On the off chance that there are a few risk takers who haven’t yet taken advantage of the links I’ve posted on maintenance of fast twitch fibers, balance training, one-legged sit to stand exercises, well, let’s just say that in over 45 years of marriage I’ve never suffered the indignity of my husband seeing me sitting on the toilet…and he still hasnt. AND, yes, I can pull up my underps standing on one leg!
FWIW, the binoculars you see are set up to watch the daft beggars para gliding off the mountains…not voyeuristic tendencies. That’ll be my story for my recovery period…a bit more badazz than bunion surgery, I reckon.
And, for @JLC …thanks to the anesthesiologist and sidekick, I had me a tutorial on ultrasound guided femoral and sciatic nerve block before the sedation.
I mentioned that it was disconcerting but nothing to really complain about…
Thanks Wendy. I thought I was being crafty with my planning. I’d had my right foot done in the October and the recovery period afterwards really put a damper on the holidays so I scheduled for the New Year. Well, just to show me, the darn foot started to act up just about the the beginning of November…that “strained ligaments and tendons” feeling you’re familiar with. Got progressively worse so I was pretty relieved when the day came…I was reduced to shopping in my slippers and daily step count down to a paltry 10k tops!!!
Anesthesiologist used some good, long acting stuff…leg still feels like a log (as I was advised but felt a bit skeptical about) so I won’t get too ahead of myself. I rather think that if the bones had slipped so far as to provoke the sort of pain that I never felt before the first surgery, the movement back to a functional position will maybe mean an even harder time as everything gets reacquainted with “normal”. Husband says that’s Dim DentiSt (DDS,geddit?) logic. I hope he’s right🤞
Also, and in the context of healthcare costs…orthopedic centers/hospitals serving youngish communities and in mountain towns close to skiing, para gliding and other risky endevours is the place to look for “spendy”.
This is the place I was at yesterday…a specialty hospital within a large hospital. Quite like a boutique hotel. Check out the photos.
I was here as opposed to a regular surgical suite like last time since I’ve transitioned to higher risk status by virtue of my new found knowledge. I needed all manner of “clearance” from the cardiovascular unit I’m treated at and I have to say that the feeling of foreboding that rigmarole produced totally evaporated when we walked through the doors. Staffing was excellent and, unusually for this area these days, actual hospital affiliated staff as opposed to a posse of travel nurses, PAs etc. Tremendously advantageous when the surgical team knows each other and where everything is and how stuff works.
Interesting to note this hospital was originally part of the Centura group…a coalition of Adventist and Catholic charities formed about 2000. Apart from the University academic system, most of the hospital systems here are amalgamation of god botherers. Swanky new build hospitals etc. Husband’s so-called retirement gig was at the Adventist hospital in Denver where the liver transplant unit was located. Anyhoo…and this might be a fundamental weakness of these amalgamations…the Centura hospitals have recently split. The Catholics are now common spirit and the official story is that it was a separation over abortion rights following the SCOTUS decision. More likely money, according to dh. He’s now at a Presbyterian-Catholic group part time until they can get a proper transplant hepatologist.
@VeeEnn that’s the good, long acting stuff that my surgeon (whose husband was an orthopedic surgeon) used during my bilateral mastectomy/ expander placement surgery. Lasted until the next day when the hospital discharged me with the finding of controlled pain. About halfway through the trip home, the drugs wore off. Major pain that lasted weeks.
You know the drill. Stay ahead of the pain, whatever it takes.
Yes, I don’t need telling about that!! Even long acting local effects wear off very quickly once the initial pins and needles start…just about the time it takes for oxycodone to kick in.
My first dose is holding it in check but I just got the surgical report by email and it makes for alarming reading. I knew I was getting more done than the first surgery…and I did. In spades. I’ll be lucky if the first meagre rations of oxy last me but, although the orthopedist’s printed blurb implies there will be no refills, I’ve been reassured that I won’t be left suffering just on the off chance I can’t be trusted to be responsible in my usage.
