My personal experience with ketamine: A thread.

Yesterday, I was scraping a spinach mix out of an immersion blender with my left index finger, but the thing was (very stupidly) still plugged in. My finger hit it and, boom, got blended. My finger was stabbed to the bone and lodged between the edge of the blender and the blade.

I couldn't get it out. I laid on the kitchen floor with the kids upset and my husband on 911 answering a million questions.

Paramedics and firefighters arrived, eight guys kneeled over and tried moving the blender blade. My screams halted that effort. They loaded me up into an ambulance with the immersion blender attached to my left hand.

They gave me fentanyl via IV and an anti-nausea medicine in the ambulance. It took 4 hours, but a team at Denver Health used a bunch of tools and saws and finally sawed the blender off.

Before that, I was in a great deal of pain with the blender attached to my hand, so they gave me more fentanyl. Then, a nurse told me I was getting 15 mgs of ketamine. I told them I knew about it because I covered Elijah McClain last summer.

I also told the nurse I understood that CDPHE was amid a review of the drug's use outside of hospital settings. (In ambulances.)

They asked my weight and assured me I wasn't getting much. Before a minute or two went by, it felt like the bed was forcing itself through my eyes. A high pitched squeal rang through my head. The room spun. Then I blacked out. Then I couldn't breathe. I was given oxygen quickly.

I've had two emergency c sections, so I'm no stranger to pain or anesthesia.

I tell this story because reporters oft have blind spots when writing and reporting on topics -- and this was my case with ketamine. I didn’t really know what it was.

I know now. I told the nurse, after the spell passed, to never give that to me again. Her response: It can go either way with ketamine!

With as much objectivity as I can muster hours later, I think it's smart that state officials are reviewing this drug -- particularly when administered to people outside a hospital. And certainly involuntarily. FIN