I swear, I do listen to y’all. More important, I act on your advice.
It seems like everyone ‘yelled’ at me yesterday, both here and via email. I was taking action even then:
- I met with my therapist: I am not crazy, I am in pain, I need to get on top of the pain as my first priority.
- I called my plastic surgeon. His MA thinks this is ‘just’ nerves healing, and not much can be done because it isn’t an emergency. In any case, I’ll see him 1st thing . . . Tuesday morning.
- I have an appt on Wednesday with a clinical psychologist who specializes in pain mgmt using hypnosis.
- I had a lovely dinner with friends last night and it was a marvelous distraction from the discomfort. I had 2 glasses of wine and although it still took awhile to get to sleep, when I did I slept well. (A really good sign.)
- There are periods of time when I do not hurt, but a lowering of medication produces pain, so we’re working with that.
- If I do not get an alleviation from the pain by this afternoon, we’ll start adding in some of the leftover prescription meds I still have on hand.
I truly appreciate your advice and support. As you can see, I continue to explore all of the options and am doing my best to work all of this out.
Hang in there. I’ve just been through better than ten months of healing, including lots of pain and lots of meds. I’m doing better but it took a lot of time and more patience than I had.
Give your doctors all the info you can about pains, spasms, any side effects from meds and so forth. Don’t be afraid to get second opinions. I fired a specialist through my ordeal, but I hope it doesn’t go there for you.
Hoping for the best for you.
Thanks — it helps to hear from others who are dealing with, or dealt with, a long recovery. the frustration factor is incredibly high. I was *just* adjusting to the idea that I might have to be dealing with the mild discomfort for several more months when the pain level went out of control. It makes me all whiny and ‘it’s not FAIR’. Which is useless.