Yesterday and today have been the toughest days yet. Had a bad night followed by difficulty getting my pain levels under control yesterday morning. The whole leg of my operated hip started seizing up until even to move any muscle in my body an inch was excruciating. I remember this from last time. It feels like my leg turning inside out on itself. I got mixed up with what doses of meds I could take and when yesterday morning and didn't quite ask on time, and then, of course, the nurse couldn't come straight away as they were dealing with other patients.
I forgot what it is like when someone else is in control of your meds. I can't just have my own times written down, and be in control of it that way. The nursing staff are lovely, it's just the nature of being a patient. It can feel very disempowering. I ended up bursting into tears and asking to speak to the ward sister; a combination of pain, exhaustion and nausea from the previous meds. And then I was so light headed anyway I wasn't making much sense! Mum has been a rock, of course, to be honest sometimes she has come in and sat reading her book whilst I slept. Trying to get the balance between enough pain relief and not zonking myself out on it has been quite tricky, but I think we got there a bit more today. I'm drinking Fortisip to get something down me. Taking this patient role seriously I am!
When the physios came later on yesterday, the pain relief hadn't kicked in yet, so I started yelling in pain at their attempt to passively abduct my right hip! It did settle down a bit though and I managed to have a stand up and took a couple of steps with a frame. This morning it was a bit of a fail though, I could only just sit on the edge of the bed as I was feeling light headed and nauseous, but I've now gone down to a slightly lower dose of morphine and I feel a bit more myself. I've realised that pain is a little bit like a naughty puppy. You have to keep its behaviour under control or else things get out of hand and then double the effort is needed to reinforce the boundaries!
I've been working on my bed exercises, I can now flex and extend my right knee and ab- and adduct with a bit of help. Hooray! It's clunking a bit sometimes which is really off putting but this is normal. I'm told it's the tendons and other soft tissue pinging a bit as the hip is in a completely new position. Freaky...
I've been working on my bed exercises, I can now flex and extend my right knee and ab- and adduct with a bit of help. Hooray! It's clunking a bit sometimes which is really off putting but this is normal. I'm told it's the tendons and other soft tissue pinging a bit as the hip is in a completely new position. Freaky...
