2 weeks out

Many firsts have occurred in the last 5-7 days...

• walking inside without crutches or cane
• walking outside on the arm of another, working on gait mechanics
• shopping with a friend (Nordstrom's fashion and makeup extravaganza Saturday)
  
• stairs: one footed up and down
• stairs: forgetting to one foot it down (and feeling the pull/pain)
• staples come out, steri-strips go on (steri-strips are showerable)
  
• oxy for pain is done, tylenol picks up the slack

It's this last one that I am currently struggling with, really struggling. I ran out of the 10 day Oxy RX on Sunday morning. They were prescribed 2 per day for 10 days. I initially felt that I had a hard time getting used to taking it -- it clouded my concentration and memory -- in conjunction with the anesthesia that was leaving my body from the surgery. After a few days I seemed to get used to it and felt great getting up every morning, built up my endurance to be active all day, focused my brain on reading and crosswords. That felt great and felt very stable.

Figuring out the transition from narcotic to otc pain killer was not well specified. I was told to try to use tylenol (acetaminophen) for fill-in pain med. So in place of the evening oxy, I took 2 tylenol XS (650mg each). Sleep with the oxy, as I described to the nurse, was like a stone. The first night w/o oxy did not seem so different, perhaps not so sound. I woke up feeling a pain in my stomach and not very well. I took some breakfast to try to settle my stomach. I somehow got myself in the shower and dressed because I had two in-home appointments, nursing and PT, during the day. I felt on the verge of nausea and went back to bed with chills and weird sleep in and out. I emerged for my appointments but did not feel well. Rescheduled a phone appointment in which I wanted to be fresh.

Not through the transition yet. Hard to fall asleep with only the tylenol. Slept in several segments, got up once for an additional 650mg or tylenol. Woke still feeling sickish with headache.

Tylenol max. to protect the liver is 4000 mg/day. So now my pain med schedule is a math game. each XS (extended strength) tab is 650mg, each ES (extra strength) is 500mg, each norco contains 375mg acyt. The norco I will take an hour before I have physical therapy so that I can do the max range of motion.