I wasn't prepared for this

I'm new here, been reading this board daily for almost 2 weeks, I had a TAV on Nov 15th, they took it all.

I thought I was prepared, I read all I could, thought I asked all the questions. Boy was i suprised.

First of all, I never properly thought out whether to have a general or a spinal. All the medical staff was pushing for a spinal, I would be awake for the entire surgery. I am phobic of such a thing, but if it kept me pain free for 24 hours afterward, I was willing to negotiate. I agreed after 1/2 hour of delaying my surgery to make up my mind, as long as they heavily sedated me BEFORE they started the spinal and kept me that way the whole time. I did NOT want to hear what was going on. They agreed.

I finally get to the O.R. and they sedated me. I have to laugh, I started talking non stop about this website, that I was a princess and the servents of the castle were going to take good care of me. The dr's and nurses got a kick out of it, a few days later I had to explain it to them.
WEll, it turns out that all the agony about the spinal was for nothing. After 1/2 hour of 2 doctors poking and stabbing, they could not find the right spot to give me one so I went under with a general after all.

After waking up, I was in extreme pain!!! My back was one huge pincusion and bruise, that did NOT help any, made things worse. I asked for pain medicine and was given 2 tylenol 3's. They said I could have more in 4 hours.
I can not tell you how much pain I was in, and the dr did not authorize any other meds, so I had to suffer. I spent the entire day focusing on my breathing and meditating for the extreme pain, I said to my husband 3 sentances in the entire day. I hurt. I hurt bad. I changed my mind.

My husband finally came to realize I was getting NO pain meds and threw a fit. They gave me a shot of .25mg of demoral. That is the dose that would sedate a child. I am almost 200 pounds. It did nothing. I was only authorized for ONE shot of it. AFter another fit, my orders were changed for one shot an hour. Still no effect, my body weight was too much for such a small amount.
24 hours post op, no pain meds (my hospital doesn't have morphine pumps yet, thats how behind the times they are)
The next day I got authorization from a sweet male nurse for a sedative, that worked!! it was almost 36 hours from surgery before I got my first break from the pain. I felt on top of the world.
Then came the laxitives. I was in so much pain I couldn't pass gas let alone a bm. It took 2 days of laxitives and no results. They scheduled me for a tube to be put down my throat to my bowel to relive the pressure. I freaked out and started walking non stop, 20 minutes of walking every hour for an entire day and night. Just hours before the tube, I had a bm and sat and cried my eyes out in relief.

My advice, check with your dr on exactly what pain meds you will have and what doses. If I had known I would have a dose meant for a child and nothing else, I would have gone elsewhere.
Do NOT do this without pain meds. It is pure agony. I have a RX for tylenol 3's but hardly use them now, this pain post op is NOTHING compared to what I was put thru the first 3 days in the hospital. The dr summed it up with "I guess you learned to live with the pain" It wasn't totally his fault, the nurses should have taken initiative to contact him to let him know of my suffering, he thought I was handling it alright. They said I could have pain meds only when I asked for them. I was in too much pain to ask.

Now they found my gall bladder is in need of coming out. I will have to have this done next month, less than a month post op. They promised me the morphine pumps will be here by then. Sure.. now a simple operation like that and I can get help with the pain.. just my bad timing.

Good luck to you all.. Less than a week and I think I'm doing pretty good so far!

Oh Sue, that;s terrible. I am so sorry you had to suffer like that. And what a bummer that they poke you so much in the back & then never got the spinal in! YOU ARE A TROUPER!

I had a morphine pump but did not like the way the morphine made me feel dizzy, so my doc. allowed meto take an anti-inflamitory (Toradol)alone. It is not a narcotic, but the inflamation is what cause much of the post-op pain, so I was lucky that it worked well enough to control pain on it's own. Ask your doctor at pre-op for your gallbaldder surgery about taking Toradol to help you with post-op pain incase you have an adverse reaction to the right dose of morphine.

I'm so sorry you have to have another surgery so soon. Please check in & let us know how you're doing!

Take Care and get lots of rest!

Sue, So sorry to hear about what happened to you. I can't imagine the pain you had because I was lucky and felt nothing much for the first 48 hours. It is hard to believe that this day in age you got such poor attention in the hospital. Hopefully, you are feeling better. The first week is rough too. That getting up and down is bad. By the end of your 2nd week you will feel much better. I hope you are able to now take it very easy and rest as much as possible. Yes, walking helped me a lot and still does. I can tell when I don't walk. Take care of yourself and good luck next month. Diane

I think the thing I miss most of all since being home is my waterbed. I actually got into it to take a nap and had bad results when I woke up.. picture a turtle on it's back in quicksand!!
If someone had a video camera on me, they would probably win a prize on tv.
I have to laugh at myself, I learn the hard way I guess

