Pain
It is day three post-release and yesterday I managed to stay awake the entire day. This gave me an excellent opportunity to experience pain all day long. :-) Day two was a lot like day one, only better. Felt sharper, felt more pain, but felt more alive than any day previously. When I looked up famous quotes about pain I liked the Charles Lamb quote above the best. It is excellent to feel the pain and be alive.
This morning (Friday March 22) I got up at 6:00 and after I rolled carefully upright to prepare to stand up, everything hurt. My rib(s?), my lower back muscles, things connected to lower back muscles, All Of It Just Hurt. Bad. Level 5 (or more?) pain. It only lasted an instant but it was quite a wake-up call. I had successfully performed this maneuver many times without much pain, but this is my body explaining to me that I am still healing. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Last night I was laying in bed after just collapsing at 10:00, I felt as exhausted as I had been in a long time (the drug-induced stupor on Monday afternoon doesn’t count). But it was a good kind of exhaustion. For some reason, I felt like I needed to cough. I’m in bed so pillows are everywhere. I grab a pillow, hug it to my side tightly and prepare to cough (a good cough, but not as robust as possible, that level of cough scares me). What comes out instead is a sneeze. I wasn’t prepared for this. How dumb is that? I can’t tell the difference between an impending cough and sneeze. This Hurt So Bad. It was as bad as the cough the put me back on Dilaudid temporarily. Or worse. Another knife stab in the side. A momentary 8+ doozie. OK, coughing, laughing, and sneezing all hurt. Sneezing hurts especially bad.
The interesting (or perplexing) thing is what doesn’t cause pain. Breathing deeply doesn’t cause me any pain. I have this thing called an incentive spirometer. Let me find a picture and give you the first graphic.
Broken ribs will naturally cause you to breathe shallowly, your body’s way of keeping your lungs from pressing on your broken rib(s). This can lead to pneumonia. The incentive spirometer is designed to incentivize you to fill your lungs fully. The little blue tab monitors “flow rate” as you inhale through the breathing tube on the lower front right. The big hockey puck in the middle measures how many ml (milliliters) of air you are inhaling. For someone my size and age, I want to hit 2500-3000, I never could get an exact number. This is on your nightstand as soon as you check into the hospital. The first 24 hours, it was all I could do to hit 1500ml. I felt pitiful. But the strange thing is it didn’t hurt to try to fill my lungs. I have no idea why. It still doesn’t hurt as I sit here using the spirometer and writing this post. I can hit 2500-3000 with no problem since I got home. No pain. Don’t Know Why. I would have thought this would make my ribs hurt. It’s why I didn’t even know I had broken ribs for two days after I fell.
Other things that don’t cause pain. Walking (mostly). Wednesday night “doing laps” made me achy but I can walk around (with or without walker) mostly pain free. Sitting doesn’t hurt, mostly. Lying in bed is the most pain-free, unless I try to move, in which case my pain mileage varies. But it’s a bad idea to spend too much time in bed (even though it is tempting). If I remain centered in my core, back straight and don’t violate BLT (no bending, lifting, twisting) then movements associated with “activities of daily life” don’t hurt.
It’s fairly difficult, at least so far, to remember to face everything and only grab things at eye level, plus or minus a little bit. A “stretch” reach can be potentially hugely painful. Perhaps after I encounter enough stabbing pain episodes this will feel more natural and instinctive, but it’s difficult to unlearn a lifetime of natural movements doing the previously most normal things.
I wrote earlier about opiates and my fear of them. Plenty of people have told me that it’s OK for a short period, but I prefer the pain. Maybe I am slowing down my recovery? Increasing my risk of pneumonia? Someone else who had a fall bad enough they were wiggling their toes and fingers afterwards described the opiate experience being warm and happy and pain relieving so maybe s/he understands what the addiction risk is all about. But I haven’t felt any of that. It either felt like nothing (and didn’t relieve any pain) or I had a terrible spinning/loopy experience (and no pain relief). I consider myself lucky that both: 1) I didn’t experience the happy/warm feeling so I don’t have any addiction risk or withdrawal episodes; and 2) I can tolerate the pain that I have.
The posting rate is finally going to slow down. I have said most of what I wanted to say about this experience. I’ll summarize some (hopefully!) improvements and progress as they occur over the next several weeks in occasional posts. Sunday I am planning to get on a plane to fly to CA with my wife. That should be interesting.
P.S. I just used the incentive spirometer and I got a sharp spike of pain in my lower back as I hit 3000ml. OK, so I mostly don’t have pain when I breathe deeply. :-)
Friday night March 22, 8:00 PM edit: that pain in my hip area is getting worse and worse. It spasmed twice while I was just standing up not moving. Time to sit down.
Tomorrow: No Pain?