So, luckily. once a decision was made to get the gallbladder removed out of my body things started progressing fast. At first the ER wanted me to see a Gastro doc but it would have taken months to get in. I leave back to Africa Dec. 12. So I asked my primary doctor for a referral directly to a surgeon. The first one couldn't see me until December so I was given another surgeon in another city nearby with a more open schedule. I saw my primary doctor Monday November 12th and the surgeon the next day. Surgery was scheduled for 6 days later on Monday November 19.
On Sunday night before surgery I refrained from solids and liquids and went to sleep early. We had to be at the hospital at 6:30am which we were. An IV was started and all looked good as the surgeon was on time and in a good mood. The anesthesiologist was cool too. An old guy with a Texas accent and a good sense of humor. I like those kind. At exactly 8:03 I was wheeled out of the room. I am pretty sure I never actually saw the hallway as the anesthesia was given at 8:02 lol.
The next thing I know I am waking up in recovery and the clock says 11:15am. They told me the surgery was an hour and I was "taking a bit longer than usual to wake up" and I was "very pale". My first words upon opening my eyes was "I am in pain help me!" and the second sentence directly following it was "I am going to throw up!" Welcome to my post op experience.......
So they gave me Phenergan for nausea and Dilaudid for pain ( I am a smart nurse with good hearing) and soon they wheeled me back to where I started. I was groggy and still in a lot of pain but awake and talking with the nurses and trying to be positive. I talk about Africa to anyone who will let me... and I can go on and on and on.
Around 1pm the pain started coming back and I told the nurses and they gave me 3- 10 mg Oxycontin tablets. Within an hour and a half they were saying I was okay and I could go home. I had peed and drank some Ginger ale so I was good to go. I was sore but the recent meds were helping me be able to transfer to a wheelchair. The nurses had me sign papers and mentioned for me to not forget to stop and get my E-Script the doctor had sent to my pharmacy for pain meds. I thought I was going to be okay when the Oxycontin wore off. I was relieved I had something for later.
This was my first time ever being operated on. It was a new experience and the unknown was laid out in front of me. I just didn't know what to expect. On the car ride home the nausea came full force but luckily I had Zofran for it left from the ER visit a couple of weeks ago. I got home and into bed and layed on my back and fell asleep for one hour.
At 5 pm I woke up and the pain was coming pretty strongly, not only from the four incisions and my tummy full of operation gas (it was laproscopic surgery) but my Lupus and Rheumatoid pain came in full effect. My back and every joint in my body hurt terrible. So I called my pharmacy to make sure my family could come in and get the E-Script meds instead of me but they said nothing was ever sent to them. Hmmm. So we called the surgeon and spoke directly with him and told him the pain had come and there was no e-script and that I had Tylenol with codeine here that I take daily but a limited amount that I came with from Africa. He told me we would see how I was in the morning.
What?! So I tried the codeine and nothing happened. In fact the pain got worse. So my family called him again and said what are we going to do she is in PAIN. There were heated and anxious words exchanged on both ends of the phone but he said to take 2 codeine's and see how I was in the morning. I took them. Because my back is so bad (it broke in 2 places in 2016-thats why I take Codeine and have for 2 years) I could not lie down on my back. Because of my tummy full of carbon dioxide growing bigger by the hour instead of going down and the pain inside where my gallbladder had been scalpel-sliced from its position and burned off from the underside of my liver, I couldn't lie down on either side in the bed. So I sat upright.......all night. Sleep did not come. Only waves of pain and nausea to carry me through the hours. I took 2 more Codeine at midnight and again at 7 am with no relief whatsoever.
At 7:30 I called the surgeon's office only to get that lovely answering machine message that it was closed and if it was an emergency go to the emergency room. So I did as it directed. At 8:30 I went back to the hospital where I had the surgery and into the ER. Now I was officially considered a DRUG SEEKER. I had committed the carnal sin of not just 'being tough' through the pain and was actively seeking relief from my suffering. But from past experience as a full-time chronic pain sufferer and sick person for the past 25 years I knew there were consequences to pay for this.
