There are various horror stories of interpersonal boundary crossings in the BDSM world. This is not one of them, on the contrary, this incident is intended to show you what it means to have a purely physical accident that only becomes apparent later. Let it be a lesson to you and weigh up whether you really want to live through the consequences of some actions. Apart from that, certain content warning for this piece. If you do not want to read about blood, hospitals or intrusive thoughts, may just skip this one. If any of you have a medical fetish, this story is definitely something for you.
„Is there anything we can do to help you?“, I heard behind me and then we stared at the bright red toilet paper together.
„I don’t think so…?“, I replied.
„It looks really bad though.“
„Yeah.“
At that moment I didn’t know what was worse, that the bleeding didn’t stop, the pain or that I had no idea what exactly had happened. I mentally ran through all the possibilities: IUD? Period? Something completely different? Just before the person disappeared back into the club, I called after her, „Could you find me a dog? Big, colourful and should be at the till.“
A few minutes later, I was sitting in a separee with a pile of towels, a torch and a soaked jockstrap, waiting…
„Bless this mess“, my brain commented and I could only agree with it. I’m generally someone who tries to keep my expectations as low as possible to minimise the likelihood of being disappointed. But I hadn’t expected this scenario.
After several consultations with the tiger and the dog, I walked through the evening streets with only a towel around my hips and slightly disorientated, looking for the car that would save me. Although it had started to drizzle again, it was still far too warm and part of me was very happy to have decided to ditch the trousers and jockstrap and just walk through the streets in a towel. Meanwhile, I made a mental note to myself: „Funny, the Scots were right about wearing nothing under their kilts.“
Who was far less competent was the architect of the hospital we were heading for. There’s no other way to explain why the emergency room was built at the other end of the building complex and not right next to the car entrance to the grounds. Our night-time cruising was only interrupted by the voice of the rainbow dog next to me: „You know, I had hoped never to reach a certain level of friendship.“
He was right.
At some point, I got out early and marched into the hospital on the off-chance, hoping to run into the arms of a doctor faster than having to search endlessly for a parking space. Respect to the lady at the night desk, who didn’t even bat an eyelid when I asked for directions to the emergency room, soaked and with a tight towel around my waist. She had probably seen worse things, or she thought to herself that I was walking exactly where I belonged at that moment and that any excitement would therefore be for nothing. She was so unimpressed by my appearance that she didn’t even notice the trail of blood I left behind me. The medical staff, on the other hand, were very interested in it and my doctor in charge was very happy to hear from me the next morning that it had belonged to me.
Once we arrived at the emergency room, we had to wait, wait and… wait. Instead of acute stress, there was tiredness and exertion in the air and I was surrounded by people with broken arms, headaches, stomach aches and possible smoke inhalation. All in all, my condition was in the region of: This could all have been a lot worse, but it could also have been a lot better.
My mood worsened considerably when I realised that I had no chance of being addressed with the correct form of address without changing my marital status and name. For a brief moment, I thought about correcting the nurse, but then gave in to reality. How likely was it that she would be able to tell me apart from the twenty or thirty other patients moving around the periphery of the ER area? In the end, I wouldn’t just have to correct her, but everyone who called on me in the next few hours, and there were far more than ten of them. Correcting people is exhausting anyway, correcting people while walking around with a bleeding wound is even more so. Nevertheless, I noticed how not only my physical health declined over the course of the evening, but also my mental health.
The only moment I was extremely amused to be misgendered was in the operating theatre when I had to explain to everyone present where my festival wristband came from. My slightly convoluted explanations of what exactly the Chaos Communication Congress was amazed them, they didn’t buy my efforts to explain that the CCC was all about hackers campaigning for data protection. Suddenly I was very happy that in today’s hospitals, there is an absolute division of labour, patients are only asked about their diagnosis and not necessarily where they got it from. Those who already found the CCC adventurous were perhaps not necessarily the kind of people I should be explaining to at 3 am that trans people, the CCC and BDSM felt more like a circle than a venn diagram.
The gynaecologist on the night shift, took my story in stride. Even though she asked surprisingly often whether it had happened just like that or whether a fist or something else might have been responsible for my accident. I answered in the negative. They still had me do a urine test and took more blood. I wasn’t bleeding too much anymore, but I was beginning to wonder when the maximum had been reached and my body would have to cope with the minimum. Apparently, there was still room for improvement, because the doctor took her time to determine the problem…
Pain is a very subjective thing. I thought I had a high pain tolerance ,then I started BDSM and found out I was a sissy. Despite the painkillers, I was inwardly cursing the vein access I had been given and the fact that the doctor was poking around exactly where it hurt the most.
„I didn’t want this much attention tonight,“ I admitted.
My neighbours laughed
„At least not from us… Was it at least worth it?“, asked the doctor.
I briefly considered whether the question was too private, but then decided to answer it. I couldn’t imagine a more socially awkward situation, and the doctor had probably rummaged around in people’s internal organs during her basic training. It could hardly have been more intimate.
„Yes.“
„Did they look good?“
„Yes and no. They had masks on…”
She seemed almost a little disappointed that she didn’t get to hear any juicy details, so I added, „Believe me, from experience, you often don’t necessarily want people to remove the mask.“
Laughter rang out again. At least I made them laugh, so I couldn’t be such a bad patient and my sense of guilt (towards whomsoever) shrank.
At that moment, the gynaecologist announced her results.
The good news: the blood was merely flowing out of me and not into my body.
