My Pain in the Ass

I’ve returned to work!!

Hooray for small victories!

I returned to work, full-time, this week. It hasn’t been horrible and my BMs have been extremely manageable, bordering on pleasant. Although, I don’t want to count too many chickens before they hatch. For now, I am thankful.

My stitches have almost completely dissolved and/or fallen out, but I still have one spot that doesn’t want to fully heal. It seems content on bleeding ever-so-slightly and pretty much stinging all day long. The spot is where the cut out ‘donor tissue’ to relocate and subsequently stitched back up. I’m hopeful it will heal soon…

For now, all is well and the rest is silence. :-)

Here I sit, broken hearted…

So, I am officially beyond two weeks post-op and everything appears to be going much better. After what I have dubbed “The Tear-Scare” last week, I ate only vegetables and fruit for a few days. While that softened things up considerably, it also gave me the most HORRIBLE gas pains!! Regardless, I’ve been great ever since.

I have started taking miralax daily and that is doing the trick as of right now. Not much more to report for, which I’ll mark in the ‘win’ category. Tomorrow I plan on going into the office to work for the first time. Hope it goes well. Although I know I’m going to be relentlessly laughed at for bringing a pillow to sit on. I expect it because I know I’d laugh at my friends in good fun too. :-D

What do I do now?

Well, I had my visit to the doctor today to check on that flap of skin that has developed and grown. Great news! It’s nothing to worry about. That was actually the donor skin site and it’s just swollen. With time, it will go down.

OMG, you have NO idea how at ease that put my mind. After leaving the doctor and going home, I was on cloud nine. I was all smiles and positive because yes, I really could do this. Everything was falling in to place.

That was…until…I had the urge to have a BM.

My BMs to this point have been great, very soft and manageable. I have, after all, been keeping a steady diet of lots of fiber - fruits and veggies, stool softeners, metimucil (twice daily), and drinking more water than I have in years! So, unsuspecting, I go to the restroom and instantly know something’s wrong. It felt wrong.  No sooner had I made this assessment when I felt things get tight, and I felt that rip. The rip that every person with a fissure is haunted by and knows all too well. I felt it.

I pretty much lost it. Not from pain, I can handle that at this point, but from sadness. I can only hope the rip was something that is “going” to happen until I fully heal from surgery. I don’t honestly know. I really hope that it will heal up and never happen again, but as a realist, I know it probably will. This confirms that this was all for not. The pain, the emotional breakdowns, the good, the bad, all of it was not worth it. I just don’t know what to do. Does anyone have any suggestions? Any thoughts? At this point, I’d take someone telling me I’m a whiny jackass and to shut the hell up. I feel so alone right now. I have nothing. My husband is here, and he does all he can, but he doesn’t know what it’s like. I don’t expect anyone to know what it’s like. I mean, if there were lots more people out there like me, going through what I’m going through, I probably wouldn’t have started this blog. After all, one of the reasons I wrote it was to keep a log just in case someone else had this exact problem and was looking for information.

I don’t know. At this point, I don’t care. I feel like I’ve got my wish - I had wished I never did the surgery. Well, I may very well be back to where I was pre-surgery. Yay for granted wishes. Now, I wish I never had this problem in the first place.

More setbacks…

(Insert groan here…)

So, tomorrow I have to head back to the doctor because of a large chunk/flap of skin that has surfaced near the wound. It appears to be getting larger. Hopefully it will be something that is easily dealt with. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

On a more positive note, the doc offer suggestions for the itching. I can shove gauze in my crack to keep the stitches from poking me, or I can use Benadryl cream. Luckily, I found some Benadryl spray at the drugstore last night. I’m going to be spraying my ass down like crazy!!!

Some days are good, others… not so much.

With the exception of insane itching, the last few days have been really great. I was feeling positive about the recovery, and felt like my body was coming to terms with what had happened. The pain, in general, was lessening each day, the frequency at which I took pain pills was decreased dramatically, and I have been more mobile — sitting and walking around. Everything was feeling better…until today.

I had another breakdown today. I cried more than I’ve cried in a long time. Now I’m not generally a crier, but this afternoon I whailed like an 8 year old girl whose fish just died. I’ve just reached a point where I can’t take it anymore. I had a lot of blood today that scared me. I also have a lump that I’m not sure is swelling or not. I’m concerned that my attempts to get back to ‘normal’ the days prior may have set me back in the recovery process. For that reason I cried. I can help it. I truly wish I had not done the surgery. I wish I could go back in time and never do it. Seriously. I realized today that before the surgery, BMs caused anxiety, bleeding, and pain. After the surgery, BMs cause anxiety, bleeding, and pain. Hmmmm plus I have lots of stitches and a ridiculous amounts of constant itching. Doesn’t really make me feel great about my decision…

So, since I can’t change the past, and the surgery can’t be undone, I am going to try and make myself more comfortable. Tomorrow, I am going to call the doctor and ask what I can so about the itching, and I’m going to ask if the swelling and odd chunk of skin that has appeared is normal. Hopefulling the answers to my issues will be easy and I can stop worrying. I could sure use some good in all this right now…

Let’s have a talk about the healing process, shall we?

I’m healing. Hooray!  But what exactly does that mean? Well, in my case, what that means is that I’m able to sit for short periods of time. It also means that my stitches are starting to heal. So let’s discuss both of these advancements in my healing process…

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Could it be?

