Shelby Cass's Weblog

One of my biggest fears about having this surgery was that I would no longer remember my dreams…or that maybe I would no longer dream. Granted, my dreams were more consistantly nightmares where I would run around trying to survive and always be thwarted by one thing or another. Things were always dying, people were always yelling at me, I was always losing teeth or people I loved…quite stressful actually. Nothing I ever looked forward to, and nothing I ever woke up rested from…but I have always appreciated that I dream in movies with plots and twists…even though Courtland forbids me to ever talk about them because they stress him out. 
 
So, I was a little scared that I would lose that part of my life altogether. It’s not that I enjoyed my breams, but I enjoyed having them. Does that make sense at all? 
 
Since the surgery almost 2 weeks ago, I have not had a single nightmare. Sure, things baffle me, they go wrong, they go weird…but I am not scared. I am not running for my life. I am not fighting with anyone. I am not trying to save my family from a burning building and having them yell at me for being a bossy betty. I am dreaming. I am walking around doing things seeing things being things…I am now a bumble bee in my dream garden instead of the person being chased by the wasp in my old nightmare garden. 
 
Pretty sweet. 
 
I never knew it could be like this. I could never have even imagined. 
 
Turns out I like oxygen. We’re good together. 
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And I don’t like it. 
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One of the most frustrating parts of post surgery for me has been my lips. They hurt. As if I was a slug and I just took a salt bath and am now drip drying in the sun. The constant burning in my lips is an occasional distraction from the whole jaw pain thing, but I must say: I don’t like it. The liquid Children’s Motrin I take is about 3 tsp for 300 mg of anti-inflammatory. That’s a lot of liquid, but it dilutes the 6 mgs sodium per dose which is probably the thing that burns my poor raw lips. I would like to say I can’t IMAGINE what it would be like to have even one undiluted mg sodium in my mouth right now…but I can’t. 
 
The Tuesday after surgery I found out the very hard way that Advil and Aleve have lots of sodium in them. I tried to grind an Aleve up and take it with yogurt. First of all, don’t try taking meds with yogurt if you have not seen if you can eat yogurt yet. That was waaay too soon for me to try anything other than liquid, but since I had been taking the Toredol mixed with water, I guess I thought Aleve in yogurt would taste even better.  
 
To quote Ralphie in the Simpsons: It tastes like BURNING!!!! 
Oh ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. ow. ow. 
Owieee. 
Oweeeee. 
Yes, I went to UCSC and proudly flaunt my Mighty Banana Slug Mascot. No, I was not trying to commit Banana Slug suicide because Elfland is no more. It was purely an accident. A very. painful. accident. 
 
One would think I’d have learned. 
 
Here’s how my relationship with Court goes:  
I do things. Lots of times I frenzy mid-thing and break something (usually on myself). Court looks at me with sometimes pity, often superior contempt, and lots of annoyance that I am bleeding on his Invader Zim comforter. Rinse. Repeat. 
 
Court is a smart guy. A very smart guy. As far as I am concerned, he is pretty much the best thing to come out of Kansas City, Missouri (pronounced meh-zir-uh) EVER (Take THAT Harry S. Truman, Walt Disney, Jean Harlow, Robert Heinlein, Ginger Rogers, Ernest Hemingway, and Eminem!) He’s one in a google, but (there had to be one of those) sometimes he has a little bit of what one might consider a fragile ego. Even though he is brilliant (and I don’t give that term out willy-nilly), sometimes he comes up with ideas that seem quite obviously (for lack of a better word) DUMB to me, but by the way he stink-eye’s me when I begin to oppose said NOT brilliant idea, I must sadly, for the sake of building up my own street cred in the family, let him see it through. 
 
