Clusterheadaches.com Message Board


    
      
        Clusterheadaches.com Message Board
        (http://www.clusterheadaches.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi)
      

        New Message Board Archives >> 2005 General Board Posts >> UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
        
(Message started by: Dave0377 on Jun 1^st, 2005, 9:46pm)

Title: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Dave0377 on Jun 1^st, 2005, 9:46pm

Hey all,

First let me just thank all of you for keeping my sweetie in your thoughts and prayers! It means so much to her (and myself)!

The surgery went well. I'll let Carrie explain all the details of what they actually did since I'm sure she'll being recovering with her laptop for the next week or so ;)

She did have a lot of pain coming out of surgery, but she has some good drugs to manage that. Well, the morphine did make her kind of sick, but otherwise, her pain level was tolerable for the most part.

They'll be keeping her overnight for pain management and observation and then hopefully letting her get out of there by the afternoon.

So anyway, she's recovering and doing well and wanted me to let you all know that she appreciates your support. Many thanks to all of you from the both of us!

~Dave

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by E-Double on Jun 1^st, 2005, 10:04pm

Thanks for the Update DAVE!!!!!!!!

Hugs to her
Ex2

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by broomhilda on Jun 1^st, 2005, 10:22pm

Thanks for the update Dave, glad she is doing well!

Hugs all around! :)

Andrea

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by cootie on Jun 1^st, 2005, 10:35pm

Fast recovery wishes to her.........hope to hear the details soon !! Laptop recoveries Pam

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by sandie99 on Jun 2^nd, 2005, 1:18am

Thanks for the information, Dave!
Give my best to Carrie. :)
She's been on my thoughts and prayers.

best wishes,
Sandie

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by lionsound on Jun 2^nd, 2005, 9:09am

Thanks, Dave!

Pain Free and wellness vibes for Carrie!

-lionsound

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by LadyLuv on Jun 2^nd, 2005, 12:17pm

Thanks for the update on Carrie... Glad she's doing okay and Praying for a quick recovery...

Peace & Blessings
Lady Luv

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by LeLimey on Jun 2^nd, 2005, 2:02pm

Thanks for the update Dave!
Give her my love and tell her I said to SIT DOWN! [smiley=laugh.gif]

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Dave0377 on Jun 2^nd, 2005, 9:14pm

The latest news:

Carrie was able to get up and move around some today. She was still feeling sort of sick and queezy from the meds. A little more pain today than yesterday, but that's probably due to her getting up and moving around.....and of course, things always seem to hurt worse the 2nd day...at least in my experiences.

I think she actually got some food down and kept it there today [smiley=laugh.gif].

Unfortunately, she did not get to come home today as expected. They wanted to keep her another night since she was pretty sick.

I didn't get to go see her today because of work and having to prepare for an extremely important interview tomorrow (wish me luck), but she was very understanding of that, which makes me love her even more :)

I'm sure she'll be home soon and chatting with everyone here, but I'll keep you posted if anything happens.

Thanks again!

Dave

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Grandma_Sweet_Boy on Jun 2^nd, 2005, 9:27pm

You're doing a fine job of keeping us all updated. Give her my best and good luck to you with the interview. I'm sure you'll do just fine.

Carol

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by LeLimey on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 5:00am

Carrie.. do as you are told!!! (for once!)
Dave - Good luck with your interview! Let us know how you get on okay?

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Lizzie2 on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 2:49pm

I'm home finally...and I'm stuck on the couch here for awhile! I had morphine in my PCA, and my doc finally decided yesterday that I wasn't reacting very well to the morphine in some odd ways. The worst was that I think I've thrown up about 10+ times in the last 2 days...but so far today I kept down some peanut butter on toast and a few graham crackers!

I've switched meds now so that I'm on oxycontin every 12 hours as needed, and then I'll take percocet in between as needed. Hurts so right now I have 2 ice packs on my right knee, which is about 3 times as swollen than the left one!

They were unable to find the torn meniscus in my right knee -- I'm not convinced that it doesn't exist since multiple radiologists and docs discovered it, but at any rate, they didn't touch it.

They drilled a bunch of tracks (small holes) through the dead bone. They said it was about 20% dead, and there is a soft spot in the marrow at the top of the tibia. The funniest thing is that I just have 2 tiny holes above each knee where they manipulated my leg to do the drilling. Then my right knee also has holes under it from the scope.

Dave's job interview went well today, but he won't know for a little while yet how it turns out! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him because he really needs a teaching job!

