Pain Management...

One week ago tonight, I was lying in a hospital room dealing with a lot of pain. Last Thursday, I had undergone my first two Physical Therapy sessions since the previous day's surgery. Believe me... I was not Mr. Happy Camper.

Tonight my mom asked me a question - "How is your pain right now?" When I replied, "About a 5 right now," she was shocked.

I know a lot of people say things like I've got a good attitude throughout all of this. Maybe people think I should be all "doom and gloom" or "woe is me." Is that what is expected from me?

Well, I am "choosing" my attitude. If you've been following this since just before the surgery, I decided back then that the only way I could make it through all of this is to try and stay positive.

Yes, this sucks. But in all honesty, "it is what it is." There's nothing I can do to change the past. The past is history. My accident is ancient. If you think about it, that was last month. It's over... done.

The next hurdle in my situation, the actual surgery, is history as well. That was last week. So if I'm not going to focus on the accident, then does it really make sense to dwell on the surgery or anything else in the past? (Hope you see where I'm going with all of this)

At this point, I can only help my present and future by moving forward.

And with this attitude, I haven't talked about my pain too much... either through the blog or with the people around me. I'm not trying to ignore the pain... I mean, it's a part of me. But I'm also not trying to focus on the negative.

But for those that really Really REALLY want to know what's going on with every detail of this ordeal, then this little "pain description" is for you. Enjoy...

Typically I wake up with a pretty intense throbbing pain in my knee each morning. As you probably know, I can only sleep in one position: on my back and with my left leg propped up on a pillow. Yeah, try that all night long... it's a ton of fun.

I toss and turn that leg, which is mostly numb, trying to shake off the pain... but it never works. It's my own personal hellacious alarm clock without a snooze button.

Once I'm up and I take a pain pill, it goes down within the hour. Throughout the morning, I guess my level of pain is usually a 3. That level is pretty steady until mid-afternoon.

I try and move around on this walker as much as I can. While it's good that I get up and do some laps, it does seem to irritate the knee. So I rest as much as I can with the leg propped up, but I try and get up about 10 times a day.

By the evening, my knee is pretty sore... hence the 5 that I reported to my mom tonight. Sometimes it's a little bit higher depending on what I did that day. It also sometimes gets a little more intense throughout the night before I go to bed.

Once I go to sleep, I typically am down for about 2 hours at a time. Usually the knee wakes me up, but I try and adjust it so that I can go back to sleep. If 4 hours go by, I can take one of my pain pills and hopefully last a little longer.

Yes, I'm still taking the hydrochodone pills. I'm taking 1 every 4 hours (instead of 2). We've actually started the process to get the "no refill" prescription refilled... but who knows how long that will take. I have about 5 left at this point.

Now, there are actually separate "pains." Most of the time, I just feel the knee in general. However, there are times I actually feel the incision. I know... gross... but just being honest. I still don't have a clue how big of a cut they made, but my hunch is it must be quite a bit. I'm even looking forward to finding out the number of stitches I have!

Finally, what I've discovered lately is I can really feel the hardware in the knee. It feels like there's a metal plate in there... although I know it's just the wires that are wrapped around he 2 kneecaps. Maybe I should get a magnet and see what would happen? (Just kidding)

So, that's it in a nutshell. My pain ranges from about a 3 to maybe a 6. My hope is that this time next week, the 3 will be the high! And I can sleep longer than 2 hours...

Ah... that would be sweeeeeeeeeet...