Now this may seem like a perfect “I told you so” set up…but I don’t say that. (I do think it a lot, but I don’t say it…especially now when I am banded shut.) For example, Court is a very frugal and practical man. Operative word here is MAN. So, one day he pulled some ground beef out of the fridge that, in my opinion, did not look um…ideal. he asked “Does this meat seem okay to you?” And I looked at it and shook my head. And he looked disappointed. As if I Was asking him to waste perfectly good meat. So I smelled it. It wasn’t rancid smelling, so I couldn’t argue that, but I didn’t think it should look that way and it had been in the fridge a little bit, so if it was me…trash-o-la. My motto on “Is it still good?”: If you have doubts, throw it away. You’re worth it. I learned that from Dave. Court then said in his “I’m gunna do this. It’s the right thing to do. Don’t talk me out of this. I refuse to waste food. If you tell me to throw it away I will do so resentfully and never really believe you were right” voice, “I’m just making Sloppy Joes.” I said “We could go to McDonald’s” and he said “You don’t like my Sloppy Joes?” and gave me the dying baby cow eyes. Dang. 
 
So, he began to cook…and when the meat began to cook, I said “Don’t you think that smells a little OFF?” And he said “What do you mean?” and he had THAT TONE. That “don’t you dare tell me I am doing all this for nothing TONE” so I said, “Nothing.” But here’s the thing: I cook. I have been cooking for a long time. I am not a master chef by any stretch, but I do a lot of baking and cooking and have been known to cook up a pound of ground beef here and there (read: every night I could get away with it since Mexican food IS life) and I have learned to rely on my nose. If it smells off, it’s off. If it smells done, it’s probably done. If it smells like it’s burning and the recipe calls for another 30 minutes, your recipe is wrong (unless your recipe is for very very burnt food). 
 
He finished making his Sloppy Joes and I knew I was going to have to eat a little bit so as not to offend, but before I could get a spoonful in my mouth, Court took a bite of his Joe and said with a hesitant “It just occurred to me so I should say something because something might be wrong” voice, “You know, this doesn’t taste right.” To which I replied, “It’s okay to go to McDonalds now.” And so we did. the End. 
 
Why did I just launch into this? Because I did NOT want to grind up Aleve and take it. Dr. Li had recommended liquid Motrin on Tuesday after surgery, so I was all set to sign op for the Liquid Motrin Gang. I thought grinding up pills sounded horrible and there is a reason they make it into pills and then coat it on top of that. I asked for liquid Motrin instead. But before spending all that money, Court insisted I try. So I did. And it hurt. A lot. Say, open wound and lemon tree kind of pain. 
 
Court felt bad and went and got me Children’s Motrin. There are about 4 doses per bottle and the bottles are not cheap and he knew I would be taking this for a while, so the next day he went to Costco and bought four bottles of Children’s Motrin in Original Berry Flavor, AND was very excited to show me a HUGE bottle of Advil Liquid Capsules that he thought I should puncture and inject into my mouth because whereas there were 8 doses per bottle of the Children’s Motrin (at $.56 a dose), there were 240 capsules in the Advil Liquigel bottle (120 doses at $.11 per dose). 
 
I could care less about that kind of money when PAIN is involced, but when it looked like I was going to shut him down without even trying it, he looked hurt, so I played along. How bad could it be? He got a pin, punctured the capsule, and squeezed a drop out. Not enough. So he cut the tip off with a pair of scissors. He was being very scientific about it…and then when he had a little glob of stuff, he looked lost. Now what? He put a little on his finger and put it in his mouth. Nice of him to try it first. Shocked, he said “It numbs on the spot!” I warily looked at the elated numb-tongued boy and realised he would not understand that my mouth is a cheese grater of open wounds, so I put the tiniest bit on my finger and put my finger on the inside of my cheek (since I have no access to my tongue). Guess what? IT BURNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
 
Ow. 
Ow. 
Ow. 
 
Sometimes I want to hit Court over the head with his seeming obsession with getting the best deal and going as generic as possible. Not because I don’t have the same mentality. Mostly because when I do insist on things that I have already learned my lesson about, he is skeptical of my results and must “see for himself” and so I end up having to painfully watch or experience the lesson again. 
 
Luckily once he has learned the lesson, he is not game for learning it twice, so it’s like I have a little review of why I do or don’t use/do something, and we move on. 
 
But really, would YOU ever think it was a good idea to take the medicine out of the shell and drink it? There’s a reason they spend a lot of money diluting that stuff into yucky tasting grape flavored liquid if you HAVE to drink it. And if it comes in a shell, odds are, it’s not any kind of flavor you want to try. 
 