So right as I was coming in so were 3 ambulances, a chest pain walk-in and a permanent defibrillator- implant patient with her alarm going off inside her chest. Guess where 'drug-seeking-post-surgical-pain-complainer goes in the list of priority in the triage? Yup. Dead last. At NOON a Physicians Assistant came in. (We don't get real doctors for what I have). I had been sitting (not laying) on the gurney for 3 and half hours in ridiculous pain. I explained the situation and she ordered labwork, chest xray, urine, and IV fluids. On the 3rd poke they got the IV started. At this point I had not eaten or drank since Sunday. It was now Tuesday.
At 12:30 pm the surgeon who operated on me came in. He asked what happened. I reminded him of our TWO PHONE CALLS of last night and that I did what he told me but was in terrible pain. He said he should've just admitted me but I was smiling as I left yesterday. I told him I was feeling less pain at that point because I was MEDICATED and I THOUGHT my E-SCRIPT was waiting for me at the pharmacy which it never was. This was my first surgery ever remember. I thought that's how it works. They give you pain medicine to go home with. Who knew this was a fallacy?
So now he tells me that because my primary doctor has me on codeine (what?) that the pharmacy wouldn't have filled anything he wrote for me anyway because I already had a controlled substance med being filled for me from there. (What?) So I thought quickly back to my days as a nurse and even further back to my days of surgery rotations in Nursing school and I could not recall a single time a patient had surgery and went home and a pharmacy refused to fill a script from a surgeon after surgery because someone was already on a medication for daily pain. And then I realized wait! my primary doctor didn't give me a script for any Codiene here in the U.S.! I brought all my meds with me from Africa because I didn't want to bother anyone to give me ANY meds at all!
So I informed him that no, I brought all my medications with me and no, my primary doctor didn't order them and no there wasn't anything like that already being given from the pharmacy. He said he would give me something and left. The physicians assistant came back and I asked her if he left a script or called in an E-Script and she said no. Thank God this woman had a heart and a conscience because she ordered Toradol to be put in my IV line. Within 10 minutes I exhaled a sigh of relief and her and I took a walk together down the hallway, something I should have (and could have) been doing the day of surgery to dispel that gas but couldn't because of SO MUCH PAIN.
She told me my labs and ekg and xray and all that were fine. I told her I had Lupus and RA and its likely they just freaked out because of laying long on the operating table and freezing cold recovery room table and then lying in my bed on my back and the stress of all the fighting to get pain relief etc. I know myself well. I know Lupus and RA well. ( and I was now the expert on the 'slicing and frying of an organ pain' within my abdomen too). She ordered Tramadol 50 mg for me to take at home and by 1:30 pm I was on the way home. By the time I got home I could walk and lie down again. It was all JUST THAT SIMPLE.
So now in post thoughts I wonder...... Why in the past four years since I have been away from America did surgeons not be 'allowed' to prescribe post-surgical pain relief meds? Then 2) when did pharmacies gain the power to refuse to let a doctor prescribe a more powerful pain medicine for their patients on the fact that they already had a lessor pain med? When I was a Hospice nurse we gave Morphine to dying patients. Do the living ones not deserve that too? Just for a few days even till they were back on their feet again?
Then I wondered if I lived here still, how would I even get my daily pain medicine? In Uganda I walk up to a pharmacy counter and tell them I need this box of Codeine and I walk out with it for about $10 and no drama. Then next month I do it again. With no drama. And the next month..... an so on. I take the same number of pills every day all month long. Every year since my back broke in 2016. When they run out I get more. Its not rocket science.
I feel bad for chronically ill people in my country. I question whether I ever really want to come back and live here. What happened to compassion? Empathy? Sympathy? Common sense? Is every person in chronic pain going through this here? I hear you have to go to pain management and be psychologically screened and tested before you get pain medicine. What?! We aren't crazy....we are in pain! Don't the doctors want to BE DOCTORS? Or should we all just Google everything and figure it out for ourselves then find a street dealer and get what we need? OH NOW I KNOW! That's exactly what has happened! Hmmm.........Come on America. You can do better.
