The hospital suck also happened to my husband during the aforementioned surgery. The doctor had given him a block so he was numb from the knee down. After surgery they hooked him up to a morphine line. For thosse who may not know, a block doesn't wear of gradually. It just stops working. When this happened he immediately knew something was wrong. The pain was intense. (My husband has had a very long list of painful things happen to him as well as multiple surgeries. If he says the pain is so bad he needs meds than it's very, very bad!)
It quickly became obvious that there was something wrong with the morphine line. So, I go out to the nurse's station (since nobody comes when he hits the call button). A nurse comes in, glances at his arm, and says that the line is fine. It's clearly not and the pain is getting worse. After about half an hour I go out to the nurses station again and am told, again, that there is no problem. Repeat this scene a couple more time. At this point hubby can't handle the pain anymore. So, he starts chucking anything he can reach (EDIT: this meant his pillows and a stuffed dinosaur...he would never have thrown something that could have injured someone...also, he would throw it at the door as it was opening so it would hit the door not the nurse herself) at any nurse who comes in (they were coming in regularly to see if he needed his pillows adjusted or if he was feeling okay, but they kept insisting there was nothing wrong with his line)! Finally, they send an IV tech in. She looks at his morphine line, and immediately tells us that the needle was in his skin, but not in his vein at all. She fixes it, gives him a couple extra pumps to help with the sky-high pain levels, and everything was good after that.
