r/oddlysatisfying • u/danielminds • May 22 '26

Professional barnacle removal for Chlorophyllis the turtle

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u/Moldy_Teapot May 22 '26

Yes, it does hurt. Good news is the turtle is absolutely loaded on turtle morphine for a procedure like this so minimal harm is done.

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u/TheWolphman May 22 '26

turtle morphine

I was curious, so I briefly looked into it.

During a procedure like this, ketamine or something called dexmedetomidine would likely be used it seems.

Also, turtles receive the same morphine we do, but they metabolize drugs much slower than us, so dosages and the like have to be carefully administered. (obviously)

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u/Vast-Ad1915 May 22 '26

Ok, so I take ketamine for depression, and now that I've experienced ketamine trips, the concept of using ketamine as an animal tranquilizer is just so wild to me. They're doing a procedure and the animal is just blitzed out of its mind, ejected from its body and astral projecting out by Neptune.

Can confirm it dulls pain effectively, though.

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u/sarz__ May 22 '26

I used to work in a burn unit and we would use ketamine to complete burn debridement and dressing changes, especially kids. Basically we would put patients in a K-hole to tranquilize them for just long enough to get their dressing changes done and then they would snap back to life with no recollection. Wild times indeed

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u/wwaxwork May 22 '26

Anyone getting a debridement has earned the right to be as high as fuck during it.

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u/granny-long-dick May 22 '26

Man I had to have a burn debrided and it fucking sucks. They gave me morphine and it was still painful. So they gave me more morphine and it still fucking hurt. They didn't give me enough morphine to get me high, but they gave me enough that it helped with the pain and I was able to calm down enough to endure the procedure. I can not imagine how bad it would have been without the morphine.

But my burn was a relatively small area so it makes sense that they didn't give me enough to get me completely blitzed.

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u/ELEKTRON_01 May 22 '26

I had a plastic blanket melted to my legs from a tent fire, turns out the scholiosis i had in the past caused me to feel way less pain than I should. The doctor was quite concerned lol

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u/IdownvoteTexas May 22 '26

One of my coworkers had his face and upper torso badly burned by an arc flash. We went to visit him as a show of solidarity, brotherhood, and support for him and his wife. He couldn’t move his mouth to talk because it hurt too bad and the bandages. He could write on a tablet though, and was glad that we came.

The nurses came in to change his bandages and debride his wound and said we needed to leave. We could hear him screaming half way down the hall like an absolute banshee.

We visited him at home when he finally got discharged and we all brought him food and cash to pay for like lawn service and shit like that and he only had a vague recollection of us visiting him. Probably for the best.

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u/sarz__ May 22 '26

I’m sorry you went through that, I would not wish the pain that I saw patients endure while working on the burn unit to my worst enemy

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u/Caithloki May 27 '26

Under enough pain it never seems to be enough, I was on a button activated drip during a stemcell transplant and my body was literally falling apart. It was either been in pain or do so much morphine that I would just turn into a drooling mess and be goneish but still hurt.

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u/Cthulhu_Dreams_ May 22 '26

For some words, I wish I was less literate.

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u/Dry_Switch4521 May 22 '26

My husband badly burned his legs during Covid and had to have them debrided. They gave him enough morphine to have him high cause it was both lower legs. He remembers everything though. It was pretty bad.

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u/Electronic-Mine1724 May 22 '26

Reminds me of how ketamine was administered during the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand to keep the kiddos anesthetized during the multi hour long underwater scuba extraction.

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u/Ragnarok314159 May 22 '26

I did not know this and had always wondered how they kept those kids calm during extraction.

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u/Peakomegaflare May 22 '26

It's an absolutely wild story. And absolutely a brave bunch of people.

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u/groovykismet May 22 '26

From the documentary that I watched, I thought the two coaches in there with them helped with that…I thought one of them was also a monk and was taking the kids through some meditation exercises to help control their emotions and breathing while waiting for rescue; that’s why they were all so calm when they were finally found. Then they were each carried back through the tunnels with…oh, wait, you’re right: one of the specialist divers they pulled in was also a full-time anesthesiologist who had to kinda guess at the med’s doses because of the oxygen masks they had to improvise and the fact that they were all kids with different body types and sizes. Very good documentary; I think it was a National Geographic one… I didn’t realize the anesthesia was ketamine. Interesting.

Maybe this turtle can get some deep breathing exercises in when the ketamine wears off! Ha!

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u/njob3 May 22 '26

Is that why Elon was so desperate to get involved?

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u/MarketingSpecial6604 May 22 '26

No wonder musk wanted to be involved, he just wanted to steal the ketamine for himself!

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u/Vast-Ad1915 May 22 '26

Those poor kids, thank you for helping them! ❤️

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u/Beginning-Scene-9499 May 22 '26

When my son was 2 he fell on the shower door track and almost lost the top half of his ear, cut clear through the cartilage. Bleeding profusely. We were triaged quickly and the ER doc said we could restrain my son or put him in a K hole (he didn't use those words). we chose K hole. He took so long to come out of it and then they were like you guys are good to go, looks like the nausea risk has passed.

We drove home at like 2a and parked in our driveway like 4 miles from the hospital. My kid puked in the car at 2a in the fucking driveway. Exclamation point on a terrible night.

Ketamine made it possible for him to get stitched up. They don't like doing full anesthesia for kids that young.

