It's now been six days since I had the IVC filter removed. The pain levels continue to inch down ever so slightly, and I feel little changes each day. It's like I told my case manager - this week the pain is bad but "tolerable", where as the last few weeks I would have welcomed getting hit by a bus, put in a coma...anything where I wouldn't have to feel the pain anymore as I was going out of my mind. There is an improvement, I just have a long way to go.
Currently all of my energy is going into my job, and by the time I get home at night I'm beat. While my hand pain is much better, it's still bad enough where I'm avoiding the computer when I get home. I'll know I'm making progress when I'm back to doing my evening emails, Facebook and blogs again on a regular basis, not to mention to occasional game of mahjong. When I don't even want to play a simple computer game you know I'm not well!
I'm on minimal pain medications that help me get through the day, but I'm still having trouble sleeping. It takes me forever to get comfortable, and sometimes "comfortable" is impossible to achieve. At least this past week I've been getting in at least 5 hours of sleep a night, so I'm grateful. I'm also grateful for our DirectTV, though the receiver has been freezing up a lot lately. When you can't hold a book to read, hold a phone to talk to your family/friends or type on a computer, at least the TV is there. Thank goodness for "The Office" and "Arrested Development"; they definitely help keep my mind off the pain. And though I've probably seen each episode 10+ times for this season, I'm also grateful for "Top Chef" as I just love that show.
I had orders last week to start physical therapy; I have to start looking into that. I have a follow-up to see my spine surgeon in April, and I know he'll want a status report at that time. Which reminds me...I forgot that I was to make an appointment for next week with the vascular surgeon as a follow-up to my procedure last week. Oops, completely forgot. I'm going to "blame" Brad, as they told me this information before I left the hospital...when I was heavily medicated, exhausted, in a lot of pain and really not paying attention! Given the distance, I'm guessing that all I really need to do is just do a call/check-in and let them know how I'm doing and that the site is healing well. I basically just have a small, circular scab on my collarbone, along with some light bruising from a few injections and pressure put on the area during the procedure. It looks like what you'd find after you have an IV taken out, but on a slightly larger scale. I think it's really minimal considering how big the IVC filter was. I don't know what they did to me during my spine surgery, but they did something around my neck area that looked much, much worse in terms of bruising and size!
So that's where I'm at. I'm hoping that a week from now I will be able to report continuous improvement. Given what I've seen over the last six days, I'm very optimistic. Again, this will take time. Tomorrow is a working Friday (we get every other Friday off where I work, as it's a 9/80 work schedule), so one more day and then it's the weekend. I'm looking forward to having some time at home, and will hopefully be feeling good enough to do some much needed cleaning and errands. As always, thank you to everyone for your emails and Facebook messages; I feel so disconnected from people lately, so it really brightens my day to read them.
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I'm so excited for you that the pain is starting to go away. No matter how slowly, something is better than nothing. That is amazing! You probably will be a case study...down to where you diagnosed what the problem was & tracked down someone who would listen to you! I can't wait to hear more posts & hope they stay as positive as this one (though, of course, venting is always okay too!).
I hope Brad's mom is feeling some relief from her flu...on top of everything else, that must be miserable for her!
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