<<<I finally get to the O.R. and they sedated me. I have to laugh, I started talking non stop about this website, that I was a princess and the servents of the castle were going to take good care of me. The dr's and nurses got a kick out of it, a few days later I had to explain it to them.>>>
Hi,I have to say your trip to the big castle was alot like mine.Except that I spoke to my dr.about how I wanted a demerol pump,because I am allergic to morphine.He said sure,and then when I woke up,I was in agony,,crying like a baby.I started yelling,my eyes werent even open yet.I didnt even know where I was,I was just crying "please help me".I was also given a shot of only 20 mg.Can you beleive that? thats 5 less then you..I remember looking over at all the faces,3nurses,and my dh..they were all just looking at me,no response.I think i scared them.I sounded like i was dying or something.I yelled then passed out,yelled again,finally a nurse comes over to me,I said," I told my doctor I wanted the PUMP","WHERES THE PUMP??",..poor lady,she got so frazzled,she ran out to call the Dr.I kept saying "what is wrong with you all,I am in agony,I just had a hysterectomy" can you believe that.I was absolutely out of my mind,in sheer pain like you.Finally about a 10 minute wait i got the pump.But i was so far gone by then,I kept passing out and not pushing the button.I was in pain like that for 2 weeks.I will never again have to do that...Thank God ..and by the way,I hope you feel better soon.I know you are gonna fly through this next op.Is it a little incision,or what? Talk soonHUGS..~Sunny~

I'm soooo sorry to hear your castle experience was more like a dungeon experience!! I had the morphine pump..but it turned out that I was "sensitive" to morphine and spent my first post op day throwing my guts up..before they figured out it must be the morphine!!!I'll tell you,throwing up with all those fresh sutures was excruciating!! My roommate there,just happened to be a nurse and she rang the bell all day and kept telling them it had to be the morphine!!I love her dearly and we have begun a friendship outside of the castle..we speak almost daily!! I was then put on Percocet and Compazine..which finally stopped my vomiting and helped with the pain!!I send many cyberhugz and lots of prayers!!
Love and Prayers,
Jennifer

You know, treating pain is something that medicine knows how to do well. This should be good considering the list of things that medicine does not do well [curing the common cold, managing allergy and skin diseases....you can add to the list]

About 50% of people are UNDERMEDICATED. There is little or no chance that one would become addicted to pain medications. I think, actually, you have to be a starlet or a polititian to qualify. Of all the studies they have done on people in chronic pain, they have seen less than 5 % become addicted.

So WHY on earth don't doctor's get smarter about the use of pain medication? There are CHARTS that show what amount by weight. We are talking about a few weeks of decent coverage here.

If you type in Pain Management into your search engine, you would find the two national organizations for pain. These set quality standards for asking about pain levels, for treating pain, and for changing pain medication when one version does not work [makes someone vomit, makes someone hallucinate, does not alleviate pain]. The quality standards are nationally accepted [AMA, NIH] and are even referred to in AMA and NIH's own websites.

And still, we have story after story after story of poor pain treatment, poor pain control. Wegman, at Dartmouth, did a study that showed that Doctors do not practice what they learned in school. They do not practice what is recommended for quality treatment guidelines on a national level. Nope. They do what their peers do. And that, ladies, is exactly why we don't get the pain coverage we need across women, across hospitals, across doctors, across states. We get what their buddies do.

Personally, I think pain management should be a required course [it is starting to be in the better med schools and RN schools] and I think every doctor should read these boards just to get an idea of how VERY different our pain treatment is from one woman to another, from one doctor to another, from one hospital to another.

The VERY best way to tell what a woman needs in pain coverage [and this IS in all national standards] is to ASK the woman herself. Perhaps they should add, and BELIEVE her when she tells you what she is feeling.

Getting down off my soap box....

Terfemme

My ob/ gyn would rather just be an ob and the maternity nurses are either unqualified or disinterested in surgeries like *I* had. They were VERY VERY VERY nice to the C section ahead of me. To ME they asked, " WHAT is a subtotal hysterectomy" (now if you think I wasn't afraid... you are wrong !)

For pain I got T3 in the hospital which has never done a thing for me. I also got muscle relaxants when I whined long enough.

The care sheet I was given was for a C-section with Hysterectomy typed at the top. True- I never had a C section and maybe it is exactly the same but I'm thinking NOT. There is more cutting and sewing etc with hyster, right.

Anyway- I had a terrible terrible castle experience and never wrote my pre-op stories because I didn't want to scare any new princesses...

Still though - NO REGRETS !!

Something similar happened to me. Because of pain meds I was taking to control pain that led to the hyst the docs knew that morphine would not work. The said I would be on another drug......but they lied. I had no pain relief for over 24 hrs and when I begged my doc to help me he yelled at me for being a bad patient saying I knew there would be no pain relief and deal with it. (thankfully the resident that was the one actually doing my surgery has a brain and switched the drugs). I never realized there were people in the world that got thier kicks out of seeing people in so much pain that they are begging to die (as I was). Lets just say that first doc will never have me as a patient again! Bunghole! (excuse the language please)