…the recovery from the cure.
Immediately post-surgery
I wasn’t told what to expect following surgery other than “everyone is different.” I went into the procedure without much trepidation or anxiety, just the desire to get it going and get on with getting better.
When I awake in recovery (PACU) I saw surrounded by three wonderful friends who told me everything had gone OK. Unfortunately it was late and the RN was giving my friends the bum’s rush, which turned out just to be the beginning of the evening’s problems.
I was introduced to the PCA pump and told I could use it once every 15 minutes. The need came pretty quickly when my son called and I went to grasp the phone being held out to me. Remember, the muscles in my abdomen had been cut and were not attached across my midsection. That’s how I learned how many of our muscles we use for small tasks, like picking up the phone! My abdomen screamed in such pain as I had never experienced in my life and I was barely able to gasp out and “I’ll be OK,” to my son. Some comfort, I’m sure.
I’m friends were summarily dismissed for the night and I was alone, except for me pain. I found that the abdominal muscles would spasm with not real provocation and sometimes as the slightest touch. They they did so the spasms would come in waves of two to four and then subside for an indeterminate amount of time. Each time the spasms came, they provided a searing blast of pain that felt like a lightening storm had gone off in my brain and body. It was beyond any work for pain I know of. But then, the RN helped. In the midst of one of my spasms she chided me saying, “We’re not doing anything to you. You’re doing this to yourself.” Shortly after I was moved into a corner of the room, the curtain was pulled around my bed and I was left isolated and with the promise of random, mind-numbing pain.
As it was I passed the next four or five hours like that. I found a clock and managed to work out that the spasms seem to come three to four times and hour. By that time the PCA did little and my need for a boost of medication was so uncoordinated with the availability of medication through the pump that I literally never knew whether or not I’d have medication to receive.
Relief came somewhere around 4:30 or 5 am when the anesthesia team came in. They’d been told about my pain and revealed that the epidural with which I’d had success during surgery had “stopped working properly” after surgery. There were sections where I was properly without sensation but others were I should be numb were obviously, and without explanation, fully sensate! Their best option was to try and reposition the epidural by rolling me onto my side and holding my while they did their work on my back.
Now folks, I cannot tell you what the thought of rolling me onto my side meant, when the slightest touch sent my abdomen into apoplexy. They assured me, however, that they had a powerful medication that would make it possible for me to go through the procedure awake, but without feeling a thing. I agreed and entered another land. To this day I don’t remember what they gave me but it was the strongest psychotropic substance I’ve ever been near. I ceased to sense myself as a unique being and melted into the pillows, sheets, arms, and hands and held me in place. At one point I remember seeing an RN’s thumb and having the sense that that thumb represented something I needed to hold onto, so I did. When the whole thing was over I was completely lucid, the abdominal spasms were gone, and though the new epidural placement wasn’t working exactly as they wanted, it was working well enough.
After all this, when the surgeon came in to check on me, I reported the abdominal issues and he stated that it happens with all patients having that surgery because the severed ends of the abdominal muscles except to work in harmony with the other. When they find they are cut apart they naturally spasm in a way that is extraordinarily painful. It’s worse with some people more than others, he said. Oh yes, and he said they should have upped my pain med to address it.
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