I did have hopes of trailing off the Dilaudid today — I'm taking it very moderately now, as I taper down. But I woke up in too much surgical pain to ignore, so I suspect I'll be using it for a few more days. (The good part, of course, is that I slept through the night in the first place without being awoken by the pain.) For obvious reasons I can't drive until I've been off the Dilaudid for a few days, and that places a lot of limits on my activities.
I always seem to forget how extreme the surgery experience is. This is probably a natural process to protect my sanity. Still, I should not feel so surprised at how rough the process is. Not to mention the recovery.
Each procedure is different, as well. In the case of the liver resectioning I have just undergone, there's surgical pain from the entry wounds, there's site pain from the liver itself, and there's lower GI pain from the very difficult restart process. The various drugs don't address each issue equally, and to some degree I don't want to completely suppress the sensations. They're important feedback. But meanwhile, ouch. Ouch ouch ouch.
Anyway, having finally returned home again yesterday afternoon, H— came over with food and a DVD. At my urging,
calendula_witch took a break from Cancerland and headed for the hills. I ate my usual handful of stuff, after which H— the_child and I watched Panique au village [ imdb ].It was one of the weirdest films I've ever seen, and that's going some given my film viewing habits. I don't know if the movie would have made more sense or less sense without the Dilaudid, but it was a heck of a lot of fun.
Also, viz yesterday's comment about wearing purple:
Today I lay low. Most processes will be in neutral while I try to re-enter my normal life. Have not yet really processed the news about not needing chemo, frankly, as post-op has been so overwhelming. Plenty to gnaw on there, and rejoicing yet to come.