Pain after surgery

dianelynn41

It's been awhile since I posted anything. Roby had his surgery on May 16th 7 hours, could not remove all of the tumor. Said the radiation burned it into the wall. Then a few days later had to have another surgery, incision started separating and the bowel was starting to protrude, left that open till May 24th and then closed him up. Went home on the 30th. Now he's had a abscess where his rectum use to be and it's still draining. He's had two spots on his abdomen that have gotten infected and drained, one is healed one still draining (it only happened this weekend). Colostomy is going well, no problems there.

He had a ct scan last week because onc was not happy with the liver numbers, but all is well with the liver and the colon. No signs of the cancer spreading, still a stage 3.

He's wanting me to ask how long before the pain goes away in the abdomen. He walks everyday, eating well can't get comfortable to sleep really well. Getting frustrated and impatient.

Diane

cowman

Post Surgery
Hi Diane,

I haven't posted for a long time but see you had a question and it sort of got covered up. My husband's experience was the pain lasted quite a while. I would say 3 months or so with some amount of pain. It gets better but slowly. I am happy that yours is walking everyday. With everything that happened to their bodies, it's not a wonder that there is pain for a while but it is just hard to deal with when you are not expecting it. We ended up getting different pain meds that seemed to help but not the narcotics. I hope this helps a little.

Another Diane

WinneyPooh

Pain
Diane,

Pain is something we all have to live with and i find if it is not debilitating, ( can't get out of bed pain) then it is best just to push by it. I have had three surgeries in the belly area and the surgery pain went away pretty quickly as long as i stayed active, the nagging pain which came months later is a perplexing matter and i have treated it with the occasional pain pill and sleep.

If sleep is a problem ambien is good for that. As with all prescrt. drugs becareful not to over do.

Best of luck
Winney

mommyof2kds

WinneyPooh said:

Pain
Diane,

Pain is something we all have to live with and i find if it is not debilitating, ( can't get out of bed pain) then it is best just to push by it. I have had three surgeries in the belly area and the surgery pain went away pretty quickly as long as i stayed active, the nagging pain which came months later is a perplexing matter and i have treated it with the occasional pain pill and sleep.

If sleep is a problem ambien is good for that. As with all prescrt. drugs becareful not to over do.

Best of luck
Winney

Took about 2 mths for me,
Took about 2 mths for me, could be some adhesion pain or just nerve damage from the surgery. Hope he feels better soon. Petrina

RickMurtagh

I was taking
This last surgery I was taking fentanyl (via patches) and dilaudid every day for more than a month and reduced amounts of fentanyl for a month more to keep from going into withdrawals, so I never had very much pain, I am happy to say. But it always takes me four to six months to truly recover from big surgeries.

It sounds like Roby needs a pain management team or someone, perhaps himself, to be an advocate for his pain management. Several times after surgery I had nominal pain medication, this time it was perfect and I never felt over medicated or pain or even much discomfort really. Three cheers for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's pain management teams (and my surgeon ofc)!

Buckwirth

Pain post APR
Sounds like he had an Abdominoperineal resection.

If so, that is the surgery I had January 10th.

It was eight weeks before I could sit properly in a car seat (my wife would drive to my appointments and I would lay on my side in the passenger seat, fully reclined holding on to the seatbelt for dear life). Probably about 10 weeks for the pain to be gone, though I still have moments where the scarring on my bum hurts.

The leaking from the backside is normal, and should go away eventually. If not, they may use a woundvac to speed things up. In a surgery of the abdominal cavity when an organ is removed (say the appendix) the other organs just move about a bit and take up the space. In the pelvic area everything is so tightly packed the other organs cannot move, so the space created first fills up with fluid, which over time becomes scar tissue. This can take quite some time to finish, and it is normal for the excess fluid to try to find any convenient exit.

The pain is a bear, but it does eventually get better.

Good luck,

Blake