Well, I'm going to go attempt to sleep. Thanks again for all the well-wishes!

Carrie :)

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Jimi on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 3:21pm

Glad to see that you are back home and out of the hospital. I think that Dave is a keeper. I don't have to warn you about long term use of oxycontin. I know you know about that. Get on the percocet as soon as you can.
*me telling a nurse about drugs* ;;D

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by kissmyglass on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 5:16pm

Glad to hear all went well. Hope you heal soon & feel better !! :)

Kev

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Charlie on Jun 3^rd, 2005, 10:02pm

Ah...good news is so great to hear. http://www.netsync.net/users/charlies/gifs/getwell.gif

Thanks Dave.

Charlie

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Lizzie2 on Jun 4^th, 2005, 12:38pm

Thanks again!

I'm being a bum and chillin here on the couch... Woohoo! I'm trying right now to decide if it is better to stop taking a longer-acting pain med (the oxycontin) and move to taking the percocet every 4 hours. I took the oxy at about 9:45 am today, and even though my knees hurt, I'm tolerating it okay with ice and rest.

I prefer to take the oxycontin at night so that I don't have to wake up at take pain meds every 4 hours - and especially because in the event that I don't wake up and keep the pain down - I'll wake up in the morning with the pain from hell which then will be harder to get back in control.

Maybe I should switch to just the percocet as needed during the day and try to take the oxycontin just once at night to get through the night until I think I'll be okay without doing that?

I dunno... I'm not asking for medical advice, but if anyone does have any suggestions or opinions, I'd love to hear them. No worries - you know me, I'll always come up with something or call my doctor before I do something dangerous to myself!!! I'm just not really used to working with pain meds since I don't really take them too often.

Other than that - things are going okay! I think my mom is starting to freak because my stuff from moving home is literally from one end of the house to the other, and I'm not really able to get up and help put it all away right now! Some of my furniture is still sitting in the garage, which isn't the best place for it with the humidity/rain we're having!

Last night, Dave bought me an iPod mini (which I paid him for with graduation money) so that I can put music on it to take with me to Florida. I'm still trying to figure out how to take my music from Real Player and transfer it into iTunes! I love using my computer, but I'm not that good at some of this stuff!!

Rambling on - but I'm a little bored here just lying around on the couch! On the plus side, the beast has been away since the surgery, which is nice. Maybe the pain meds are knocking down any smaller hits I'd have, as I'm still taking my prevents as usual. My chronic daily migraine is definitely benefitting from taking pain meds for my knee since the daily baseline has decreased for the time being!

Hope all is well! Hugz,
Carrie :)

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Opus on Jun 4^th, 2005, 4:57pm

Lizzie, glad you are doing better. I don't have much time but I can sya that taking the least amount of pain meds is always better, and your plan would be one that I would go for. When you no longer need the perk during the day, ( remember to wait for the pain to return before taking the next one) then you can try stopping they OXY.

Also sorry to tell you it might be hard to change the realplayer formats into mp3's especially on windows. Google and see what you find.

Opus/Paul

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Lizzie2 on Jun 4^th, 2005, 5:47pm

Thanks for the info Paul,

Actually as far as pain, we may be talking about the same thing, but I might be a little confused by your post. It is wise to not take pain meds when you don't need them, but it's better to take them early on or on a schedule (at least in the beginning) because when the pain flares up badly, it's harder to get it under control than if you've been doing more of a pain management strategy.

I just wasn't sure if taking one oxycontin every 12 hours and then maybe one dose of perc or so in between was worse than quitting the oxy's altogether and then taking the perc much more often during the day....like every 4 hours for now.

I will get to the point where I will be able to go for periods without pain meds, but I'm not there yet. Just took my first shower post-op (gross, I know...) and I feel a lot better, but it definitely flared up the pain/nausea and wore me out! I just got back to the couch with an ice pack for each knee. I'd taken the oxy this morning and actually didn't take a percocet until between 3 or 4, I don't think? I also took my zofran with it because of all the nausea.

I think maybe tonight I will take the oxycontin to get through the night and avoid waking up in bad pain in the morning, and then tomorrow I will just try taking the percocet throughout the day and see if I do okay. Gradually just using less and less. It's definitely worse when I have to get up - even though I'm using the crutches, I still have to put weight on one leg more than the other at some point. I'm actually lucky that the left leg has gotten so much stronger since the surgery, because I can almost rely on it as a "good" leg while really easing off the right leg. It is still only at about 50% or so, but the right knee is far behind that - it's good to have one stronger knee while trying to rehab a bad one!

