I wanted to wish you well with your surgery and say that I hope it brings you much deserved relief from your pain.
A note about post op pain...based on my own experience it is very beneficial for us to have a talk with our anesthesiologist pre opertively to bring them up to speed on our history of chronic pain and long term narcotic use. It can be very difficult to achieve adequate pain control for a chronic pain patient immediately following surgery on normal doses of post operative narcotics. My anesthesiologists have always welcomed this information and worked very closely with me in the immediate post op phase to be sure my pain was well controlled. Because of what I'd shared with him before the surgery he knew ahead of time that my needs for pain meds were not going to be the same as another patient. The nursing staff can be very reluctant to give enough meds to control the pain but an anesthesiologist knows what to do and will do it if they know your history.
A couple of years ago I had outpatient shoulder surgery. I explained to the anesthesiologist my history with endo, adhesions and chronic pelvic pain and detailed the meds I've taken for years. He assured me he would keep close tabs on me in post op and that he would personally see to it that my pain was controlled, whatever it took. He said if necessary he'd have me admitted overnight for pain management and to monitor my respiration and heart rate which can be depressed on high doses of narcotics.
It would be worth your while to request a telephone call from your anesthesiologist before your surgery so that you can go over your history with him. It will better equip him to be able to help you.
All the best, Debbie
At Tue, 2 Aug 2005, Jawana Coleman wrote:
>
>Good luck to you as well, Rachel. I could have written your post as I
>am experiencing all of the same things. I am having surgery again
>because I can no longer deal with this pain and the pain pills barely
>help anymore.