Went to bed around 11:15, feeling pretty good. Discovered that “feeling pretty good” did not include lying on the bed and trying to sleep pain-free. In fact, every movement caused a LOT of pain in various places around the abdomen. Didn’t feel like tearing or anything bad like that, just more like testing a badly bruised area to see if it still hurts. It does. I keep forgetting this if I’ve not had jabbing pains for a while.

So, I’lll continue to nap on the couch and just accept insomnia for a while.

I was given Tramadol, “1 tablet every 6 hours for pain.” For the past few days I’ve been taking it less frequently, usually waiting until I feel the pain. It hasn’t been quite 5 hours since I took one with my evening meds (so glad I log this sort of thing), so I’ll wait a little longer. For the Triple A surgery I was also given Tramadol, but it was 1 every 8 hours as needed. I used those very sparingly (it’s a mild narcotic and I don’t want to get hooked on anything like that), and only had 1 refill of that Rx since the Triple A surgery and still had ten or a dozen or so remaining; I’ve not used all of those yet, so I’m glad to have those plus the new supply that we picked up on the way home from the hospital on Thursday. While in the hospital I was given regular shots of morphine, which was nice I suppose. I don’t recall having that for the surgery in January, but maybe I did. I was fairly out of it for several days and have no idea about a lot of what happened before they took out the feeding tube and catheter and other things.

The Tramadol is for the surgery pain, and is used in the short-term. The celecoxib is for the long term management of arthritis. I was told NOT to take the celecoxib or even the baby aspirin for the days before this surgery, and I could seriously tell in my hip that I’d not had it for a few days.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I can’t sleep for the pain in my abdomen when I try to move in bed, and I’m waiting another half hour until I can take another Tramadol. And then I’ll rest here on the couch and nap.

Yes, yes, I know it’s still only been 4 days and only just barely, depending on how one counts. The surgery was over just before noon on Wednesday, so I’m counting noons on Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun as days post-op. It’s too soon to even think about being frustrated with how long recovery is taking. They said I’d start to feel better in about 2 weeks, and 4 days is not even a half of 14 days; two weeks would be Nov 25. Funny enough, the Rx I got was for 1 tablet every 6 hours for 10 days, but I guess they figured I’d sleep a lot since I only got 30 tablets. LOL. I have a telehealth visit with the surgeon scheduled for the 27th, so I’m going to try to suspend all judgment until then.

Oh! And one thing I both appreciate and despise at the same time, is “One a scale of 1 to 10, how is your pain?” Sometimes they show a chart with various facial expressions to match the numbers. I like it and understand it because it is a way to quantify the pain, but I hate it because the pain is not static — for general soreness, it’s about a steady 2 or 3, but the pains that prevent sleep are a 7 or 8 or even the occasional 9, but those pains aren’t continuous and only come in response to trying to move. And it annoyed the nurses when I would answer “It’s like a three-four,” or “right now it’s like a seven-eight,” since they could only dose the morphine based on my pain assessment.

Having lived with various physical pains all my life, it is difficult to quantify specific pains from surgery. A lot of the aches and pains of arthritis and other things, I’ve learned to stuff it and get on with life most of the time. I don’t know if that’s a ‘guy thing’ or a ‘growing up with an always-in-pain Mother’ and trying not to be her. Many of Mother’s pains were in her head and/or physical responses to over-drinking, which led to her easy addiction to pain meds and tranquilizers. Whatever it was, it caused me to not want to live on pills all the time. At least not for that. I understand pills for blood pressure, cholesterol, prostate issues, and other such stuff. Pills for pain just annoy the hell out of me. Back in the days of hand-written scrips, at one point Mother would leave the dr. office with a scrip for ‘5mg Librium 1x a day’ and land at the pharmacy with a scrip for ’25mg Librium 4x a day’… funny how a few ink marks would change by themselves. Anyway, I do not want to be like Mother in this regard.

And she would see different doctors for different things, so she’d have multiple prescriptions for various things, and use different pharmacies for filling those prescription. This was long before electronic patient records, so there was little oversight over patients who abused medical practice in order to self-prescribe and abuse assorted medications. And it didn’t help that Mother would wash down her Librium with vodka. Alcohol is definitely contra-indicated when taking most tranquilizers. I think Librium was the popular drug-of-choice in those days, before Valium became the popular calm-down drug, and then everyone went to Prozac.

One time in the mid-60s (and i don’t recall if I was still in elementary school or had started junior high), Mother went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. One of our neighbors had been sober for many years and I suspect she had finally prevailed on Mother to try it. Many years later, in Denver as I recall, Mother said she tried AA and “had a bad experience” there. Having been to 12 Step meetings myself (ACoA), I’m pretty sure her ‘bad experience’ was when someone spilled her tea and didn’t buy her self-pitying sob story.

“Spilled her tea” or “read her beads” etc. — called her out for her bullshit, gave her a dose of reality, held a mirror up to her, and basically held her accountable for her life. As long as I can remember, there was always someone or something that caused all her agony, and she wasn’t willing or able to take responsibility for contributing to her own misery or being accountable for moving in new directions. Easier to play the victim.

Oh look!!! I’ve rattled on and now it’s time I can take a Tramadol. 🙂