On the first of this month, Beauregard passed away. He joined us in 2007 and was the sweetest dog I’ve ever known. He’d started to show his age in the last six months, and really went downhill after Christmas. He died in the vet’s office, and even the vet, who has been dealing with this for 35 years, had tears in his eyes.
On top of it all, our other dog, Perl, has been acting confused and depressed since then. They were running mates for eleven years and she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
@tbone1 Sorry man, I know that hurt. Our dog died at the vets as well about two years ago and still not ready for another. I swear it takes alot out of a person to go through watching a decline in health, with people or critters. He looks like he could have had about whatever he wanted with that kinda look on his face.
Oh, he did. He was spoiled rotten, as is Perl, but they deserve it. We had Perl already and were looking for another dog, beagles being very pack-oriented. She saw his picture on the local humane society’s web site and were going to see him the next day. But he got adopted. One week later he as back. We moved heaven, Earth, and half of New Jersey tomget there that night before the closed. We met him and set up and introduction with him and Perl. The lady at HS said it was the easiest intro she had done in her six years. My wife said it was like Catherine and Heathcliff.
He was such a great goofball; so many great stories, but later.
My operation was successful. Now it's 4 weeks with an arm sling..
@FinneousPJ Great! All I can say is take recovery as easy as they suggest. Do they have any PT scheduled for you at home or in-office? That darn sling gets old, I tell ya. It's amazing how much that pec muscle get used just in everyday movements. How's the pain lvl doing afterwards so far?
@Zaghoul Well I'm high on codeine so it's fine. Still hurts a bit and there's an annoying sensation of tension in the muscle. It makes me wanna squeeze it which makes it worse lol
I have PT scheduled in 4 wks after the sling comes off. Meanwhile they told me to move the other joints except the shoulder best I can.
@FinneousPJ Sounds about right. Yeah, no squeezin. I had to learn to brush my teeth with my opposite arm (not easy, heh). NOT trying to use the affected arm/area which flexes the pec muscle is hard to do. I used a wedge pillow to sleep on that helped getting up without using my arm. Good on the PT being scheduled after a while, goes slow but I think you'll get there after a while. Glad ya got the meds, docs here skimp on it more cause they are monitored a little more closely now with pain meds. I hear ya though, hurts even with that. The tension thing should improve, esp. after the PT, as not moving it now for a while will tighten things up for a bit, plus the muscle was looser than all get out after being torn loose.
Hey, rough as it is though, the good thing is, at least now your on the road to recovery and not stuck in a position of a busted chest as the first doc was content with leaving ya in.
@Zaghoul regarding the meds I got 10 oxycodone from the hospital in addition To The 200 pc codeine prescription and man these things rock your f**king tits off. I kinda get the epidemic now.
But yeah it's difficult for the moment but I am grateful to be on the road to recovery
regarding the meds I got 10 oxycodone from the hospital in addition To The 200 pc codeine prescription and man these things rock your f**king tits off.
Really defeats the purpose of having tit reattachment surgery.
@Zaghoul regarding the meds I got 10 oxycodone from the hospital in addition To The 200 pc codeine prescription and man these things rock your f**king tits off. I kinda get the epidemic now.
But yeah it's difficult for the moment but I am grateful to be on the road to recovery
@FinneousPJ I'm hearing ya. Sounds like they got the dosage right at least. I've had to ween myself off pain meds used at high doses for weeks at a time for 2 major surgeries in the last eight years. I to have come to understand how easy it would be for someone to get hooked on them, as many have. Awful stuff to come off of, but very much needed for recovery. I figger everyone deserves a little feel good after being cut on, hehheh.
Madeline. Plot summary for the uninitiated, since it's not entirely irrelevant to this thread:
Madeline is a brave little girl at a boarding school in Paris. She gets appendicitis and has to have an appendectomy, which is a bummer. But then she ends up with lots of presents and a rad scar.
