For me, the title has double meaning: recovery from surgery but also from long-term use of opioid analgesics leading up to my surgery. In order just to function day-to-day, I was on maximum doses of hydrocodone-APAP (otherwise known as Vicodin, Norco, Anexsia, Lorcet, Lortab, and the list goes on). To put that in perspective, oral hydrocodone is considered to be 1.5 times as potent as oral morphine.
The side-effects aren’t terrible, but the worst for me was the drowsiness and reduced mental acuity I felt every single day. The technical term is “depressant effects on the central nervous system.” In short, I often felt zoned out and lethargic.
Immediately after surgery, I wasn’t in much of a mood to get off drugs, but after 18 hours I stopped taking any pain medicine just to get it out of my bloodstream. Even without Vicodin, the pain from the surgery site is probably only 20% of what I was experiencing in my left leg before surgical relief. I can deal with that any day of the week. I know that the surgical pain will lessen every day, so there is certainly hope ahead.
The great praise I have is that I am still completely free from the left leg sciatic pain. The surgeon has put walking at the top of my “best activities” list, with a daily target of one mile. I did that yesterday without a problem, so today I upped it to over 2 miles. What a great feeling to walk without leg pain.
For anyone reading this who has exhausted the other treatments available, I would encourage you to at least consider the new types of back surgery available to you. This is not your father’s back surgery with long incisions and lengthy recovery times. My incision is just about 1.4 inches long.
I would, however, advise against watching the available online videos of microdiskectomy surgery before you decide. Not such a good idea. The results are certainly worth it in the long-run.
Recent Comments