Catching up - week of surgery

I woke up from surgery in a sling, and nauseated like all get-out.  The nurse was able to inject some medication to ease the nausea, but that sort of set the stage for a fairly miserable week.  I haven't had any surgery like this before, so I really was clueless as to the coming misery. Not just the shoulder itself; a lot of small miseries were concomitant with the sling, the medication, and the heat here. First off, the anaesthesia and the pain meds can cause constipation, and by late in that week I was taking Dulcolax to move things along.  Also, I had a heat-rash in my sling, which developed into fluid-filled blisters. I am real glad that I had put a layer of cotton fabric into the sling as a liner to ease the heat rash; it was easy to remove and wash.  I am allergic to opiates, too; they make me itch. Imagine hives all over, but on the inside. Insane itches. I told the surgeon's office that I have this allergy, but was counseled just to take Benadryl to help with the itching caused by my Oxycodone prescription.  For the first couple of days after the surgery, I was asleep most of the time, so was not overly miserable. But the more time I spent in the conscious world, the more time I had to fully immerse myself in the misery!  


It could have been worse, though. Friday after the surgery, massive storms rolled through our area, knocking out power for thousands of homes. Some of those folks were without electricity for more than a week, with daily temperatures in the high 90s or worse. We kept our power, for which I am very thankful!


I have been wearing sleeveless dresses since the surgery, loose enough that I can get them on without having to move my surgeried arm.  That has been a boon, because I can't pull up anything without help yet.


Most of the pain from the surgery was pretty much gone by Sunday of that week, which I find amazing.  And the baseline pain was just gone. Incredible to have no discomfort at all in that shoulder. The surgeon found considerable fluid build-up from bursitis in there, and that was the source of a lot of the constant baseline discomfort I had been dealing with for so long.  He drained that out, and that has relieved the ache.