Chapter 26: Pain is a Master

Two days post-op. My surgeon was right: the post-surgical pain from the liposuction will be worse than the breast surgery itself. As stated in Chapter 25: my surgeon harvested fat from my abdomen to use as a contouring agent for my new breasts. My abdomen hurts significantly worse than my breasts at the moment. It’s extremely difficult to move from a seated to a standing position and vice versa. The simple act of changing positions in my sleep takes my breath away. The pain is reminiscent of the vertical c-section I had when Ethan was born. It’s strange to me that the pain would be so great considering the procedure was surface level. My abdominal muscles were not cut open like they were with my c-section, so why is this so freaking painful? It makes me wonder if elective/cosmetic liposuction has the same pain in recovery. If so, I can’t imagine signing up for this torture willingly. I think I’d rather burn the fat off with exercise now that I’m feeling the aftermath of lipo.
Mayo sent me home with a bottle of Oxycodone for the pain, but I’m hard pressed to start taking that shit. Addiction runs rampid in my family, so I try avoid substances with highly addictive properties. I’ve seen/heard enough stories of people getting hooked on painkillers, and blowing up their lives as a result.
Side Note: If you haven’t seen the Netflix series Painkiller (2023) with Matthew Broderick, I HIGHLY recommend it. It gives some raw insight to the opioid epidemic.
Now, back to my slabbering! If my pain gets to the point where I can’t sleep, then I might take an Oxycodone before bed. That’s actually what I did while recovering from my mastectomy. There were a couple of nights that I took Oxycodone in order to sleep comfortably.
I’m sure I mentioned my thoughts on pain in earlier chapters, but for the sake of this discussion, I’ll mention it again. My take on pain: it’s our bodies signal to the brain that something is wrong. If a person continuously masks pain, they will inevitably do worse damage to themselves because they deactivated their brains alarm system. Pain hurts, but it’s also our friend. Much like the strict disciplinarian parent we grew up resenting. But, once we became adults, we realize they were strict for our own good. Those strict rules prepared us for the real world. Pain is like that…it hurts for your own good. It forces you slow your roll, so you can heal properly.