Post Operative Day #1. Here comes the pain.

And that leads me to how POD 1 started....after finally falling asleep around 3am, I woke up at 9am. Still no pain, but starting to be able to wiggle my toes...IT'S ALIVE!!...



WTG Dr. Pittman, more than 24 hours pain relief, can't ask for much more than that, with modern medicine. Again, if you ever have foot surgery, or any appendage surgery that they can do a nerve block for, ask for it...it's well worth it, even if there is a disconcerting period of "will I ever feel it again?". Now I can better understand my patients who get a really numb leg from their epidurals and why they sometimes can panic a little bit. 

I had thought ahead, and had a cooler ready with ice packs in the freezer, and a list for my honey to put into the cooler before going to work each day. I'm very independent, and after taking a few hours off the previous afternoon to tend to me, I sent him to work as usual the next day...several friends in calling distance, plus his work wasn't that far away, so I felt I could handle it on my own. I set up a snack basket on my bedside stand, and he packed me a cooler beside my bed full of cold goodies...juices and gingerale (in case of nausea), yogurt, hummus, veggies and dip...I'm determined that this sedentary time is NOT going to add to my middle-aged spread!!

So after a little caffeine (I also had him add one Monster zero calerie drink to the cooler, my cold caffeine beverage of choice, because I had a feeling I may not be up to making coffee, and cold caffeine might sit better than hot, post-operatively), I got myself onto my knee scooter, decided I'd better take advantage of the lack of pain to perform some basic hygiene....I got to my shower (my other purchase, a basic shower stool, $26 from Walmart). I have a tub shower with a hand-held shower head with an on/off switch right on it....I plunked myself down, stuck my foot on my scooter seat outside the shower, covered that part of my leg with the shower curtain to keep it dry, and showered away. I had enough energy to brush my teeth and dry my hair before retreating to bed, feeling much better.

The rest of the day was basically a blur of napping and installing our new AT&T modem...of course, came home from surgery and our wireless cable/internet decided to die on us within a few hours of getting home (it all runs wirelessly off one modem). This has happened before, about 6 months ago, and one call to AT&T, some troubleshooting later and they sent out another modem overnight...so that occupied some time for me. And as before, in the meantime it finally started working again, so I at least had cable and internet for the night, but past experience with this has been if a modem goes out once, it will go out again in the near future, so I installed the new one when it got to me.

Received a lovely surprise, a gift basket from a nurse friend the west coast...lots of chocolate yum!! And other friends called and texted, throughout the day...it's good to be loved!!

My foot? Well I know there's an incision over the main bunion, another over the pinky bunion, both are stinging and sore, and if I wiggle those joints, they're sore... the arch of my foot feels bruised, likely as a result of the removal of that nerve tumor, and my broken hammertoe? Pretty much numb at this time, mainly because the nerve tumor involved the nerves of that toe....will the numbness go away? Possibly partly, as the body has ways to bypass things and get what needs to be done done, and some other nerves may pick up the job of innervating my 3rd and 4th toes, but for now, I'll take numb. The pain is not bad right now....trying to alternately stay ahead of it, but also, since the percocet tends to knock me out AND make me itch mildly, trying to stretch out the times between doses a bit.

By the end of the day, the pins and needles are gone, the pain is increasing, and I'm going to have to break down and take another percocet...the arch of my foot feels swollen, and that 4th toe? It's coming to life...yup, not totally numb.

Time for my antibiotic...very important to take all of the antibiotics prescribed. Infection can make a mess of things, and if you stop early, you can simply cause a bacteria to get resistant to the antibiotic, instead of completely wiping the bacteria out. This is how superbugs, bugs resistant to a lot of antibiotics, like MRSA, VRE, to come to be, and these are life-threatening. So take your antibiotics.

And move a lot....legs, feet, getting up the bathroom, whatever....keeps the blood circulating and prevents blood clots.

Oh, and don't think that those thick dressings around your feet make applying ice to the foot useless...they should give you an icepack that will tie around the foot. Keep it filled with ice and on there...the cool through all of those dressings feels good.

Sorry, once a nurse, always a nurse...using my experiences to help others. Or bore them to sleep, whichever.

Soon, Post Op Day 2. I wonder how long before I start climbing the walls?? Thankfully, I have lots of projects lined up for when the pain isn't that bad any more. And Mom's coming this weekend...just in time for Mother's Day!

Off to percocet lala land........