Along with the adequate pain relief, I’ve got that mild nausea and slightly “out of it” feeling…that no rational person could want to chase for recreational purposes. Not to mention the constipation. Taken my colace too …hopefully before the housebricks start to form! (if you know, you know )
So, @WendyBG, I do believe I was a little overly confident about my post of pain management. I did very well after my first lapiplasty and I was able to spin my prescription out for long enough to cover most of the really painful period. Definitely unlikely to happen this go around.
I’m just about getting to an almost tolerable level of pain…which would be almost acceptable if post op pain didn’t have an impact on actual recovery…but that’s the best I can get and I do believe I’ve reached that “10” number that I’ve only had cause to wonder about before on a couple of occasions.
Did you try/find any benefit from any of the cannabis type compounds? I’m not out of oxy yet, but it’ll be a close thing by my appointment Monday pm, and ibuprofen/acetaminophen alone aren’t enough either. I think I’m going to send husband out to a dispensary tomorrow (even though neither one of us would know what to ask for) This one is just down the road and looks plausible to me…
My bilateral mastectomy surgery was in March 2015, before the intense focus on controlling opioids. I doubled the dose of Norco (hydrocodone + acetaminophen) as well as adding the maximum dose of naproxen. These are all in different classes of analgesic so they can be mixed. I kept a spreadsheet of when I took these drugs to avoid exceeding the safe daily dose. Unlike you, I also had to drain the blood from my surgical wounds several times a day. (Messy; I hope you never have to do this.) Keeping these schedules straight was confusing so I wrote it all down.
I had to ask my surgeon for renewed prescriptions of the opioid which she did. Nowadays that would probably be more of a problem. However, the pendulum of pain control seems to be swinging back due to the disastrous plight of pain patients who are denied opioids for fear of addiction. My sister, who has severe scoliosis, is affected by this.
Thanks Wendy…and, just like these things seem to go, I’m starting to get a decent degree of pain control. Not comfy by any stretch of the imagination…but certainly adequate. Just have to impress upon my husband that he NEEDS to wake me up for some pills on schedule. Sleep might be good for me…but pills are better under the circumstances.
One thing I can say is that I’m thankful I always took pain management seriously when I was in practice, and had a different take on who the War on Drugs should be taken to than the popular narrative. I wouldn’t care to be thinking that I’d left someone to suffer unnecessarily because I’d been too spineless to take a stand against irrational prohibitionism. It sure is heartening to see the pendulum swinging back in the direction of the folk for whom opioid pain medication is/was intended. It’s hard enough for the body to handle recovery from surgery without inadequately treated pain to be using up resources unnecessarily.
In 2016 Youngest wound up in the hospital with a compound fracture of the tibia and all the shin bones from a bad skateboarding accident. He was constantly waking up screaming from pain, only 20 minutes after IV Dilaudid. They tried telling me that he just didn’t understand pain, given he was only 18, but this kid was one that would come home bragging about his road rash from a crash and burn, refusing all pain meds. I suggested that he perhaps had inherited my lack of response to most pain meds, and why not try Tylenol, or something like which worked for me? Since he was heading into day 4 in the hospital, and they refused to let him go home without getting off IV meds, they finally tried it. That worked.
They still sent him home with oxy and valium for the spasms, but true to form, he had something like two of the super strength acetaminophen, ignoring the rest which wound up in a drug take back bin. A month in a wheelchair, followed by crutches and months of rehab, on almost no painkillers. That kid can handle pain.