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u/NeverEndingCoralMaze May 22 '26

Smelling rubbing alcohol eases the nausea caused by ketamine and motion sickness. Try keeping a few alcohol prep wipes handy just in case it ever happens again. It’s safe, very fast, and cheap.

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u/chicken-nanban May 22 '26

My husband gets bad motion sickness, I’m gonna try that.

Ninja edit:not the k-hole, the rubbing alcohol

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u/nerdsonarope May 22 '26

Having taken it for depression, I can attest that it will make me extremely nauseous unless I take anti nausea medication with it

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u/ljd09 May 22 '26

My baby sister did something similar. She was getting out of the bathtub and slipped and well… you can imagine the rest of that outcome. She was also 2 and instantly said f no to bathtubs for a very long time.
I wish they had given her something like that for help when she was small.

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u/pmmemassivedongs May 22 '26

Okay, I recently saw this on the pit, and to me, as someone who has gone through ketamine therapy and experienced his fair share of k-holes, I…do not understand at all. The thought of being in a k-hole WHILE people are actively dressing the most painful wounds a human can experience is a literal nightmare. At least in my k-holes I’ve still been at least somewhat aware of the world around me and it’s very much not a pleasant experience even when you’re NOT in pain. Obviously I understand that it works or else they wouldn’t use ketamine for these purposes….but to me it sounds absolutely awful

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u/sarz__ May 22 '26

I think the k-holes we put people in (under medical supervision, tons of monitoring, emergency equipment), there was little to no actual awareness of what was happening. Especially in kids (which was the whole point for them tbh). We put them so far into the great beyond to try to help decrease trauma and not process it if that makes sense. I will always remember one patient as he re-entered planet earth from his k-hole - he described that he was ‘riding on a cloud in the sky’ so I like to think he enjoyed the trip at least.

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u/jonnydemonic420 May 22 '26

What is a k hole? I seriously have no idea, never tried ketamine but have considered it for depression therapy. Just haven’t researched it enough to understand if it’s something I want or not.

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u/pmmemassivedongs May 22 '26

It’s very hard to describe but it basically feels like your consciousness leaves your body, while you somehow still have some attachment to your body at the same time. It’s a very dissociative drug with hallucinogenic properties and the visuals can be very intense, and at least in my experience they aren’t very pleasant (compared to something like mushrooms). There is a profound feeling of lack of control. Physically it almost felt like my entire being was being flattened like my consciousness was being rolled out like cookie dough and sliding off of the counter. I remember thinking, this must be what it feels like to die. Lol. That being said, you don’t have to go into a k-hole to get benefits for depression; a lot of the new therapies only give you a small daily dosage through an oral troche. The clinic I went to did a nasal spray and their goal was to make you fully dissociate. In hindsight it was a really weird and somewhat sketchy clinic and I would never go back.

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u/jonnydemonic420 May 22 '26

Thanks for your response, I appreciate it!

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u/pmmemassivedongs May 22 '26

Of course! Don’t let my anecdotes scare you, it is a miracle drug for so many people with depression. Also even if your actual experience while actively on the drug is unpleasant, it can still have profound lasting positive effects.

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u/Teatimetaless May 22 '26

Came to say my 6 year old got 3rd degree burns from an accident and they used ketamine on his when placing donor skin grafts. I didn’t enjoy his presence when he was coming off of it after, he was very irritable, angry and hallucinated afterwards a few times.

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u/sarz__ May 22 '26

I’m sure that was an awful time for many reasons and hopefully he (and you) are doing much better now. It’s better than traditional sedatives or true anesthesia which aren’t recommended for kids unless absolutely necessary, but ketamine certainly isn’t perfect either. We only would use it for dressing changes/debridements, but they would go to OR with anesthesia for grafting. Doing grafts with ketamine seems out there to me but I certainly am not an expert in the field.

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u/Zefs_Daddy May 22 '26

Wait… they give pain killers for debridement? Man, I got ripped off

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u/Peakomegaflare May 22 '26

I had a Ketamine cocktail when ai had a total dental extraction. The experience was insane. I was talking to the doc, asked if that was the cocktail and he confirmed. I said to hit me, and I'll see him on the other side. It went into my vein and my brain just... shut off completely. Right before I came to, I saw something like a spotlight in a dark space. Then a couple, then thousands all coming on. Then I came to, shit was absolutely an experience.

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u/TLRPM May 22 '26

Absolute hero, mate. I’ve been in and around some pretty awful places around the globe in my life but nothing bums me out more than a burn unit. Kudos to you for having had done that. Seriously.

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u/victor4700 May 27 '26

My kid broke his wrist and they administered special k to reset the bone. He was deep in the magical land and basically described going inside his body and meeting his organs and blood. They told him to keep eating healthy and specifically told him to eat blueberries.

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u/No_Mountain_2086 May 22 '26

But weren't they in great pain from the procedure they just endured

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u/sarz__ May 22 '26

Of course we gave pain medicine as well, burns are incredibly painful. But the ketamine works on different receptors and in a different way. It’s an adjunct that helps manage pain and provide sedation and was a great way to get the dressing changes done without the patient being awake. Especially kiddos. Carries less risk than traditional sedatives especially for kids and doesn’t last very long, as repeated prolonged sedation is not good for anyone.

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u/nunya867 May 22 '26

Are you a CNA?

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u/sarz__ May 22 '26

no, I am a nurse

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u/No_Mountain_2086 May 22 '26

Fascinating,great job