Which kind of pain is this?
Today I was presented with a new and very Not Fun game: Which kind of pain is this? Because right now I have two primary kinds of pain: 1) hip related pain which means STOP RIGHT NOW. Whatever I am doing that is causing the pain: stop doing it. Even at PT the only exception to this rule is targeted massage to break up scar tissue which hurts like whoa but is not something I am doing so it's in bounds. 2) abdominal pain related to the liver surgery which I am supposed to push through because, according to the surgeon, I cannot do any internal damage from normal activity. I can't rupture stitches or pop a hernia even though transitioning, however carefully, from lying down to sitting up still leaves me feeling like i'm being filleted open.
Anyways, starting yesterday after my very careful, very slow second walk around the block, I started noticing an increase in pain in a specific area of my lower right belly under the mass of bloating and up the right side. It might be my psoas, but honestly, with all the bloat and surgery-related trauma in that general region it's tough to poke around and really figure out such things. Anyways, walking seems to aggravate it so i'm concerned it might be hip related which means Knock It Off! But it's also inside the abdominal cavity so it's equally likely liver surgery related which means Keep On Going. Whilst lying in bed last night after icing the hip and before sleep i tried poking around at it which made it decidedly worse, so in case it's hip related (and because I was already at max 4mg dilaudid so inviting more pain beyond what was already aggravating at that level seemed a poor choice if i ever wanted to sleep) i stopped.
Tried a walk around the block today which seemed a good idea at the time. Still can't imagine what a sight I must make in my glasses and pepe le pew pajamas slowly ambling down the sidewalk with both hands on my lower back/buttocks feeling to see if my muscles were engaging properly. They weren't. My right glutes were barely working, not nearly as much as the left side, and it seemed like my right foot was tending to point outward more than it ought. Wasn't able to self-correct so I headed home with many mental notes for PT tomorrow.
In "get me off these pills so I can get back to my pysanky, pleaseandthankyou" news, down to 1 mg pill/4 hrs but still having enough constant noise from lower right quadrant that I'm hesitant to try and start splitting even the daytime pills. Last night I went to bed mid-cycle so instead of knowing that i'd be up in 2 hrs I took another pill just before bed and restarted the timer, so I was effectively at the full 4mg dose for first 2 hrs of sleep. Interestingly, the strangest and most vivid dreams were at the end of my second night time cycle where I woke up (3 hrs 58 minutes, short of the 4 hr goal, boo) sobbing into my pillow from a dream that had seen my trust betrayed by my absolute favorite PM from my SM days. In the dream I had made a contract to rent two items starting the following day, even had a signed contract, and was there to pick them up 3 hrs after rehearsals were supposed to be over for the day. I knew that the contract technically didn't grant me the items till the next day, so after midnight, but I knew the rehearsal schedule and that no one else would be using them. But when I showed up my beloved PM was running some kind of special rehearsal using one of the items and wouldn't let me have it till after NOON the next day and said that noon was implicit in the contract even through it wasn't typed out. I was so frustrated and upset that someone who had always had my back was turning against me that I was literally in tears, both in the dream and IRL. Took about ten minutes to calm down enough to manuever through my "sitting up" protocol and have a drink of water. There were plenty of other strange aspects of that dream, including that the theatre management (which included a coworker at my current job) had surveillance cameras mounted on mini RF cars in employee's homes and used one to wake someone in the accounting dept in order to cut me a check for reimbursement on the rental. That was also shocking in a betrayal of trust/invasion of privacy way that had me concocting elaborate speeches about personal privacy and human rights. Strange things for my subconscious to be juggling when my primary concern is being able to walk.
Anyways, starting yesterday after my very careful, very slow second walk around the block, I started noticing an increase in pain in a specific area of my lower right belly under the mass of bloating and up the right side. It might be my psoas, but honestly, with all the bloat and surgery-related trauma in that general region it's tough to poke around and really figure out such things. Anyways, walking seems to aggravate it so i'm concerned it might be hip related which means Knock It Off! But it's also inside the abdominal cavity so it's equally likely liver surgery related which means Keep On Going. Whilst lying in bed last night after icing the hip and before sleep i tried poking around at it which made it decidedly worse, so in case it's hip related (and because I was already at max 4mg dilaudid so inviting more pain beyond what was already aggravating at that level seemed a poor choice if i ever wanted to sleep) i stopped.
Tried a walk around the block today which seemed a good idea at the time. Still can't imagine what a sight I must make in my glasses and pepe le pew pajamas slowly ambling down the sidewalk with both hands on my lower back/buttocks feeling to see if my muscles were engaging properly. They weren't. My right glutes were barely working, not nearly as much as the left side, and it seemed like my right foot was tending to point outward more than it ought. Wasn't able to self-correct so I headed home with many mental notes for PT tomorrow.
In "get me off these pills so I can get back to my pysanky, pleaseandthankyou" news, down to 1 mg pill/4 hrs but still having enough constant noise from lower right quadrant that I'm hesitant to try and start splitting even the daytime pills. Last night I went to bed mid-cycle so instead of knowing that i'd be up in 2 hrs I took another pill just before bed and restarted the timer, so I was effectively at the full 4mg dose for first 2 hrs of sleep. Interestingly, the strangest and most vivid dreams were at the end of my second night time cycle where I woke up (3 hrs 58 minutes, short of the 4 hr goal, boo) sobbing into my pillow from a dream that had seen my trust betrayed by my absolute favorite PM from my SM days. In the dream I had made a contract to rent two items starting the following day, even had a signed contract, and was there to pick them up 3 hrs after rehearsals were supposed to be over for the day. I knew that the contract technically didn't grant me the items till the next day, so after midnight, but I knew the rehearsal schedule and that no one else would be using them. But when I showed up my beloved PM was running some kind of special rehearsal using one of the items and wouldn't let me have it till after NOON the next day and said that noon was implicit in the contract even through it wasn't typed out. I was so frustrated and upset that someone who had always had my back was turning against me that I was literally in tears, both in the dream and IRL. Took about ten minutes to calm down enough to manuever through my "sitting up" protocol and have a drink of water. There were plenty of other strange aspects of that dream, including that the theatre management (which included a coworker at my current job) had surveillance cameras mounted on mini RF cars in employee's homes and used one to wake someone in the accounting dept in order to cut me a check for reimbursement on the rental. That was also shocking in a betrayal of trust/invasion of privacy way that had me concocting elaborate speeches about personal privacy and human rights. Strange things for my subconscious to be juggling when my primary concern is being able to walk.