It is entirely possible that I’ve turned the corner (FINALLY) on my recovery. Let us all rejoice in the potential success that is my ass. (insert gratuitous angels singing here)

Today had I had my first post-op appointment. I knew going into today that it would be a challenge because the doctor’s office is a 40-45 minute drive away and I have yet to actually be able to sit for more than a few minutes here and there. So the plan was to wait until about an hour before leaving for the appointment to take my pain pill so that it would be in full affect during the drive.

Well, that was a great plan, if only my body wasn’t such a jackhole. It would figure that I’d wake up at 4 freaking a.m. in excruciating pain. I couldn’t take my pain pills then because it would mean that I couldn’t take another until the time we had to leave for the doctor’s office. So, I tried standing in a scalding hot shower in hopes that the heat would calm things down a bit. Unfortunately it didn’t, and I ended up having to take my pain pill 2 hours earlier than planned.  Lame.

Fortunately, I was able to handle the drive to the appointment quite well, and while at the appointment, the doctor marveled at wound site. Apparently I have not lost my super-human healing abilities. This made me happy. With no infection visible, and everything healing better than planned, the doctor informed me that he was going to remove the pain pump.

Ok, so… removal of a pain pump. Sounds simple huh? He said “I’m going to just snip one stitch holding it in and pull it out.” Me: “cool, doc, do what you gotta do!”  *snip* *tug* Me: A;SDLFKJASD;ASDLKFJADLFA;LKWHATTHEFUCKINGFUCK!!!!!!!  It felt like he pulled a razor blade out of my ass! Holy shit!!  I was shocked. I couldn’t speak, the pain paralyzed me. I just lay there in a pain-induced stupor while he told me I could get dressed and head out, he’d see me again in a month.

I wanted to cry. I didn’t want to move. After I willed myself up, got dressed and left, still in shock, I pondered how on earth I was going to get home. MY ASS HURT. I considered asking my husband if I could just lay in the bed of the truck, but I figured I could do this. It’s only a little drive….  AN HOUR LATER, we make it home and I’m sweating from the pain.You know how they say pain can cause irrational, stupid thoughts/actions. Well, I’m no exception. Wanting desperately to escape the piercing pain my ass, I ate some saltines and downed a percocet and a vallium, and even a phenergan, knowing the previous two taken together would make me a bit nauseous. Well… let’s just say that little relief-filled cocktail sent me into a coma faster than a fat man can down a donut. I don’t remember anything between the times of 9am and 6pm. LOL  Well done, drugs. Well done.

So, now my pain pump is gone, and to be honest, I’m not needing it nearly as much. The doc has given me a clean bill of recovery health. I was able to actually sit tonight for 20 or so minutes and eat my dinner. And believe it or not, BMs are actually LESS painful than the hour following them. Things are starting to look up me thinks. I’ve been more positive today than I have in quite some time.

Here’s to hoping the trend continues and I am able to be back to normal in no time. :-D

The Pain Chronicles, Volume 57

So, my body’s decision to wait 4 days to finally pass not one, but two BMs has royally fucked me up. You see, the doctor gave me a ton of pain meds right off the bat - percoset, vallium, toradol, and a pain pump that feeds meds constantly through a tube to the wound site. Well, as luck would have it, the toradol and the pain pump were only meant to last me to day 4. It’s day 5, bitches. This shit just got off the wall ridiculous.

I didn’t sleep last night. At. All. The pain is horrific. I thought for sure the prescription for the toradol must have been a mistake because everything else was for 21 pills, it was for 12. So all of last night I cursed the dyslexic pharmacist who filled my prescription.

When the morning came, I called and left a message for the doctor to call me. When I got that call, my hopes were shot down. I was informed that this is the normal course of action. Since most BMs occur prior to the 4th day (CURSE YOU BOWELS!!! *shakes fist* CURSE YOOOOOUUUUU!!!) that the majority of the pain is covered by those pain pills. That is, of course, if you’re the average person and not me, the gastrointestinal failure. Sigh…

So, here I sit, in pain. The doc just said that I need to do whatever it takes to be comfortable. No more toradol or pain pumps for me. I have to rely on my only two friends I have left - percoset and vallium. And to be honest, percoset isn’t getting the job done, but at least vallium knocks me out. [Every time I take a vallium, I can’t help of thinking about Prince Vallium in Spaceballs…it makes me laugh.] The doc did say I could double-up on percoset, but I sort of like my brain cells, and I’m afraid I’d send them on a drug-induced bender that they may never want to come back from. Who knows. If you see an incoherent post from me in the near future, you’ll know that I’ve decided to take that risk.

As a final note, I cannot WAIT for my post op appointment tomorrow. Why? Because the tube for the bleeping pain pump is taped across my side, down my back, down my crack and stitched into my asshole. The tape has started to pull away and IT FREAKING HURTS. Not to mention it’s getting red and irritated, and it itches. But when I itch it, it feels like I am sticking a red-hot coal against my back. I need some medicated ointment on that stat.

Ugh. FML.

Fuck you, bowels.

WTF, body? Another BM? Is this a cruel joke? I feel like if my bowels could, they would laugh maniacally at me right now with an evil undertone. Seriously, one BM post-surgery was enough, but two? In the same day? What did I do to deserve that? Did I kick the Pope’s dog or something? (Does the Pope even have a dog?) If I didn’t fear spending the next week in the hospital, I would totally go to Taco Hell right now and show my gastrointestinal system who’s boss.

Fuck you, bowels.

The good, the bad, and the incredibly painful.

Today I celebrated a victory, a HUGE victory actually. I had my first true post-surgery BM. And let me just say, yet again, if you are bothered at all by anything to do with BMs, please do NOT click to read more…

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