At its best, my pain level is about a three or a four, but never lower than that. I find it somewhat hilarious that doctors measure pain based on this silly one to ten scale of unhappy faces, but whatever. I guess it's useful in that it's simple and universal.
A three or four is tolerable enough to sleep, especially when I'm really tired. When I'm getting close to needing another pain pill, my pain goes up to about a five or six. If I wake up and my pain is around that level, I need to distract myself until the pain pill kicks in and the pain level goes back down. Then I can fall back asleep.
But every few days, I sky rocket into the eight or nine level. This usually happens at night. And once I'm at that level, there's nothing I can do about it. The Vicodin doesn't even touch the pain. I basically just have to wait, stop the lengthening entirely, and restart it once I've had about four or five doses of Vicodin.
I called my doctor this morning, since last night was another one of these eight or nine pain level nights. He told me to hold off on the lengthening for the moment and call him back in three hours to give him an update. Now I'm waiting for him to call me back. I don't want to get too off my lengthening schedule, but I'm not exactly eager to start again.
The weekend before I had my surgery, a friend of mine in Vegas, David, got into a water skiing accident and wound up needing an external fixator to hold his broken knee in place. His fixator actually connects his upper and lower legs so he can't even bend his knee or hip. We've been emailing and comparing stories, and I finally saw a picture of his fixator today.
Man, I feel for you, David. Your fixator looks much worse than mine. :(
3 comments:
i've always found those pain scales ridiculously subjective. they should pinch you first to gather a control assessment for pain tolerance. i remember when my cousin bonnie was having her baby (who shares your birthday! yeah, finnegan!) and she'd told the nurse that her pain level was at 10 during the middle stages of labor. by the end, she confessed she'd discovered a whole new 10. it was very confusing, to incorporate this new 10A into the pain'o'meter.
Yeah, the scales are pretty vague, at best. Who's to say your 10 is equal to my 10? And what is 10, anyway? Is it the worst pain you've ever experienced (which for many is childbirth, or, for those unfortunate few who are born without vaginas, a severe charlie horse), or is it the worst pain you can possibly imagine?
And who would sign their name on and freaking copyright something with the words "HURTS WHOLE LOT" on it, with a face that looks like maybe they're out of bleu cheese so you'll have to have ranch instead?
Screw Wong and Baker.
The worst pain I have experienced (which is a tie between some complicated teeth extractions surgery without anesthesia and having to watch that asshat on CSI: Miami without complaining about how much of an overdramatic queen he is) is probably a 1.5 on a scale with 1 as no pain and 10 is my worst imaginable pain.
So how does that compare to yours? No clue. But that looks like it freaking hurts. Yay for six clicks!
As restrictive as my external fixator is in comparison to yours, I think I have it better than you now on the pain scale. All of my pain was front-loaded into the first two weeks or so (with an incredible concentration in the first 6 hours, of course). When they were first trying to transition me from Morphine to Percocet, the Percocet didn't even touch the pain. Eventually, I started taking less and less Percocet, and now I only take it at night, just taking Advil during the day.
Long story short, your pain is being dragged out - and in an ironic twist (heh) you're being forced to inflict it upon yourself on an ongoing basis. Sure, it sucks to only be able to sit and lay down on my back, but at least my pain is decreasing.
I'm sure we'll talk again about physical therapy though, seeing as I haven't been able to move my leg much or knee at all. We'll see how it goes. Good luck to both of us. :-)
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