Pain and Jazz heart hands

Unless you have a valid reason not to, take all of the pain medication they offer you on the schedule that suits your pain management the best. You are the only person living in your body, nobody else knows how you feel. (Unless you are one of those people with a partially formed conjoined twin fetus growth, then you should ask it how it feels too.)

In any event you should know when it hurts and your pain should be set to minimal during the first week of recovery. I had some hiccups with pain management the first day on the ward with a well meaning night nurse directing me to press my time controlled morphine button less and to try to limit the use of the prescribed pain pills after the drip was removed. At 48hrs post op this was clearly not what was going to help me get through with as many flying colours. I was experiencing quite a lot of pain and pain quite simply makes you totally unhappy. I like to be happy.

I can only effectively describe what MY experience is because so far in life I have only effectively been able to be MYself. Everyone has very different pain experiences but there are certainly overarching human similarities and that’s what makes us such an interesting species.

This was/is my experience:
The pain out of the ICU was almost negligible on account of your brain forgetting that your sewed up heart and your chest were just wide open hours before – because it is too busy languishing in top end anesthetiser and pain drugs.

The ICU is a reasonably fuzzy blur of faces streaming in and out of the luscious heavy handed sleep they keep you entangled in. When those started to wear off a bit more the reality of my situation and the accompanying sensations felt a bit like if you stick your finger deep into your belly button and push up, that sensation of pain, pressure and internal / external discomfort started from my neck straight down my middle chest. Externally my incision felt like a taught, searing sensation not unlike newly sunburned skin or a fresh graze. The wires tubes and dressings attached to your skin ameliorate these feelings of tight, pulling non mobility quite a lot and those being eventually removed help endlessly with everything overall.

Internally all of this is accompanied by a steady, dull throb inside that radiates like a stubbed toe or hammered finger, a kind of bone deep overall pressure ache in the center of your sternum spanning outwards. Or sort of like if a watermelon rapidly started to grow behind your ribcage and was keen to escape. (I love watermelon but not the ribcage dwelling escaping kind.) Muscles in your neck and shoulders are sore and the bruising around the collarbone starts in blue and black watercolour patterns about 48hours post opt. Mine are starting to show now.

Overall the pain management coats all of this to a completely tolerable and manageable degree.

My bruised and fiddled with heart has been acting out by keeping up a remarkable pace of tap dance, acrobatics and jazz hands. No doubt a performance of protest for the rude interruptions and porcine additions it has had installed. After short strolls down the hall it is hitting resting rates of up to 130Bpm so they would like to continue to monitor me for a bit longer before discharge, to see if medication will be required to even those all dance moves out to a steady waltz. In any event I am feeling better than yesterday and plan to continue along that route.

Screw you, pain.
I’ve got this.