I didn’t mean to discount the pain.

02-05-12

I want to back up again to the beginning of my recovery.   I haven’t talked much about right after surgery and the pain.  I don’t want to skip over that as if it didn’t happen it did and it was bad.

I think that pain becomes easy to forget as you move further away from it, (need convincing? Look at people that have more than one child, can you say OUTCH?) Anyway, I digress, I touched on the back pain in my first blog, it was bad and the walking helped more then you can imagine. 

I did not talk much about how I felt or dealt with the pain other than how walking is so helpful.

Not including my back, my left side hurt the most, (which was interesting since my biggest bruise was on my right side and it was HUGE!! 

To get out of bed while I was still in the hospital I would get as far onto my right side as I could then I would use the raise the head on the bed and then sort of pivot myself to a upright sitting position.

Once home It was kind of the same movement (minus the mechanical bed) I would get my right arm underneath me then plant my elbow up under me as much as possible and then use it sort of like a hydraulic apparatus raising myself up.  During the process of sitting from lying down it would feel like someone was slicing me with an extremely HOT knife.  Once Up it would subside, somewhat   (my pain medication helped a lot.) 

Coughing and sneezing.  (A post surgery nightmare.)

They tell you; if you are going to cough to place a pillow at your abdomen before if you’re quick enough.  What I found worked for me was to forget the pillow, instead I would place 3 fingers over the area (left side for me) and press in as hard as I could stand during the cough or sneeze, It still hurts but not as bad.

Getting into bed is almost as tricky as getting out of bed.

My bed sits up pretty high off the ground, so I would sit on the bed trying to land my bottom as far back and in the middle of my ‘sleeping area’ as possible, then, I would draw my knees up as much as possible and use my arms to guide me then “spin” or pivot on my bottom to get turned and lined up with my pillow.  Once in that position I could use my arms to lower myself on to my elbows and then continue until my head was on my pillow.  I bent my knees when doing thing (even fluffing my pillow, well as much as you can when your laying on it)  bending your knees puts more pressure on your feet and legs so you don’t use those stomach muscles as much.  

 It was several weeks before I could sleep on anything but my back, I would use a flat pillow to put under one side  (long ways sitting between  just below my shoulder blades to hip) or the other from time to time just so I could get off my back some.   I am a side sleeper usually, so, having to sleep on my back for so long was not so great.  Oh at first it wasn’t so bad, I was on more pain medicine so I guess I was out of it enough that it didn’t bother me as much; as the weeks went by and the pain medicine became less the sleeping on my back became more of a problem. The good news was that Instead of feeling like I was being sliced with a very hot knife, I was feeling more like I was being stabbed with one.

 As the weeks moved on I would try lying on one side or the other for small amounts of time (until it became too uncomfortable then on to my back or on my back with a pillow to give me a tilt to one side or the other.)  The first time after surgery that I could comfortably lye on one side or the other was such a sigh of relief. I promptly resumed sleeping on my (left) side.

Now,  at a month and a few weeks out, my biggest “sleeping complaint” is my C-Pap headgear, I have got to find a way to keep it from creeping up the back of my head (which makes it loose and not fit properly.)  I just keep adjusting it, I need to go and have it refitted again, I guess my head is not as ‘fat’ as it was which is cool, who wants to be a fathead, no one that's who.  (pun intended)

A.  Dawn