God. What a mess. Talk about your lost week and then some.
Not too bad right after surgery, but then I started having worse and worse symptoms: headache, nausea, weakness, extreme sensitivity to pain, photosensitivity. I had to go back for three CAT scans before they were convinced that there wasn't something putting pressure on my brain*. Now the thought is that it's an "intractable migraine" brought on but not directly caused by the surgery.
Only the IV drugs seemed to have any effect -- possibly because my stomach was totally shut down. So, I'd go into the emergency room and get a jolt of phenergan or dilaudid and feel pretty good, and they'd send me home with a bottle of pills, and so on.
[I may have left something important out, or gotten something wrong, but that's the way I remember it right now]
The worst part of it all was that there was nothing to distract me from the pain, and nothing to pass the time. All I could do was lie there thinking about every last little detail of how bad I felt, and how long it was going to be until I could have another, and whether I was going to sleep at all, and if so, how would I feel when I woke up?
Right now, though, I'm on what appears to be a winning combination of 1) a three-day patch, 2) PRN liquid morphine and 3) anti-nausea suppositories.
This has been quite a disappointing week. Not at all what I'd been led to expect. Still, I seem to have survived it.
And there's still some time for the enjoyable parts of this sick leave: walking downtown, showing off my staples, &c.
And there are a lot of things to get done: decorations, postcards, getting a new watch (seems to have disappeared at the hospital), &c.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Take it easy."\\
2 comments:
Convalescence generally sucks. You'll get through it. Hang tough.
Migraine. Euw. I hope this is a one-time thing and you're not going to develop them now.
I hope you'll get better John. After my various surgeries, I have surgical site pain for quite awhile. But your surgery site was your brain, which means headaches, and I hope that ends. Where does it hurt? They had to have inflamed facial nerves too. The one thing I learned with neck injury was about facial nerves, because I was getting extreme pain in them. They originate in the skull, as you likely know, and exit the skull behind the ear. Any irritation (like surgery!) of the face, scalp anything, neck muscles, will inflame those nerves. Maybe ice packs behind your ears would help at least with facial nerve inflammation. It helps me. Also, maybe an ice pack at the base of your head would help with inflammed nerves. I hope it is inflammed nerves from the surgery itself causing your pain and not anything else. Good luck, John. Keep us posted.
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