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The Day After

I am laying here being hard on myself for finally pushing the button on my Morphine pump. I had done really well all night last night and all day today. I hadn't been in a whole lot of pain since yesterday evening. However, since then I have been on a clear liquid diet and have been sipping tea and water and juice. However, every last bit the drugs completely wore off a few hours ago and I am getting a bit uncomfortable as nothing has passed yet. It seems to all be just sitting there. My tummy is swelling but I am not in so much pain that I can't deal with it at all. I decided after a few laps around the halls, holding my guts in, that I would go ahead and give myself some meds. I just don't want to slow down the process by taking narcotics. Morphine slows the intestines. So you are kind of damned if you do, and damned if you don't. You are either a slave to the pain or a slave to the drugs. I don't want to be either.

I keep telling myself I am bigger and stronger than what I am feeling right now. I know that I could get through for a little longer without the morphine. It would take a lot of concentration and deep breathing though. Frankly, I am too tired to be that stubborn.

On the other hand, I don't want to become dependent on pain killers again. It is easy to build up a tolerance to it and it is hard to live without when eventually you must go from being in a fuzzy numb stupor to crisp acute pain. At some point the medication has to stop. That is why I don't want to even get it started. So I sort of feel like I am failing myself by drugging myself up.

My throat is sore too. I knew it would be. Breathing tubes tend to be rough on the throat and I was just very happy that I didn't wake up before they removed it. That was one of my biggest fears. It is hard to wake up with that in and have your arms strapped down and feel like someone had shoved a vacuum cleaner hose down your throat. It happened to me last time. I had to lay there like that for a few minutes before they removed it. I still have nightmares about it. I have found out that coughing is absolutely out of the question at the moment. I can't even brace myself well enough to do it. It just tears me up.

On a good note, I am fully enjoying the wall of windows once again. I like laying here with the sunshine beaming down directly on me. It is very comforting. My babies came to visit me today. We all piled into my bed and watched cartoons and just hugged a lot. I ended up drifting off to sleep for awhile and then woke up pretty sore so they went home with mom to make smoothies and eat watermelon. Hope was pretty whiney about leaving without me. It breaks my heart. I keep trying to not feel like the whole nightmare is about to start over again.

Everyone send some good vibes to my digestive tract and tell it to giddyup.

Posted by gwendolyn on March 04, 2003 at 04:19 PM