My mother lives next door. I've been spending a lot of time over there, "borrowing" her husband's adjustable bed to get my leg better elevated, and letting her fuss. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Two birds with one stone: you get the help (elevated beds can be Godsend) and you get to let mom be mom (nobody's pester, nobody's guilty about it, everybody comes out ahead in the familial contract). Win/Win.

Good luck healing up.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

If you have a compounding pharmacy near by, you can get smaller than 200 MG made. But with your level of pain the 200 MG might be OK to start.

Thanks!

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes

I'll ask him about it, but it's probably not on—I've been told to avoid ibuprofen because I've only got the one kidney, and other things in the same class are probably similarly off the list. :/

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

... man, four courses of three different antibiotics in five weeks, you better believe I am hitting the yogurt.

And I would just like to say to all those farmers who help breed multi-drug-resistant bacteria strains by feeding mass quantities of antibiotics to livestock that isn't even sick: thanks a fucking bunch, guys.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, that's how I feel about them.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

But my cheap meat and fat cows!
Some people don't understand and need adjustment. Monetary or by wrench impact.

Yikes! I spent a weekend on vancomycin IVs every 12 hours for cellulitis from an infected toe(nail), and then doxycycline as a followup. I'm glad I didn't need to go further than that, especially since I'm allergic to cephalosporins so they're right out. I hope this one kills it for good this time!

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

... which I can't put on or take off without help,

and some hydrocodone...

... which seems to do nothing.

That last part is not a particular surprise. Every single time I've been prescribed hydrocodone in my life, it's been completely ineffective. I seriously cannot understand why anyone would ever bother taking this stuff long enough to get addicted to it. It does nothing! Doesn't even make me drowsy. Certainly doesn't relieve any pain.

Just starting to show signs of incipient recovery after a solid month of misery, and I manage to go and set myself back to worse than I started (except hopefully without another infection this time, since I didn't actually fall down).

Fuck my life!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And if you tell them that, they immediately assume you're a junkie trying to score a bigger dose and isn't that just heaps of fun.

Good luck with it all.

--sofaspud
--I might be projecting due to my wife's constant battle with that situation, I dunno

Yeah, I called my PA's office to report that this morning, they took all day to think about it, then called back at 5 and said, "That's the best we can give you, if you don't like it, try alternating between acetaminophen and ibuprofen"(????)

At present I have gone for option 3, "swearing copiously and weeping when forced by necessity out of complete immobility". I don't even have any ibuprofen in the house, having been advised to limit my consumption thereof significantly now that I'm down a kidney, and taking acetaminophen for this level of pain is like trying to clean a car with a toothbrush.

As a bonus, having been switched from tramadol (which seemed to have stopped working) to hydrocodone (which never worked) yesterday, I spent last night alternately having lurid nightmares and lying awake feeling really, really weird, which I suspect but cannot prove was a minor-league withdrawal reaction. So I'm not switching back to that.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Ooo... I remember that. I was given percocet (oxycodone + acetaminophen) after my shoulder surgery, and while it did help with the pain, after a couple days I started having serious physical hallucinations. As in, I'm stuck in an immobilizer sling under strict orders not to move my upper arm/shoulder at all, and I felt like my arms and legs were just randomly flying all over the place. Combined with an inability to sleep properly (just lying there in a twilight state) I said no thanks and cut it out altogether for just tylenol + ibuprofen. Pain sucks, but I'd rather be coherent and in a right state of mind (well, at least as much as I ever am :)) than mentally out in the cosmos. At this point I can take a half pill (and that's at the lowest dose) without mental side effects and did so to help with the early days of PT, but I intend to avoid it in the future as much as possible.

Seriously, tell the doc that the hydrocodone is causing you hallucinations and remind them about the inadvisability of taking ibuprofen, and ask if there's anything different available. If necessary, see about a referral to a pain management clinic, where they tend to be better about sorting out the "I'm just here for the narcotics" people from the "I don't want drugs, I just want to stop hurting!" folks...

Good luck, and I hope your knee gets better.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

I don't know if it was the hydrocodone, or from coming off a month of tramadol, but either way, I'm not taking either one any more. I'm told OTC doses of ibuprofen, alternated with acetaminophen (that's paracetamol for those of you in the UK), will be OK since my kidney function is so high in the remaining unit.

Fortunately, the resprain seems to be healing a lot faster than the original did, so as of today I can get by with just acetaminophen.

Less fortunately, I'm now on my fourth course of antibiotics (fifth if you count the one for the UTI I had just gotten over when I bashed up the knee), as the frexing cellulitis just will not quite go away. It goes dormant until the pills run out and then flares right on back up.

Man, am I eating more yogurt these days.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Given these complications... are you sure that this hasn't caused these last month or two to 'rank up' as far as where they landed in the 'really sucky months' list? cause if not... All I can do is sit here open mouthed in shock of how sucky your life has gotten over the years....

Well, I mean, I'm still pretty sure it's below the time they screwed up my cancer surgery and I coded four times on the operating table. Admittedly I kind of wasn't there for that, whereas I haven't missed a moment of the knee thing, but the six or eight weeks after said botched operation weren't a hell of a lot of fun either, I can assure you.

I'm kind of on the fence about whether it's been worse than the Great Brain Adventure of 2007. That didn't hurt, per se (except when they did the spinal tap, boy howdy), but it was freaky and scary and led, two years later, to an MS diagnosis. Plus the recovery phase lasted for months.

Just realized I haven't updated y'all in a while. I had my first session with the physical therapy people today. The sprain is much improved, and they think most of my remaining pain is from internal swelling (from soft tissue damage that hasn't healed yet) and all the bed rest having made the muscles weak, rather than the connective tissue, which appears to be sound again. The infection seems to have cleared at last, but it's left behind some nasty wounds where the blisters were, and I'm seeing the wound care clinic up at the hospital about that tomorrow.

Hilariously, the amount of money I'm making on unemployment makes me ineligible for the state's Medicaid extension and only qualifies me for a 50% discount from the hospital itself, which means I now owe them somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 (and that's before today's PT session, tomorrow's wound care visit, and whatever follow-ups both of those courses of care entail). By any numerical measure, I would be better off if I wasn't collecting unemployment.

And no, I haven't gotten a damn thing done on my thesis so far, with the semester more than half gone.

So upon further review, maybe it is worse than the cancer thing. I mean, that was a tougher physical and mental ordeal, for sure (I sort of died a bunch at one point during that), but it didn't fuck up my life nearly as much on an ongoing basis, thanks to various surrounding factors (like the fact that I did qualify for MaineCare when that happened).

Sigh.

And they're probably going to debride my knee tomorrow, which has nothing to do with brides and everything to do with hurting.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I guess what I mean is, here's hoping you have the same experience and come out of it just feeling better, period, rather than all the ow and the hurting.

Wound care specialists, IMO, have a strange sense of humor. Or are closet sadists. "This will hurt a little. Oh, it didn't? That means I'm not doing it right. Here, let me try again."

--sofaspud
--thanks, doc

That reminds me of the time a couple of years back when my rheumatism specialist did ultrasound scans of almost my entire lower body, then wanted to stick an implausibly large syringe in behind my kneecap to get some fluid out. Some ouch, but not as much as either of us had expected.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

Sounds to me like you have a drug immunity. While it's more common with NSAIDs and psychophamaceuticals, it can happen with painkillers as well.