What to talk to surgeon about

[satori]

Im still on the fence about having surgery. theres a lumpy type thing on my chest and it has bothered me for a while. I have waited about a year to see if it would go away but to no avail. One thing that has me worried is Even though i have been taking lower doses of opiates or none at all recently my tollerance is still much higher then it was befor. 10mg of oxycodone seems it may work but im not sure how well it would work after a surgery no matter how inavasive(sp). I am honestly worried about it hurting afterwards and want to talk to him about it. I was thinking of saying that i had been given pain meds for my last surgery and wisdom teeth but they did not work well so that has me nervous about the surgery. Do i ask him about this, the fact that this worries me? Or should i just call in after if it isnt working and ask what to do? I know i wouldnt probably get anything stronger then oxycodone itself the most i think he would do is call in a stronger strength so i can take 20mg at a time but this has been one dynamic of worry for me. Atleast once i figure this out i can decide whether or not to do it. Its strange having a lump in the breast area that gets bigger especialy when your a guy ahha.

[bodangly]

Yeah, maybe just say that in the past you found the pain meds didn't help that well; but you are right waiting until after the surgery and complaining then would probably be the best course of action. I just wouldn't wait too long or he might think you binged on the meds or sold them all.

[superman]

or you could score some shit on the street before hand. i doubt that pain will be a problem if all he's doing is removeing a piece of benign tissue though.

[satori]

Ok, thats good atleast. I had a lymphnode removed 2 years ago that was infected (biopsy) and he did a little "exploring" around the area. WELL i went home on 20mg injected morphine and 15mg oxycodone and didnt feel a thing. Washed some dishes, walked around a bit. When i woke up the next morning i couldnt even get out of bed. My intire upper neck / shoulder area was completely locked with pain. It took me 10 minutes to roll out of bed, i couldnt even yell to get any ones attention. I have never been able to take pain meds right when i woke up EXCEPT THAT ONE WEEK period, the second i woke up, dose, wait a bit, get out of bed lol. I do have a bunch of laudanum to so i probably shouldnt be to worried.

[oc80tn]

Well, if we are sharing surgery stories and the pain component of them, let me add my two cents to the list. In 2003, I had three seizure-like episodes within a three-month time span. The resulting falls from them left me with compression fractures in my thoracic spine from T5 to T11. Count them. That's seven different compression fractures, plus a broken shoulder and the already present herniated disc at L5.
After the first episode, I was rushed to the emergency room, given all sorts of scans and what-not to find out what happened. The nurse asked me if I had pain, I told her my upper arm/shoulder was hurting, along with my mid-back around the rib cage. They gave me a shot of something and didn't even bother to x-ray me or anything! They also did a piss test, which came back positive for opioids. I had taken a couple of Lortab a few days earlier for my herniated disc, which my doctor gave me legally. Well, the ER doc treated me like a drug seeker, sent me home with no pain meds and I spent the next night throwing up because of the excruciating pain.

To cut my story short, after eight weeks of being told that I had probably just bruised my ribs in the fall, I finally went to my regular doctor who found three fractures at T9-T11. (The others came from the other falls). I had been walking around for two months with a broken back and didn't even know it. I am convinced this is the reason I have been left with chronic pain because of the nerve damage this caused.

A year later, my physical rehab doctor wants me to see a surgeon for my back. I agree to it and the ortho does a fusion at T9. This vertebra was 50 percent compressed and also had a ruptured disc right below it which exploded inwardly toward the spinal cord. They "fix it" and send me home with percocet 5mg every 4-6 hours. Why? Well, the surgeon who performed the operation was on vacation when I got out of the hospital and left me in the care of another doctor. Keep in mind that prior to my surgery, I had been on OxyContin 20mg twice a day and 5 Percocet 7.5's daily. Needless to say that 15 mgs of oxycodone didn't help much when I was used to about 90 mgs a day. Then add on top of that the fact I was a week out of major surgery....the kind where they crack your chest and have to move organs out of the way to get to your spine. I went through those 50 pills in about three days!

Finally, my mom calls the doctor's office and demands that I be seen. The original doctor was back and pretty much threw a fit at the other doctor for underprescribing my meds. He then asks me what I think I need to be comfortable. I told him just to write what I had before and he did. No questions asked.

During this time, my ortho left the practice he was at and, again, left me with the same doctor for my post-surgical follow-ups. This shit-for-brains doctor was left instructions by the other one on what I needed for pain management. Did he follow it? No! He didn't even bring it up and I had to ask him as he was leaving the room. I told him I needed to get some OxyContin. He told me that he doesn't write that junk and sent me home with 50 percocet 5's.

Thank God that my pyschical rehab doctor took me back and has been handling my pain management since them and is pretty good about giving me what I need to make it through the month.

Moral of the story: Orthopedic surgeons, hell, any surgeon, believes they have the power to magically heal every ailment and when you are done with that, you don't need pain meds, other than Advil or Tylenol to control it.