Unexplainable Pain Explained - Part 2

To continue where I left off I feel I need to refer to Part 1 and bring things to speed. I may be wrong, but it’s my blog, I’m doing it anyway.

          So I had just finished giving the build up of a lifetime and left you hanging right? Good.

          Well fret none because this is where we get to the meat and potatoes of it all and give you all of the gruesome details, no, wait, descriptive details that will, with a bit of luck, convey what it actually feels like to experience extreme and almost unbearable pain.

          So we’ll continue on from where I left off and carry on with the post surgery pain. I want to talk about the initial surgery first, not the second surgery, which is a completely different experience all together. K? Thanks.

          Because this first surgery was considered a day surgery I was sent home that same afternoon which was, we were told, the appropriate two hour recovery time after waking up from the anesthetic. Two hours, really?  

Major throat surgery and all I get is two hours to wake up enough to hail a cab home? Wow. It really doesn’t seem like a long enough time to convalesce unless you just want the hell out of there real bad. And the drugs you are fed kind of make you want to hang around for at least a little bit longer so you can score more of them.

          Getting to the whole pain business, which is the point of this entry, and the after first surgery experience, I feel I need to advance to the point where the drugs wear off. After all it is about the pain right?

          So now I have found my way home with the help of my beautiful wife. I’m pretty sure it was a taxi because my truck was still in the parking space at home. If I’m remembering the actual ride home and not a drug induced haze, it took no time at all.

I never realized just how bumpy and fun the roads in this city really are. Roller coaster-like enjoy ability. I don’t know if I should chalk that up to just the drugs I was pumped full of or give the cab driver credit for hitting every speed bump and corner at break neck speed to make it truly memorable.

So jumping ahead just a bit, I’m now home for a while and have been in and out of consciousness for a few hours. I love how the hospital loads you up with the good drugs to send you home and never gives you spares.

Then, all of a sudden, at least it felt that way, the painkillers that I were given out so freely at the hospital as if they were Skittles, wear off, and I attempt to have a glass of water. This was a normal reaction, or so I thought, because my throat feels extremely dry and the dryness makes it hard to swallow. Go ahead and have drink of something wet I thought.

 It turns out that it’s not hard to swallow because my throat is dry, but because I just had major throat surgery…duh.

So I reach for a glass of water. Not ice water, noooo. Not warm water either but a little bit above room temperature water. It was just a tad on the cool side as not to provoke an experience, but less painful. Or so I thought. I was thinking warn. Warm is never wrong but I was wrong. After all I just had major throat surgery right? Warm is soothing.

My shock and surprise to this experience, no person on earth could possibly have prepared themselves or, actually trained themselves for.

It was like swallowing a mouthful of molten pre chewed broken shards of glass while simultaneously having a red hot 3 inch diameter knitting needle forced though the side of your neck slowly, and I do mean slowly, at the same time a noose tightens around your neck with every small sip of cool soothing liquid that you happen to force down your burning, dry, raw throat. How’s that for pain?

This is not limited to water. This is swallowing anything in general, and I mean anything. Like painkillers. Yup, the stuff that makes this type of pain go away so you can swallow? Yeah, that stuff.

It, at times, also includes air. You guessed it, breathing. I never thought that it would ever be this painful to breathe. Take my word for it, it is. See above pain description.

So before going to bed, like anyone would, I dose up for the night in an attempt to try and get as much of a full night sleep as I can. So I’m good right? The meds knock me out and I drift off into what I hope to be a night of sound sleep.

All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the night the pain meds wear off and I wake up in tears and screaming. Not regular blood curdling screaming like you hear in movies but the kind of screaming that can only be described as raspy and garbled as if you just had a portion of you throat removed, or at least scraped raw.

 Yet I try to avoid screaming or expressing anything vocally because that too causes its own new experience in severity.

This is where my internal debate begins as to which pain is worse or at least more tolerable for the time being.

Do I endure the tears for the next undetermined amount of time from the excruciating pain that I am feeling at this moment? Or do I bite the bullet and swallow the 3 doctor prescribed Codeine laden pills one at a time? Or is it the Morphine’s turn? Such a dilemma. It was either that or the morphine, depending on whose turn it was. I was told to alternate every 4 hours or as needed. 4 hours my ass. Turns out no matter what I took it only lasted 2 hours at best. Go figure.

I feel I need to refer back to the description of swallowing broken glass here as a quick reminder about swallowing. We now have added a solid object which feels like a razor blade encrusted jagged edged rock the size of a golf ball, to the liquid.

So now after what seemed like an eternity of internal debate, which in reality was only about 15 seconds, I reach for the Codeine pills. It was their turn so I grab three of the buggers, a glass of tepid water and work up the courage to swallow them one at a time.

That’s right, one at a time because the thought of doing all three at once, well, I may as well put a bullet in my brain because right now I think the bullet would hurt less. This every two hours. Then the pain kicks in again and I get to do it all over.

Set an alarm clock to go off every two hours for no reason whatsoever one weekend. That in itself is an extremely annoying experience and yet pain free, unless you have small children. They tend to jump on your in bed, which is fun in itself and not relative to this situation at all.

I hope that this gives you a little better insight into what I have attempted to portray. This could easily turn into a three or four part mini-series but I will end it here.

Please let me know your thoughts and leave a comment.

Thanks.