 
 
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved 
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Today is the first day I am able to get my pain down to below a 5 of 10 and keep it there for a couple hours. I have been trying to lower my Oxycodone dosage over the past week because I really don’t want to be on more than I have to, and I definitely do not enjoy detoxing from things like that. 
 
Quick history: I have had over 12 kidney stones, 4 knee surgeries, wisdom tooth removal (gone wrong – ‘nuther story ‘nuther time), 2 dry sockets, multiple periodontal surgeries (because of the wisdom tooth removal gone wrong), a laproscopy to remove a cyst from my pancreas, lasik, donated ovum, and some other lovey dovey things I didn’t sign up for but which just happened to my body. Morphine and heavy duty pain killers have been, at times, a staple to get me to function. They are great when they are addressing serious pain, but when the pain is gone and you suddenly are not on the drugs anymore (the drawback of opiates for kidney stone pain since often the pain goes as quickly as it arrives), sometimes you wish for the pain back to not feel like climbing the walls or tearing your hair out or severely beating yourself about the head and face. True story. 
 
So, my Oxycodone (oral meds are so NOT my cup o’tea, especially injected into your mouth through a feeding syringe) dosage is supposed to be 5-10mL every 3-4 hours as needed. I was only on morphine my first night in the hospital while I was in the ICU, so the Oxycodone started Day 2. They brought in 5mL. Then they have to give me another 5mL. There was no way I was going to make it 3-4 hours so things had to change. Soon it was 7.5mL every 2 hours but if I did not get it ON THE DOT I was spiking up to a 9 of 10 pain rating really quickly. Today I am at about 3.5mL every 2 or 5mL every 4 hours with only the occasional 2.5 for breakthrough pain. The highest dose I’ve taken in the past 2 days is 7.5mL. It’s awesome. I only spike up to about an 8 now, and my drop after a dose is to about a 3. I am also drinking prune juice like a fish would if a fish drank prune juice. 
 
I can thank my mother for this. Not the prune juice. The high tolerance and metabolism. My mom is 5’1″. Actually, she’s never been 5’1″. She was 5′ and 3/4″ at her tallest, and now she claims to be holding onto 5′, but I’m going to have to disagree. Anyhow, my mom, about 100 lbs, has such high metabolism and tolerance to medications that the doctors say to put her under they have to give her as much as they would a horse. Not a little Shetland pony either. 
 
My first surgery was on my left knee when I was 18 years old. The anesthesiologist said “I’m going to give you a little shot. Now, what sports do you like?” I’d heard from other people who had been put under general that answers to that question go something like, “football, basketball, soc–” and you’re out. Or, if they have you count backwards from 100, you get to maybe 97 and you’re out. My answer was “Oh! Ballet! blah blah blah blah…” Until he said, “I’m going to give you another shot. Now. How long have you been dancing?” And I said “10 years You’re playing the Nutcracker! How appropriate you would play that during my knee surgery blah blah blah blah…” Until he said “I’m going to give you another shot.” And I said “Okay!” And he said “Now let me know when you feel you’ve had a glass of champagne” and I said “I’ve never had champagne…Oh I feel it!” And he said, “What?” And I don’t think I got through repeating my answer. 
 
He came to see me in the ICU after I was more alert and coherent post-op (I was only in ICU because they didn’t have any other beds- that was a whole different lovely experience) and asked how I was feeling. He then added that “For someone your age, height and weight who doesn’t DRINK DAILY, it took over twice as much to knock you out.” For some reason, when I tell doctors this, as they are being conservative in dispensing meds for things like oh, I don’t know….KIDNEY STONES, they immediately see through my sham and realise I am actually a full-fledged drug addict who had kidney stones surgically implanted into my kidneys just for the morphine. Lots of people just don’t like to hear “I have a high tolerance” and I completely understand their reaction. I just don’t like that it usually ends up with me in a lot of pain for a longer amount of time until they believe me and give me a little more. 
 
So. That was a long story just to say that I have the metabolism of a hummingbird on crack (my favorite way to refer to it) and unfortunately pain management has been a very big challenge during this recovery, but I think today I turned a corner. Hooray! 
 
 
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved 
 
PS in case you want to see pix through day 8:  
http://web.mac.com/cidstrom/iWeb/Sleep%20Apnea%20Surgery/Day%201.html 
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