIOUS of everything that is going on and severe pain, terror and grief is being experienced in real time. It is sick to rely on a nasty little amnesia drug to just go ahead ans subject people to this kind of sadistic "care."
Apparently I need to clarify some issues I have with Versed use.
1) Versed is a VERY bad drug for a lot of patients.
2) The people in health care who use this drug KNOW THIS FOR A FACT!
3) Versed is NOT used for the care and comfort of patients. It is strictly used for the ease and convenience of staff.
4) Versed is used for spoliation. (To conceal abuse from the patient by creating amnesia)
5) Versed is used to force the patient into compliance.
6) The people who inject patients with the drug Versed/Midazolam are at worst sadists in need of therapy or incarceration, and at best completely indifferent to human suffering, like gang bangers and other anti-social people. (sociopaths)
7) Versed is used in defiance of every single patient right that is enumerated in the law. Using Versed to conceal bad acts, using Versed to obtain forced compliance, using Versed for the convenience of staff, using Versed WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT (FULL disclosure) are all violations of the law.
Any questions?
Never again - no questions, but I have some opinions. Your most recet post was all your opinion, just like this is my opinion. With that being said, I wouldn't let someone administer me Versed if my life dependend on it, because it's a benzodiazepine (xanax, valium, ativan, klonopin - most people - we take them everyday, don't we?) and I had the absolute worst experience on benzos ever. I developed toxicity and had to withdraw and the withdrawal syndrome is protracted, crippling in a literal sense, and hellish, worse than heroin withdrawal. The withdrawal impacted my life so very badly that I ended up on disability, lost my job and had to drop out of college. Housebound for at least two years. Doctors can get you on them but cannot get you off of them. Benzodiazepines are just bad drugs, although can be life saving in an epileptic emergency for a one time use.
So with that said, my advice to anyone here who had a bad experience from a one time or maybe a few times dose of this benzodiazepine, be thankful your doctor isn't shoving it down your throat every day telling you it's non-addictive.
To the user "Never Again" - please do get over it and request general anesthesia for your minimally invasive procedures.
Dear alphascanova, I don't want g/a! That's part of my point. I want minimal intervention for minimally invasive procedures. In my case they bypassed my refusal to allow g/a for a minimally invasive procedure by giving me Versed. (also against my precise instructions)
I can no sooner get over my experience with Versed than you can get over your experience with benzos! Instead of shoving it down my throat and saying it isn't addictive, it was shot directly into my vein. It was "for my own good, and because they know what's best for me." They said it was a good drug, that nobody ever has a bad experience with it, that it's just like Valium...
Why are you mad at me? We are on the same page with our experiences with the wonder drugs in the benzo family. They are no good! They are bad for you, and they are bad for me!
Sorry Alphasconova, everything NeverAgain wrote is FACT. One reason this blog exists is because so many of us experienced the same things. We all thought "is it just me??" - until we compared notes.
There is a consistent pattern of abuse. Period.
Where do you get off telling us to "get over it" ? Not only did I have a bad experience while on Versed, but I had side effects that lingered for years. It affected my job and may have been a factor in my losing it.
I have responsibilities. I need to function. I also would like to be able to enjoy my life. Versed rained heavily on all of these things and I live in abject fear that this obviously bad drug might be used on me again.
I am so thankful to this site. Your information was so helpful when I really was afraid I was losing my mind.
My experience with versed (midazolam)was also a nightmare. I had received general anesthesia a few months before without versed and experienced no problems with anxiety, nightmares, amnesia. Nothing unexpected happened, but then I had a SECOND encounter with general anesthesia and had a bad reaction with so many serious and lingering after effects. I could not understand what was wrong with me. I have never been prone to depression, and cried almost every day for weeks. I had nightmares, I was upset or angry almost every day for no apparent reason. My surgery was 100%successful, so my anxiety wasn't coming from that. And it kept bugging me that I couldn't remember what happened for several hours after surgery. Finally I filed a formal complaint with the hospital: and got profuse apologies and the truth about my amnesia and those hours of time. I was never told I was getting an amnesia drug. Just "something to relax" me injected into my hand via IV port.
I had actuallly received a Press Ganey questionnaire asking me rate how my treatment in recovery was. I wrote that I couldn't remember the 2+ hours and didn't know why.
I should explain I work in health care as an administrator (not in a service unit that uses anesthesia!) I never told this to the rude crna "surgery nurse" that was barely spoke to me. There was no indication I was nervous (I really wasn't) and the anesthesia doc nor the crna didn't speak to me enough to assess my level of anything.
I am absolutely sickened by the way I was disrespected and purposely misled. When I found your blog, I felt such relief I can't begin to express my thanks.
There is more to my versed horror story, but you have all heard it from others. In closing, I will tell you I have been able to focus my fury in making the agency I work for the most patient friendly and respectful we can be. I have become relentless.