The bad news: If the tourniquet along with adrenaline didn’t help, I would have to have surgery under general anaesthetic. At that moment I realised two things, firstly at the word „general anaesthetic“ my brain screamed “PANIC” and secondly, having a catheter placed is not as bad as I imagined, but still not pleasant at all. In other words: No new kink unlocked.
Even though I now realise that the vein access hurt on my left side, my wound in the middle and the catheter on my right side. Could this be called the trinity of pain? When the doctor left me, I managed to take a look in a mirror and looked straight into the face of a very tired creature, with very thin hairy legs and a tourniquet around my hips that looked like a loincloth. My protruding veins emphasised the please-call-me-the-scrawniest-Conan-the-barbarian-on-earth look.
In the end, I ended up in the operating theatre. Before that, however, I was parked in a side area of the emergency department. Although I had been given a spacious hospital bed, I still couldn’t sleep. The neon light was too bright and the gasping, coughing and wheezing around me was too loud. My brain didn’t help, “Listen and look, right now you get a flavour of what it means to be old and lonely in this country. Your health will deteriorate, nobody will be left to accompany you, and the nurses are way too busy to care either. Sure, you ever really want to start saving for retirement and get old?”
After four hours, I ended up in the operating theatre. Before that, however, I was wheeled through windowless corridors several times, taken up and down lifts and managed to take off my binder myself despite the catheter and vein access. I mentally added putting on hospital clothes to the long list of painful activities I’ve had to go through in the last few hours. I studiously ignored the red button that I could have pressed to call one of the nurses to help me. For one thing, I was strong and independent and for another, I didn’t feel like explaining to someone else why I was wearing such a tight tank top under my T-shirt. Anyone who continued to misgender me, even though I wrote „permanent medication: testosterone“ on every diagnosis, allergy or admission form, didn’t deserve to help me take off my binder either.
The next fuck-you moment I experienced was when the theatre nurses strapped me to the bed and I briefly considered whether running away wouldn’t be a better idea after all. At the same time, I knew that the likelihood of me losing my catheter or vein access if I tried to escape was quite high, and I didn’t know where I should have fled to. Especially as I was still bleeding… My brain contented itself with a silent rant about my still miserable condition and how this was the wrong context for any form of bondage. Already I was not too fond of it in the bedroom, in the hospital I realised I despised it.
My mood didn’t improve when the surgeon held an oxygen mask over my nose and explained to me, clearly too cheerfully for my liking, that the mask was only for the oxygen and not for the anaesthetic, which I would receive via the venous access. At that moment, I couldn’t really understand his friends, especially when the anaesthetist gave me the first injection, which was supposed to „just make me a bit dizzy“. I don’t know what his definition of „a little“ dizziness was, but I was glad I was lying in a bed, because my reality started to tilt and I couldn’t tell up from down. I could still see the second injection being given and nothing after that.
The next thing I knew, someone was pushing me through the corridors again. When I opened my eyes, the anaesthetist from before was standing in front of me, „The operation is over and went well.“ As always, my brain was faster than anything else in my body, „You know what, you should thank him. He did a good job and just because you can’t stand hospitals to death doesn’t mean he was to blame for your accident.“
Not gonna lie, I can’t remember the order in which I croaked out the phrases, „Good morning, thank you and actually I’m doing pretty well“; I was only told later that I had apparently managed it twice.
I spent the next few hours sleeping, without any strange anaesthetic dreams, which was all I needed. Nevertheless, my body wasn’t good at ‚relaxing‘ for long. So began the endless game of:
I opened my eyes, stared at a white wall, and then closed them again.
I opened my eyes, stared at a white wall, and then closed them again.
I opened my eyes, stared at a white wall, and noticed a cup of tea and rusks next to me… From the smell, though, it was camomile tea, which I didn’t like, and the rusk was probably not gluten-free… Therefore I closed my eyes again.
The fourth time I opened my eyes and my best friend was sitting in front of me. A definite improvement, the tea and rusk hadn’t been put away yet. Suddenly I was very keen to leave the hospital as soon as possible, unfortunately, I was the only one.
My circulation had other plans. I was supposed to use the bathroom on my own as a discharge test, but of course my body was not up to the task. The floor tilted, I got cold and sweat poured down my face. Never before had I been so glad that a toilet was designed for disabled people because the handles next to me saved me from a rough landing on the floor tiles at that moment. By now my ankles were white from clutching and I had no idea how to get to grips with the problem. I wouldn’t die, not while I was sitting on the toilet, but the situation was still not pleasant. One option was to lie on the floor and lift my legs up, but was that such a good idea? Did I want to know how many people had already thrown up on this floor? And when was the last time it had been cleaned? I feverishly looked for one of those A4-sized word tables in which the last cleaning was entered in public toilets. No such thing.
I would have to explain my situation when the nurse came back at the latest.
At that moment, there was a knock, „Are you OK?
„Yes?“, I replied and stumbled towards the door.
„Oh my goodness“, was the comment on my condition and a few minutes later I fell back into my bed and was hooked up to a drip. With a „I’m glad I hadn’t removed the venous access yet“, and a subsequent, „You know, that wasn’t really surprising, you’ve lost a lot of blood“, she rushed off again.
Slowly, I began to fully understand the relativity of statements made by hospital staff: „The operation is over and went well“ meant „congratulations, you’re alive and there were no acute life-threatening complications“. My best friend commented on my condition with an accurate: „Wow, you look like shit“, and then turned his attention curiously to the contents of my drip. It turns out that saline solution can work wonders, which is why an hour later I was sitting in my best friend’s car, overjoyed and devouring three rolls of foccacia.