Thursday, December 11, 2008

On A Scale of One to Ten

All of my hip chickers know this line: "on a scale of one to ten, what is the pain?" In the hospital, in pre-ops and post-ops, we are asked this over and over, all day long. My pain has been in the 4-5 neighborhood post surgery.... That is until the PT comes around.

About an hour ago I was decathed and got up on the walker to make my first trip to the loo. Standing up spiked my pain up to about a 9.75 for about 30 seconds. It's all consuming, but it passes and I know that it's part of my recovery. Oh sure, I'll squawk about it, but for the most part I'm dealing with it. I also think I happen to have a pretty high threshold for pain.

Not so for one of the women down the hall. I have no idea what she had done, or what the PT's are doing to her but she's been SCREAMING at the top of her lungs "NOOOOOOOO!!!!! I CAN'T DO IT!!!!" She's got a long road ahead of her. Literally, the entire floor can hear her. I think on a scale of 1 to 10, she's got to be registering about a 35 right now.

Maybe it's in my head, but my right leg already feels better having had the blade plate removed. I'm happy to be on my way to getting fully better.

1 comment:

Marina said...

So great to hear that you're doing well! I laughed when I got my hospital bill in the mail to see that the pain team billed $300/visit just to come by and inquire about my pain level which was at a 3/4 the entire time. I should have been a pain doctor.