But I can't go near my old hospital or even think about any thing to do with iv ports without major anxiety problems. This is eight months later.
I don't care that some medical people accuse us of being nuts or liars, or worse. I know what happened to me, and am not interested in the defense of a drug given in deceit that was obviously not for my benefit. It harmed me as it has harmed so many.
Karen, at least you got "profuse apologies" ! The majority of us do not...
Just curious, what was their version of "the truth" about Versed ? Just the truth about the amnesia, or the REAL truth that it is DELIBERATELY given to patients without true informed consent ?
The apologies started with "sorry you weren't happy" and progressed to a rather lame proposal in writing the patient information process needs to be reviewed. I am pretty sure at least two of the initial four apologists were afraid I was going to sue them. I was able to indicate several areas in my records where mandated documentation was missing. That did get their attention.
I had to turn the medical center where I went in to all kinds of boards including Health and Welfare and the JACHO. They were in such denial... They were still unrepentant even after they were cited for NUMEROUS violations of patient rights law. What difference does it make when they are pretty much totally protected from lawsuits?
Oh, Never Again, you are so right about how unlikely it is any single one of us can change the bad behavior we encountered. All the apologies in the world cannot change the damage that has been done to us. The insincere apologies just made me angrier and more insulted.
Our complaints may not appear to make some of those people sorry, but I know someone in that hospital is tracking complaints. And in the near future (2013 I think), hospitals are going to be paid according to patient satisfaction ratings. Not kidding.
This year is the first time I've ever seen the "quality control" committees seriously review what their unhappy patients write.
Please don't give up documenting complaints about this drug and the way we were misled. I believe the majority of writers on this site want to help others avoid our experiences. And I feel an obligation to continue to point to the menace this drug presents for what seems to be a growing number of people.
You helped inspire this lost soul to keep up the complaints. I'll never quit now, and I don't feel lost any more...just p#**^d.
It's been a good thing for me!
Wow. You people need to quit being such litigious, needy babies. Medical procedures are often painful and uncomfortable. But their intent is to heal and/or prevent. General anesthesia (unconscious sedation) always carries a risk. Versed/demerol is a safer, effective alternative. It works. Yes, some people experience complications, but LIFE ISN'T PERFECT. Medicine ISN'T PERFECT. If you treat every bad experience as some sort of conspiracy and scare people contemplating the procedure, you are showing your ignorance, your arrogance and spoiled, "center of the universe" nature. Insist on general anesthesia. I'm sure if you die under anesthesia, your relatives WON'T then sue because versed wasn't used. When did we become such an unbearably selfish, whiny, neurotic society?
I read some more of the comments before mine and I'd like to ask that you just bypass my comment, please. It is clear that the anti-Versed commenters will not be swayed by facts and are convinced that they know more than the cruel doctors and nurses who went into medicine with the obvious intent of mistreating/undertreating patients. The bad experience they personally suffered should DEFINITELY be used to scare people away from a safe, effective, NON-LIFE THREATENING drug. Sorry to have implied otherwise.
"Unknown" you are too funny! You came on a site for people who have had serious, and/or life threatening problems (in some cases, otherwise we simply hated it!) with the drug Versed. It does say versedBUSTERS in the title doesn't it? You mention 2 of the worst drugs there are (the third being Ketamine)and THEN you realize that you may be in the wrong place for your little tantrums? ROFL
AFTER you posted your snippy little response, you read some of the approximately 594 posts above yours, nearly ALL of them from patients who were harmed by Versed? This is hysterical!
Come on, Unknown. Why do you defend this precious drug so?
Conspiracy against the Evil Doctors? Then why not attack the whole group, and every little thing they do? This is VERSEDbusters, not "Let's hang every doctor on earth no matter how good or bad they really are and for no good reason."
Frankly, I've had ALL good encounters with medical practitioners until my hernia fix with the Versed. And I have found too many others who feel the same. I feel obligated to warn others.
Could we be wrong about poor little old Versed? Of course. But I really don't think so. I strongly suggest people choose other medications.
Unknown, I would definitely choose GA over conscious sedation with Versed ANY DAY, having experienced both. Most doctors & nurses may not be "cruel," but they often do what is in their own best interest instead of the patient's.
Conspiracy ? Maybe. Since you are obviously in health care, maybe you can tell us why Versed is ALMOST NEVER explained to the patient ? And why do you(pl) have absolutely no compassion for those of us whose lives have been ruined by that drug ??
I also feel it is my obligation to warn others about Versed, lest they be left with permanent PTSD from their experience, like me. I am truly fearful of ever needing surgery again.