Blah...sorry to vent all that. Like I said before, I'm stuck on the couch - lots more time to just sit and think. LOL

As far as the iPod - I found the file that my Real Files were in and simply highlighted and dragged them into the iTunes program. Worked great for just about all files! The only ones that wouldn't really convert over are ones I purchased through the Real store or Napster or what not. That makes sense though, since I'd paid for them through the individual program, so they don't convert into iTunes.

iTunes uses AAC (I think?) files, so they just flip the mp3's into AAC files! Next up, I'd like to get a small and portable speaker set that the iPod mini can sit in - charges through that and I can take it anywhere to play. Dave had bought a mini also, and he also bought something so that he could use the iPod mini through the car stereo. He also was talking about some little equipment that allows you to transfer songs from iPod to iPod.

I'm not really concerned with all those little gadgets! I would like to get a case so I don't wreck it - especially on the beach. And then...just the speakers. I saw some made by Altec Lansing that looked pretty decent when my mom and I were shopping the week before last in Sharper Image. They sounded good, too. My brother said I should wait and check out all the speakers they have at the iPod store in King of Prussia. I don't need anything huge and elaborate - just want them to be portable and also play the sound clearly, not all distorted. I don't care about them having any loud amplification of the bass because my computer speakers have that, and I can hardly ever listen to music through them because it rattles the floor and disturbs my neighbors!

At any rate, it's a very fun new toy - and a nice grad gift that I could get with money from my family! I'm still waiting for my grad gift from my parents and maternal grandparents to come in the mail -- I got a graduation ring which is really nice! Doesn't look like a traditional grad ring. It does say "TJU" on one side, "BSN 2005" on one side, and my name is engraved on the inside of the ring. I'll have to post a link at some point - we had to wait to order it until we had my ring size.

OK enough rambling!! LOL

Carrie :)

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Opus on Jun 4^th, 2005, 9:52pm

Lizzie,

Yes I was talking when you are takeing them on a need for pain basis.

As for the Ipod, Yes you can convert the formats but windows will probably block you.

Opus/Paul

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Sean_C on Jun 4^th, 2005, 10:54pm

Get well soon ;;D

Sean........................

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Lizzie2 on Jun 4^th, 2005, 11:26pm

on 06/04/05 at 21:52:09, Opus wrote:

As for the Ipod, Yes you can convert the formats but windows will probably block you.

Opus/Paul

I've got 137 songs on my iPod now...all converted except for the music I bought through the individual programs. :)

Fun toy!

Title: htgRe: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by sandie99 on Jun 5^th, 2005, 12:27am

Carrie,
what songs are you listening to right now? :)

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Lizzie2 on Jun 5^th, 2005, 12:38am

Actually - right now, Dave is asleep in the recliner chair across the room, and I'm watching Season 2 of "Friends" which my mom bought me to get through some of the post-op boredom.

However, since I'm stuck on the couch, this morning I had free reign of the tv. Then I was forced to watch a lot of golf, soccer, and hockey before I finally stayed up late enough to get to watch my own shows! haha

:)

Title: Re: UPDATE: Carrie/Lizzie2's surgery
Post by Missy_Donna on Jun 5^th, 2005, 9:46pm

Hey Carrie:

I know we all are concerned about pain meds......me being one of the biggest worriers because of having young people in my family who got into serious trouble with addiction while recouperating from injuries.

Since my 12 week flare up with a very painful back problem, I have found out that when using pain meds for a short term, it is best to simply follow docs directions (taking the meds as often as prescribed and not to worry about having a problem with them) as we heal faster if we are pain free.......mental and physical combination of less pain stress. Once the pain leaves, quit the meds immediately and don't use them again. If you do, dependency becomes a problem.

I took hydrocodone (10 mg) every 4 hours around the clock for about 8 weeks until I started with a new doc, who immediately put me on the Fentanyl patch. He couldn't understand why I was taking oral (systemic) meds when the patch would be much kinder to my body. I was on the patch for 4 more weeks, taking the hydrocodone for breakthru pain ( there wasn't much of that) and as soon as the flare-up was over, I was able to simply quit taking the pain meds. I've been off pain meds since April 21st..with no problem.

So, if your doc says take pain meds while you heal, I wouldn't worry about it Just relax, rest and get better.

Prayers are in the air.

Thanks for the news bulletins, Dave. We were all waiting to hear how she was doing.

Love,
Donna H.