A Pain Scale

I sat down to try, yet again, to write a story. Instead, I got distracted and started writing about foot surgeries, and then about my pain scale. When I realized what had happened, I had three options:

1. Save the document and probably never read it again or show it to another living soul.
2. Just delete it instead of using up more memory.
3. Put it on my blog. Just because I want to write more posts about anime doesn't mean all of them have to relate it. Besides, I'm planning to post some ramblings about anime tomorrow. Why not post the product of my distraction today? At least it won't go to waste.

So there you have it. In order to keep the time and writing I spent completely distracted from going to waste, I'm posting the result here. Please enjoy, misspelled medicine names and all.

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Pain. Terrible, throbbing, worst-in-my-life pain. If asked to describe my foot surgeries, I couldn’t say much else. He might have cut me open in three places (two the first time), but my whole foot hurt. My toes, perhaps, escaped the pain, but they may as well have hurt, too – If I even thought about twitching a toe, the rest of my foot would erupt in burning, piercing, pulsing pain. That happens when you get new bone spliced in.

After my surgeries less than five years ago, I’ve come up with a new pain scale. The 1-10 thing doesn’t cut it, especially since I can never figure out which number it is. My scale looks more like this:

No meds – it’s annoying, but barely qualifies as pain

Chocolate – painful, but a little candy makes it all better

Ibeprophen – It hurts enough to take the dose of an over-the-counter pain reliever recommended on the package

Double Ibeprofen – needs more help than the normal dose of pain reliever

Vicaden – Maybe you’re recovering from surgery. Maybe you’re Dr. House. Whatever it is, “ouch” doesn’t quite suffice to describe the hurt.

Vicaden and double ibeprophen – Your doctor tells you to alternate the two. My first surgery (the two-bone-graft one) qualified for this. I needed both meds to control the pain and swelling. If the doc prescribes this much to a thirteen year old barely over 100 pounds, you know it’s bad.

Extra strength Vicaden – After my second surgery, downgrading to this medicine was a sign of recovery.

Percasec (spelling’s probably wrong) – You can safely say the pain is pretty dang bad. My friend was on this after her kidney stones. I don’t know what she was on at first – this is after she began coming back to class.

Percasec and double ibeprophen – Again, you’re alternating the two. An example of this pain would be when my doctor learned new tricks and decided to cut my other foot open in three places instead of two. This time, I got two pins in my heel. In addition to the six weeks spent in a cast, I had to wear a walking boot for three weeks. Percasec was my best friend during the first week of recovery.

Whatever my dad was on when he came home from knee surgery – when a rather important tendon (I don’t know how to spell it) between Dad’s knee and lower leg decided to quit, he had to spend three nights in the hospital (partially due to complications). It happened on December 19, and thanks to the meds and the pain, he doesn’t really remember that Christmas.

Morphine – we all know what that is. They only give this to people in major pain.