(continued)
PTSD? Really? I believe people may think they have PTSD, but to me it belittles people in war torn regions, survivors of violence, trauma patients, etc. The term is tossed around too easily. Lost some sleep? Have flashbacks? Even if Versed really is the sole reason for such reactions, is it possible for you to compare those "side effects" with the suffering of any of the millions of people in the world who TRULY suffer?
We (myself included) easily get spoiled in modern America and forget how good we have it.
I'm running out of steam on this subject but I'd like to add:
Versed doesn't seem like a magnet for trouble. Even a thousand (real) bad experiences are a small fraction of the number of uses of Versed. ANY drug affects a small number of people badly. It is sad, but it is expected and normal. Because YOU have a bad experience doesn't make the drug "evil."
Versed isn't "forced" on people. I was told exactly what Versed would do and why, and I immediately thought "great! sounds exactly like what I need." Don't remember anything after prep or before recovery. Drugs were forced on people in Nazi Germany. The rhetoric here needs to be toned down several notches.
At some point, you have to put things in perspective. Versed "typically is automatically given to people - with no explanation." Well, if it is standard protocol for the procedure... YES, of course it is given. Why is that a complaint? No explanation? Even if that were true, every part of every procedure is not automatically explained in detail to every patient. Ask questions if you must, but the notion that you have a right to be informed can easily cross over into a patient taking up more than a reasonable share of the staff's time and energy. There ARE other patients. I know you don't think it's true, but patients can be overly needy and even obnoxious. Yes, it's true.
I doubt any of this will convince anyone to rethink their "traumatic stress" and put it in perspective. Or remind anyone to be grateful we live in a time where medicine has advanced to the point where we have the luxury to debate some relatively minor experiences with a drug, rather than worrying about life-threatening diseases and conditions that once were common.
Flashbacks? Memories of pain during a procedure? Compare to paralysis, quadraplegia, brain damage, amputation, schizophrenia, etc.
Perspective.
This was my last comment on this topic. Fire away. Hopefully, not too many people make wrong choices based on the "warnings" on this site.
And just to make it plain: I wish bad things, of any severity, never happened to anyone. And I do wish good health and happiness to every author of every comment on this site. Even those who disagree with me.
i apologize for going back on my word, but I have to make one final comment.
One poster uses the words "rape" and "torture" multiple times in her commentary.
Rape? Torture? Really? I honestly hope you never actually suffer either of those things.
Okay. Post traumatic stress disorder is a real diagnosis, it has clinical criteria. As with most disorders, it has a spectrum of severity.
I fail to see how someone diagnosed with PTSD could possibly be minimizing the experiences that lead other people to be diagnosed with the same disorder.
You are out of line with the criticism.
I would never dismiss a writer here by assuming the poster wasn't also unfortunately familiar with rape or torture either. Nor combat trauma, for that matter.
Put simply, you are just another person trying to minimize the spectrum of negative effects versed has had on the posters here.
But thanks for the well wishes, they are returned.
With perspective.
You're probably going to hate this, but in the last year Dr. McDougall wrote this article downing the routine use of colonoscopy:
http://drmcdougall.com/misc/2010nl/aug/colon.pdf
And here's another new blog repeating what we've been saying about Versed:
http://sweetrocket.blogspot.com/2011/08/versed-midazolam-avoid-this-drug.html
I think anyone with perspective would take advantage of the other options available.
Check out the other sites I've linked to. Perspective? I don't know of any other drug that has caused so much complaint.
The constant denial by people such as Unknown amazes me.
Most of the stuff that our latest person states are the same old tired excuses that we have all heard before, but there a few statements that this person makes that need some examination...
First of all, informed consent law states that the patient must be informed of the effects, side effects and alternatives to the patients' procedure. If that procedure involves DRUGS, those too must be explained. There is no arbitrary time frame allotted for questions by the patient, BY LAW.
You will also not find that health care workers are exempt from patient rights laws because of "protocol." The law is black and white on this issue. Informed consent is not an option. There are no instances where medical workers' desires trump the law. Sorry. If I say NO to Versed, my EMT or any other must abide by this.
The law specifically prohibits forced drugging for the benefit of staff. So Mr. EMT's complaining that we may struggle against the colonoscopy is specious. This would be for the benefit of staff, along with being able to avoid all those pesky questions that the EMT dislikes. Sure shut 'em up, roll 'em over and have at it. Who cares if they scream. They won't remember it! (they hope) All for the direct benefit of staff.
As for the part where they say "you probably do feel you are an indispensible part of everything that goes on." Excuse me but the patient IS "an indispensible part of everything that goes on!" What else would you be doing if it wasn't for the patient? Mopping the floor?
I AM the center of my universe! You need to acknowledge that the patient IS the center of everything. Why else would we have health care workers if not for the patient? You act like we are only an annoying peripheral (and dispensible?) part of medicine! If not for us you would be in the unemployment line.
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