If you don’t want to read a post that mostly includes me whining, I’ll understand.
If you’re still here, well, you were warned. I’m sorry, everyone. I’m doing my best to keep up a good, strong, fighting spirit during my recovery. For the most part, I’m succeeding, I think. Today, however, I’m just not feeling it. Instead I’m feeling the pain, the frustration and the sleep deprivation.
It is all well and good for me to understand that I have to keep pushing myself in physical therapy. If we don’t keep forcing the muscles, tendons and other parts of my leg, I will not achieve the straightness, extension and flexion I desire. These things were compromised from years of a degenerating knee. Improvement is a challenge. I know all of this intellectually but, damn it, in today’s therapy session the pain and effort got to me. I wanted my leg to just. be. better. Right then and there I wanted it to be where I know it will be eventually. I resented every repetition of every exercise, even while I was striving my hardest to push, to press, to straighten, to bend.
I didn’t whine audibly, although I did cry out a couple of times when the therapist was physically manipulating my leg. I refused to give up or ask to stop. Instead I dug deep, told myself to suck it up and kept working, kept pressing, kept going for more. My therapist said that we made progress and that my leg was straighter at the end of the session. I’m glad he could see it because I couldn’t, and I couldn’t feel anything but tired and sore.
After that I went to my massage therapist to see if she could help me with the nightly problem that is creating my sleep deprivation. Every night, I fall asleep and then a couple of hours later a persistent, annoying, powerful ache wakes me up. It starts in my right glute, travels down my leg, often crosses over the quads and can go down into my calf and shin. It doesn’t matter that I take a pain pill before I go to bed and have even been using a sleeping pill on the suggestion of my surgeon. Once the ache wakes me up, I’m then up for two to three hours. I come out into the living room and try shifting lots of positions to find one where I’m more comfortable. Depending on what temperature I think will feel better, I either warm up the heating pad or use the ice machine cooling contraption.
I’m worried about taking pain pills too close together so I hold off as long as possible to the right time before I take another dose. That’s all well and good, but it takes a while for the medication to get into my system and help. Sometimes I just give up on the idea of going back to sleep and just start doing stuff around the house, banking on getting in naps during the day. Even though I can take those naps, the interrupted sleep really throws me off mentally and emotionally.
I’m tired of it. I want a good night’s sleep. I resent the pain.
Look, I knew to expect a period of pain, intense pain, after surgery. I just honestly thought that I would be experiencing significantly less by this point. Maybe I am. No, probably I am, but it just doesn’t feel like it today.
The massage therapist worked on me for an hour. She doesn’t just do tissue massage, but instead feels for the nerves, the circulation, the muscles and how everything connects and affects the other parts of my leg. I believe that I started to experience some relief and she confirmed better blood and energy flow so, I am cautiously hopeful that tonight will be better.
She and I are friends and have know each other for several years. Because of that, I felt comfortable discussing another complaint. If you watch television much, you’ve probably see ads with people talking about opioid related constipation. Folks, that’s not something created by pharmaceutical companies. It’s a real thing and it sucks. I do not want to call my doctor and ask for yet another prescription medicine. Instead, I’m trying to correct the problem with a special herbal tea, prunes and, today, my letting my massage therapist work on some of my internal organs too. Please, let’s all be hopeful.
I got home from my appointments and experienced a big, emotional let down. I’m just tired of hurting, not sleeping, being constipated and everything else. Tonight, it’s all getting to me and I think I may even need to indulge in a good cry to let everything out.
Tomorrow, I’ll pick myself up and get back in the game but tonight, I needed the whine. Thanks for listening.
Weighty Matters 
Hang in there, Mary!
Hi Mary. Check your email. Dolores Wilson