This is Part 6 of my notes about my recent open heart surgery. To read what has come before use these links: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5
After getting situated in the inpatient rehabilitation hospital I was ready for continued healing/improvement. Days after the surgery I became aware that my left leg below the knee was pretty well numb. The surgeon’s nurse had explained to me this was to be expected since they took a large vein from my leg and that disturbed the nerves, created some swelling, and would take time to heal.
Neuropathic Pain, neuropathy, is pain that occurs when the nerve path to the brain is disrupted or damaged. The way I understand it, the nerves give the brain the location and intensity of pain. When the nerve is messed up the brain may receive signals of intense pain at the location where the nerve was otherwise connected. So the spot that hurts doesn’t have a wound, bruise, or indcation of trouble. But the brain is quite sure it is hurting. And just how much pain the brain senses is left precariously to the damaged line of nerves. For the most part this neuropathy for me has been felt as a numbness, sometimes stinging or with some pain in a pins and needles kind of thing, like a limb that has fallen asleep. Neuropathy is often a symptom of Charcot Marie Tooth (CMT) disease, so I am familiar with it.
What I was not familiar with was just how intense the pain can become. And how sudden and random it can fire. So the first night at rehab I was ready to try to sleep some when the entire area on the left side of my upper left thigh decided it had been immersed in boiling water. All at once, and completely. Ow! The nurses gave me everything they could in the way of pain meds, but once pain like that starts it is hard to quiet it down. And, they weren’t able to get it under control. That made for a horrible, awful, good for nothing, sleepless night. Ow!
The pattern of night pain continued for several nights. But after that first night they gave me narcotic pain med before the neuropathy exploded. That gave a little more control over the pain that ensued. But I though how thankful I was that I did not go home straight from the first hospital, placing this sleepless night on my wife and son when there was nothing they could do about it. Coming to the inpatient rehab was indeed a good course of action.
After three or four nights it seemed to be improving. Until… until I noticed pain in the left inside of my left ankle. Neuropathic pain. Intense pain. That should have been quite discouraging. But to me it was actually encouraging. The pain had diminished in my thigh and moved to my ankle. Without knowing much about medicine and the human body, that told me my leg was changing. Probably healing. And as my body tried to reroute everything around the vein they pulled out, it may be finding its way to a more sustainable scenario. With time the neuropathy may heal, or change enough to be manageable.
In times of pain like these since surgery I was reminded by my wife and children it would take time to heal. I’d come a long ways since surgery, but I have a long long ways to go. The truth is that the doctors have told me it may take 6 months after surgery before I feel fully human again. And it could take a year or more to have this episode behind me and return to carefree activity with my body. Soldier on. That was the commitment I made when I had the surgery. “It is going to be okay… you can do this. It will be alright”. My wife’s words ring over and over in my head.
When next we meet – in my next post I should say, I want to remember hospital modesty. Okay, that’s an oxymoron if ever three was one. As a 71 year old man I had a modicum of dignity and modesty before I entered the hospital. But I’m afraid I left that in the hospital before I left to come home. More to come…