Not what I bargained for...

May 24, 2011

Well, I've been pretty quiet because things aren't going as I thought they would. I've experienced a great amount of pain since the day I woke up from surgery. The scary thing is that it's getting worse instead of better. I feel like I was in better shape on day two in the hospital than I am today. The pain is incredibly unbearable. It often brings me to tears. The pain changed a little bit as of yesterday. Now, not only do I have the ripping, tearing, aching muscle pain but the latest is that it feels like my skin is on fire alot of the time. I need to hold my clothes off of my tummy or it starts burning.

I'm going into my second week on narcotic pain killers. Being a recovering addict, this concerns me greatly. They discharged me from the hospital on May 13 with 1mg Dilaudid/4 hours (as needed) and liquid Tylenol/4 hours. I tried to ditch the Dilaudid early on by not taking it on day four but I only got to about the 6th hour and couldn't move or anything. I came to the realization that just because I'm a recovering addict does not mean that I need to suffer needlessly. I decided that i would follow the dosing as prescribed until there was no more pain. There has not been 'no more pain'. In fact, it's getting worse.

On Friday, May 20 I went to my follow-up appointment with the Advanced Practice Nurse (Sue Allen) and also met with the Dietician. She indicated that some people suffer greater muscle/nerve trauma in surgery and some take longer to heal than others. She also mentioned that Dilaudid did not always work for everyone and prescribed me Tramaset to get me through the weekend. The Rx instructions were 1-2 tablets every 6 hours, as necessary. I started with one pill. About two hours later, I decided to add a second pill. I finally felt a little bit of relief. My pain was down to about 50%. Six hours later, I was aching again and well ready for the next dose. I took two tablets. It was the first time I almost felt normal since surgery. I actually slept through the night too. Sadly, when I woke up the next morning and got out of bed, it felt like somebody had ripped my guts out and set them on fire again. I took two Tramaset but it did very little. I suffered for six hours and took two more. This time it took about 10% off my pain. So frustrating. By Sunday, I could barely move and had been in a great deal of pain all weekend. I headed to Emerg Sunday night and got there at about 8:30pm. They hit me at about 11pm with some Dilaudid and again, I felt a little bit of relief. It only lasted about two hours. They decided to hit me again after the CT Scan with what the doctor called "a real dose" saying the first dose was "kind of lightweight". Holy hell, they stoned me out of my tree. I was dizzy and racing and really yucky but the pain was 90% gone. TAAAAAAAAADAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

That was the good news. The bad news is that the CT revealed nothing. The emerg doctor parroted what the APN at the clinic said... greater muscle/nerve damage, longer healing... and that he believes that I was under-dosed on pain meds. Yep, under-dosed!!! He sent me home with 2mg Dilaudid/4 hours. I just can't believe it. That I'm 13 days out of surgery and I'm receiving a larger medication dose than most people are discharged with. I can't believe that this ridiculous amount of pain that these increased pain meds doesn't seem to be able to numb is just normal and there's nothing wrong. Something has to be wrong. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and this has me a mess.

The spin-off of all of this is that I have an 8-year-old son with Aspergers and ADHD who has had a "lame mom" for two weeks. We expected a few days but that poor boy was in tears begging me to play Lego with him yesterday. It's still rings in my mind and brings me to tears: "Please Mom, I'm begging you. I can't take it anymore. Please, please play with me."  I had my brother take him out yesterday for a few hours but he still seemed depressed when he got back. One of the big reasons I had this surgery to be able to do more with my son, so this is tanamount to torture for both of us.

The other spin-off is a great fear that I'm falling behind. Some days I can barely move. I do my best to make sure I get out for at least one walk a day but they're slow and short walks (about 250 meters) and I always come back aching (stomach and back). I feel like I should be doing so much more by now and that I'm going to have even more trouble with loose skin. I already knew loose skin would be an issue for me but I don't think I could have found a better way to make it worse. I want to get going. I want to get moving. I want to be able to touch the floor and wipe my ass without searing pain. (TMI!)

I'm fed up of being in pain and fed up of being a lump. I can't wait for this to be done so that I can move forward in my journey because at the moment, I feel stuck and it's really starting to mess with my mind.

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