All this talk of pain management got me looking into it more, esp. as related to severe burn injuries. Burns are one of the hardest to control as they involve the largest organ, the skin, and a tremendous number of nerve receptors. So I looked at various scholarly studies on the topic and came up with some interesting info, some that pissed me off. I also was able to confirm various things that I had thought to be true.
1. After the initial damage from burns, the metabolism increases causing a faster clearance time of whatever drug is used to dial down the pain (nothing makes it feel ok, nothing) so dosages are not the same as other types of pain.
2. Controlling pain is paramount in lowering the chances of winding up with some type of psychological problem after the physical part heals-I ended up with a dissociative disorder and PTSD as a result of the pain. Makes me wonder about how well they treated me, but I am also studying (the little I can at the moment) how different personality types are more subject to PTSD or dissociative disorders than others after severe injuries (mine is one- introversion (just one aspect) seems to have a higher rate of problems.
3. It has been reported that some health care professionals do not prescribe enough pain because they worry about addiction after (not much evidence proper pain management causing addiction). Some are reported as wanting to keep a separation of themselves from the patient. That was informative, I must say.
My shoulder surgery after the burns left me already at a high tolerance for pain meds, combine this with #3 above and I was in more pain than I needed which only reinforced the Dissociative Disorder. Thing is I told the friggin surgeon this in advance.
Additional: My own thoughts on the matter of drug clearance times for pain management are that a higher lvl of muscle mass in relation to the ineffectual BMI (Body Mass Index) rating relates to a higher metabolism as well and additional increases in drug clearance times. Just basing pain med dosing on the BMI alone leaves something to be desired.
In general, I believe proper pain management after any surgery or severe pain on a chronic basis would do alot to aid in recovery, both for the push to get patients to move and start therapy faster, and most importantly, esp, with burns, to lessen the chance of psychological damage. A person in pain does NOT want to move about or have as much motivation to do the therapy,
I know that there has been a crackdown on healthcare professionals to beware of prescribing pain meds like skittles (which has many of them worried, as it is monitored more closely now), but the whole drug epidemic we are facing has hurt those that are really and truly in need of pain meds, particularly after surgeries. So the drug epidemic not only hurts those that get addicted and their families (and those they steal from to buy more drugs), but those undergoing surgery as well. Well, that's how I see it anyway,
@Zaghoul I fully agree Pain relief has always been and is still problematic. Relieving pain has become easy, but it only treats the sympthoms not the cause - being mental or physical.
The first mass scale problems where seen after the american civil war. Newly discovered Morphine and syringes made operations (read amputation...) easier. Seen as a giant step in medicine, the soldier responded really well to the morphine - too well. Some historians believe that the treatments created 400.000 drug addicted veterans. The numbers may be wrong but the horror that the veterans and their families had to face was very real. They called it soldiers disease
It may be history from more than 150 years ago, but I fear that we have come only a short way. Being a Balkan veteran my self (serving in a quiet place), I have served with young men who had seen and experienced horror, that all should be without. They treated them selves with recreational drugs, and little else. Pain relief is easy - recovery is hard.
For all of you recovering, hang in there. We can only give you our thoughts and prayers (what ever we adhere to)
I'm one of the lucky ones that ibuprofen works the best for. Opiates just plug me up for the most part. I did chew a vicoden tablet once just to see what the hubbub was about and it did give me a nice feeling of euphoria. I'm apparently in no risk of getting addicted but I keep that experience in the back of my mind in case I need a sleep aid sometime in the future. I slept like a baby!
Luckily their pain tolerance is insane. My son was rolling around on his stomach less than a week after heart surgery (at 6 months), while my wife's response to going into labor was, "This is it?"
Comments
On the first of this month, Beauregard passed away. He joined us in 2007 and was the sweetest dog I’ve ever known. He’d started to show his age in the last six months, and really went downhill after Christmas. He died in the vet’s office, and even the vet, who has been dealing with this for 35 years, had tears in his eyes.
On top of it all, our other dog, Perl, has been acting confused and depressed since then. They were running mates for eleven years and she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
@Shandaxx Paljon kiitoksia!
