My "pain surprise": Now I need advice

[David Berg]

I haven't been around here for the past week because I was admitted to the hospital for a "surprise" gall bladder removal and I wound up having _four_ unexpected procedures in the first few days. This all came at me totally out of the blue and I'm still a little in shock how this could all hit me at once.

I'm past most of the serious problems, and it's likely that Saturday or Sunday they'll send me home. My biggest problem now is facing twice-a-day dressing changes. After I go home some agency is going to take care of them, but I'm having a serious problem with them even while I'm still in the hospital. They hurt *a lot* and nothing seems to do much of anything to help the pain, not an injection of 4 of morphine, even if you add in a couple of "extra strength" lortabs on top of that. I'm afraid that the pain from the dressing changes is going to be the primary factor in my recovery period.

Because of my work on PainOnline I usually seem to find myself focusing on neuropathic pain almost exclusively, and now I'm almost at a loss for dealing with serious "normal" pain. What "tricks" can anyone offer for dealing with this sort of situation, and exactly how do you pull them off? I mean, should I be trying to work on learning imagery? biofeedback? meditation? I've had severe pain before in my life, certainly worse than anything I've experienced this past week, but they were occasions where I was dealing with a single, acute pain episode. Now I'm facing a on-going series of severe (even if not outrageously extreme) episodes of pain that I find myself dreading.

Any brilliant ideas I can use to cope?

David Berg

[This message was edited by David Berg on September 29, 2001 at 02:03 PM.]