At about 12:30pm yesterday when I had my toes in the sand and feeling the warmth of the sun on my body, I looked over at Julie and said something like, “This sure beats staring at the pale pink walls of my hospital room at Good Sam’s Hospital!” She agreed.
After getting into the ocean up to my shoulders (did not feel it would be wise to “dive in” given the swelling/narcotic intake/other surgical circumstances) I decided I truly am having a miraculous recovery, based on the fact that 5 days after having major surgery I was sunning myself at the beach…
On that note, I am continuing to heal wonderfully well. The swelling is decreasing every day, and I have been able to notice a change even from morning to night! I cannot wait to fully see the beautiful new jaw line Dr. Ferraro has created for me.
The pain is still manageable but I’ve had some ups and downs. Here is where I get to do one of my favorite things in life: Blame My Mother: When I had my first surgery with Dr. Ferraro in April of 1989 (I was 17), the narcotics and I had quite a lovely experience together. Yes, we had a very happy, loving entanglement, me ‘n’ percs. Until I tried to punch her because she wouldn’t let me have another pill. Thus began her “anti-percoset” campaign. At the next surgery in August of 1989, Mom did her best to pry the percoset out of my grips as soon as she could. Narcotic painkillers are a necessity for surgeries involving facial reconstruction, and this one in 8/87 proving far more intense than the last. This led to a desperate plea from us on a quiet summer weekend paging as many Doctors on call at Children’s Hospital who may have been able to prescribe or assist somehow with the intolerable pain I was experiencing. Of course Mom does not seem to recall this episode quite as vividly as I, so last week she immediately began asking how many percosets I’d taken, as though the physical pain of having incisions and bones repositioned was incidental.
When Julie brought me + meds home on Thursday, I looked at my friend percs and realized there were only twenty in the bottle. This combined with the nagging about narcotics from the family matriarch caused me to hear my Mother’s voice inside my head: Must Scale Back! Since I take the percosets at the 12 and 6’s, and the Motrin at 3 and 9’s, at midnight on my first night home I only took 1 percoset. At 6am on Friday I took just 1 percoset again. Bad Idea. By the time I could take 2 again at 12pm, I was in significant pain and realized I had lost my “pain base” that I had built up and had been moving forward with for the past few days. Now I had to rebuild and hope that overnight I would be able to get rid of that painful “edge” I was feeling...
The happy note here is that since then I’ve been taking my pain pills right on time and following dosage correctly like a good little patient! The other positive factor is that Dr. Ferraro did prescribe more pain meds since I was running low.
Although Friday was grand at the beach, today, after Big Ivy (don't worry, Lil' Ivy is not jealous) returned home, it appears as though the girls needed a significant “nap” for a few hours. It was as though we had been out all night partying – except we had only had smoothies on the deck and watched tall ships sail in the harbor with Kim Z. Here’s hoping, during the 5pm Smoothie Hour, that the happiness finds me again for a full day of fun tomorrow as we head to Ogunquit…
More later from another state!
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