It is now confirmed I will be preparing for anaesthesia Wednesday morning. Wish me luck!
He looks like he could have had about whatever he wanted with that kinda look on his face.
He was such a great goofball; so many great stories, but later.
I assure you, it'll be interesting there!
How's the pain lvl doing afterwards so far?
I have PT scheduled in 4 wks after the sling comes off. Meanwhile they told me to move the other joints except the shoulder best I can.
Good on the PT being scheduled after a while, goes slow but I think you'll get there after a while. Glad ya got the meds, docs here skimp on it more cause they are monitored a little more closely now with pain meds.
I hear ya though, hurts even with that. The tension thing should improve, esp. after the PT, as not moving it now for a while will tighten things up for a bit, plus the muscle was looser than all get out after being torn loose.
Hey, rough as it is though, the good thing is, at least now your on the road to recovery and not stuck in a position of a busted chest as the first doc was content with leaving ya in.
But yeah it's difficult for the moment but I am grateful to be on the road to recovery
I figger everyone deserves a little feel good after being cut on, hehheh.
So I looked at various scholarly studies on the topic and came up with some interesting info, some that pissed me off. I also was able to confirm various things that I had thought to be true.
1. After the initial damage from burns, the metabolism increases causing a faster clearance time of whatever drug is used to dial down the pain (nothing makes it feel ok, nothing) so dosages are not the same as other types of pain.
2. Controlling pain is paramount in lowering the chances of winding up with some type of psychological problem after the physical part heals-I ended up with a dissociative disorder and PTSD as a result of the pain. Makes me wonder about how well they treated me, but I am also studying (the little I can at the moment) how different personality types are more subject to PTSD or dissociative disorders than others after severe injuries (mine is one- introversion (just one aspect) seems to have a higher rate of problems.
3. It has been reported that some health care professionals do not prescribe enough pain because they worry about addiction after (not much evidence proper pain management causing addiction). Some are reported as wanting to keep a separation of themselves from the patient. That was informative, I must say.
My shoulder surgery after the burns left me already at a high tolerance for pain meds, combine this with #3 above and I was in more pain than I needed which only reinforced the Dissociative Disorder. Thing is I told the friggin surgeon this in advance.
Additional: My own thoughts on the matter of drug clearance times for pain management are that a higher lvl of muscle mass in relation to the ineffectual BMI (Body Mass Index) rating relates to a higher metabolism as well and additional increases in drug clearance times. Just basing pain med dosing on the BMI alone leaves something to be desired.
In general, I believe proper pain management after any surgery or severe pain on a chronic basis would do alot to aid in recovery, both for the push to get patients to move and start therapy faster, and most importantly, esp, with burns, to lessen the chance of psychological damage. A person in pain does NOT want to move about or have as much motivation to do the therapy,
I know that there has been a crackdown on healthcare professionals to beware of prescribing pain meds like skittles (which has many of them worried, as it is monitored more closely now), but the whole drug epidemic we are facing has hurt those that are really and truly in need of pain meds, particularly after surgeries. So the drug epidemic not only hurts those that get addicted and their families (and those they steal from to buy more drugs), but those undergoing surgery as well. Well, that's how I see it anyway,
I fully agree
Pain relief has always been and is still problematic. Relieving pain has become easy, but it only treats the sympthoms not the cause - being mental or physical.
The first mass scale problems where seen after the american civil war. Newly discovered Morphine and syringes made operations (read amputation...) easier. Seen as a giant step in medicine, the soldier responded really well to the morphine - too well. Some historians believe that the treatments created 400.000 drug addicted veterans. The numbers may be wrong but the horror that the veterans and their families had to face was very real. They called it soldiers disease
It may be history from more than 150 years ago, but I fear that we have come only a short way. Being a Balkan veteran my self (serving in a quiet place), I have served with young men who had seen and experienced horror, that all should be without. They treated them selves with recreational drugs, and little else. Pain relief is easy - recovery is hard.
For all of you recovering, hang in there. We can only give you our thoughts and prayers (what ever we adhere to)