IP,
not knowing how a patient survives a hospital stay without an advocate
I would answer that sane survival on your own only happens with good luck. I have been an advocate more times than I can count, and on 7 occassions I went so far as to “break” people out of hospitals who desperately wanted to go home but were trapped, three of those times with the connivance of nurses who strongly quietly agreed. I sympathize with every human, patients or staff, dealing with the insurance medical industrial complex…
I strongly suggest (only because screaming from the rooftops is inutil) that in addition to writing wills people make “life and death” verbal alliances with close friends regarding hospital advocacy and end of life empowerment. Humans need help in keeping corporate and governmental bureaucratic mechanisms at bay, from possible conception through difficult illnesses unto either regained healthy life or death.
Eh. It’s out of our control, not something we do without because of any goodness on our part, but because most painkillers simply don’t work for us. At least I felt really sure he wasn’t about to add opioid addiction to the stressful teen years. In some ways we are quite lucky…until someone approaches us with a scalpel thinking we won’t feel it. What sounds amazing is the ability of those who find these drugs able to remove pain, or give a buzz, are able to resist abusing them. My nephew has had quite the disastrous whirl with them.
I think there’s probably a different brain receptor response when opioids are taken for pain control vs recreation. As much as I appreciate the pain relief, I don’t find any of the other properties much of a positive. I wouldn’t call it a “buzz” that I get… more a dissociation, “one step behind” feeling. Not something I’d pay good money or steal for!! A couple of the old Herbalife (ephedra formulation) was much more buzz-worthy. Then there’s the nausea and the constipation. I would tolerate a bit of pain in order not to experience any of the other…a good many people feel that way too. Self control is not necessary.
Part of the problem with the “opioid addiction” narrative is that what reaches the popular press and beyond tends to be told by the addict community. As a consequence, there’s the erroneous assumption that, say, more than a five day supply of adequate pain control after a surgical procedure can tip someone into a life of drug abuse.
You both worked the problem while holding on to life. I have seen too many of my acquaintances in pain and finding no relief from what is safely available go deep into alcohol, street narcotics, and crazy drugs (veterinarian pain killers anybody?) and come out permanently deranged, injured, and/or DEAD.
I have suffered with acute shingles attacks since I was 8, some of them (thankfully infrequently) so agonizing and exhausting I could neither move nor find any chemical relief other than the most perilous. Thankfully, both grandmas were adepts at use of meditation and mindfulness (they never said those words but simply taught me to breath and survive) and their lessons never left.
You make your choices. You and your son have structured your lives so that the idiot and desperate choices were not even on the menu. That, unfortunately, is becoming rarer as pain becomes alien and unacceptable and drugs escape sane controls.
I think you are giving us way too much credit, but thanks. People have different pain tolerances, and ours is pretty high. Activity seems to be what soothes the savage beast, and we are just lucky that strenuous activity is culturally acceptable
Yikes. That is one event I hope to never have again. Talk about pain! Not sure if this is still an ongoing thing for you, but the thing that worked best for me was eucalyptus essential oil. Once I found that remedy the pain was controllable and it started to knock the virus down. I used it topically right on the blisters. Hopefully it’s a thing of the past, but at least I know what to do now.
Yes. despite all manner of advances (Shingrix!!!), and drugs (hooray Valtrex!), I am still averaging an attack a month, and they sometimes last even with heavy Valtrex 2 days of acute pain, two days still unpleasant (when I was tot I called the sensation oogie woogies and so I still do, like insects gently gnawing flesh…) and a week of exhaustion.
Let me say here that, weirdly, I am thankful to the damn to my damn chickenpox virus because most doctors think it is why I survived HIV infection before drugs without progressing to immune deficiency for a full decade,
That said, my attacks were long time horrific until Shingrix came out. I did the normal two shots and had severe reaction to them, and after the second no attacks for 5 months and then it came back as before all over again. After some consultation with immune specialists I did three immunizations spaced somewhat close together. That brought a one month respite and then, intrigueingly, came the worst attack ever, but each set of attacks since then has gotten weaker and weaker. I can now knock down the pain with just 18 hours of heavy valtrex.
)
That, unfortunately, is becoming rarer as pain becomes alien and unacceptable and drugs escape sane controls.