Patience is a Virtue

So, I sleep and I walk and I take my pain meds. After ten days, I go back to my surgeon’s office to get my staples removed. Then, it’s back home to do the same things … sleep, walk and take my pain meds … again and again. I have to learn to be patient, as this fusing business will take a while. In fact, from what I’ve read and from what my doctor has told me, I will be healing for about eighteen months in total, so I better get used to being patient. I’m not ready for much of anything right now, so I look forward to getting my brace off at three months and being able to drive again. Small steps, small steps.

One thing I wish I could control better is the wearing off of my pain meds in the middle of the night. When I first got home, I was using Oxycontin and morphine sulphate for pain, having just been eased from my morphine pump at the hospital. A few weeks after my surgery, I was using Percocet (oxycodone), one every four hours, and Oxycontin, one every twelve hours. I don’t think the Oxycontin did me much good, personally, but the Percocet kept me feeling human.

But there was a problem. I would take a Percocet at about midnight, but be awakened by the most awful pain at about four in the morning. It wasn’t like I wasn’t sleeping and was in pain. The pain actually woke me up! I tried to find a way around this, but I found that I just had to wait until my pain started to abate by itself. That took a couple of weeks more. Then, I was able to sleep through the night. Of course, I would start to get up with pain later and later, like six or seven A.M., but at least I got through the night without being awakened.

Then, there was the back brace. I have to admit there were times when I took it off and just sat very still, reading or watching TV. I was to have it on all the time, except when showering or sleeping. That’s the reason I took a lot of naps. I could ditch the brace with impunity. Plus, the sleeping seemed to do me good. I got used to putting that brace on and taking it off in a hurry. If there’s ever some kind of Olympic event for this, I’m ready. Otherwise, I don’t know why I thought it was important to be so skilled with that thing.

Anyway, the back brace was officially dumped on January 28th at my surgeon’s office. I called my girlfriends to see if they wanted to go out to lunch that next week … and I drove!