wizer

[The Shark]

Hi Guys,

You know what they say about "expert":

ex is a has-been
spurt is a drip under pressure

I'm sure the term doesn't apply to any of us on here :lol:

Malc

 

[head clansman]

hi tom

nice experience for you there , :roll: bet you don,t want to repeat that again in a hurry :wink: you mentioned the pain when you came round. i had a simular experience when i had my gall bladder out , when i came round late afternoon early evening in a lot of pain which got worse as the evening wore on , by midnight it was totally unbearable,called over the night nurse who gave me a shot of pethidine , 8) oh my god wonderful stuff as i lay there almost instantly i could feel the pain draining down through and out of my body as the drug took over, next day fine , as they told me after the op they inject a small wiff of gas before they insert there instruments into the body the gas has to escape and oh boy if they had told me before that would happen i would note have had it done.


Still happy your ok stay cool and mend fast . hc

 

[hog&bodge]

Glad the op went well...welcome back..now all you have to do is
get of the morphine... :lol:.

 

[johnny.t.]

Hope they fixed you up good wizer It'll be a cold and lonely december for the BRM then

JT

 

[wizer]

Cold January too if it doesn't start to get better. The pain has taken a dip this afternoon. I'm not sure if it's because I'm administering my own PR or I've 'done too much' (which is virtually nothing).

day by day. I'll be better by YOKB, for definite

 

[Ironballs]

Hope they fixed you up good wizer It'll be a cold and lonely december for the BRM then

JT

When did Tom acquire a vintage Formula 1 racing car? Bet he sells it for a Vanwall in 6 months time :wink:

 

[Shadowfax]

Strewth, Tom!
It does not sound like much of a party to me, mate, with all this catheter stuff and so on!
Get well soon, anyway. I reckon you deserve to feel a lot better and very quickly.
Best wishes and take care,

SF

 

[frugal]

I haven't been able to read much of the forum for the past couple of days, so I missed that you were out. Glad to hear it went reasonably well, hopefully the long term prognosis will be good. Glad to see you are out of hospital (they are just full of sick people ).

 

[devonwoody]

Hows the tom tom today then?

 

[wizer]

Between yesterday afternoon and 11am this morning I felt really bad. The pain had stepped up a notch and I felt really 'sick'. But since around mid-morning things have calmed down again. I perhaps did a bit too much in my first day home and my body told me to slow down. It's very hard not being able to do much with my daughter, both in the respect of helping out with my wife and giving her fun and attention.

I think we're all learning.

 

[head clansman]

hi tom

are you still taking morphine, that use to make me feel sick , totaly blew me away , i had to stop taking after about a week when i had my tendons done last year. hc

 

[wizer]

yes it's the morphine that's making me feel sick, feverish, etc. I've only got a few more days of it. Then they'll fade me back through the levels and hopefully off it for good. I'm seeing doc tomorrow and I want to investigate Beta Blockers, as I've read they can help post op.

 

[head clansman]

hi tom

go easy on that stuff it's very easy to get addicted to it . hc

 

[gidon]

Glad to hear you're back Tom - sounds quite an ordeal!
Hope the recovery is speedy.
Cheers
Gidon

 

[Digit]

Having suffered from a bad back for some years I have followed the story of Tom's problems with considerable sympathy, but something puzzles me.
A number of posters have commented about the use of Morphine etc post op.
Is this due to the surgery being on the spine or is this level of pain normal with surgery?
The reason I ask is that I have had surgery on five occasions and have never had, nor needed, any pain killers post op.
Is it me?
(Be gentle with me chaps!)

Roy.

 

[wizer]

This is the first op I've had so I can't comment on whether it's the norm. Perhaps my need for stronger drugs is because I have been on strong pain killers for 3 years previous. I can only tell you what I feel and that's pain. I assume they've opened me up and shoved the squidgy bits out of the way to get to the bones. The operation was 7 hours long, so perhaps that has something to do with it. Don't forget I have bits of metal fusing bones together with screws as reinforcement. The bone actually has to grow back before the op can be called successful, there is a chance it wont.

This explains the whole process better if you are interested:

http://www.neurosurgery-associates.com/pedicle.htm

I had that surgery but they fused three joints

 

[Digit]

After your description Tom I think I'll give the link a miss! :lol:
What the hell happens if the op isn't a success?

Roy.

 

[wizer]

I just have to live with it Roy. The thing is. Medical Science is a fascinating thing and they've literally done wonders. But they really don't know the half of it. Sometimes it's just impossible to either identify or fix the source of the pain.

But we're not thinking about that yet. Until the wound has healed and the post op pain has died down, I can't be certain of anything. It'd be foolish of me to proclaim it a success or failure at such an early stage. I'm a little surprised at what little I've been offered in the way of post operative support. No Physio appointments or regimes, no one to call if I have a question. I'm on my own for 6 weeks until I see the consultant. I have my GP but GP's don't have the time or specific skill to support every post op patient.

 

[Digit]

Hell Tom that's bad! I help out at a cancer support group 'cos I discovered that post op support was so variable, mine was fantastic, yet I hear shocking stories from others.
In your case what about the community nurse?

Roy.

 

[wizer]

You bring up an interesting point there Roy. I'm not dying. I am\was in considerable pain which had some nasty side effects, like depression. But I'm not going to die from it. There are people in much worse situations than me. It's just something I have to keep telling myself. It's an education thing. We need to alter our lives around it. Or it will make me\us miserable forever more.

I'm seeing the practise nurse tomorrow to have the stitches out along with the GP. We'll see how that goes.