kaberett | [surgery] state of the alex

The thing about The Stents that was obvious once I'd worked out what was going on but initially baffling is how much it feels, when I'm not actually urinating, like endometriosis pain: down in the cup of my pelvis and up in the small of my back.

Which latter is worse on the left: I started out assuming that this was because More Extensive Surgery in the vicinity of that kidney (cyst removal, at least; I'm unclear on whether the ovary was also detached from the pelvic wall), but as the incisions and the muscles and so on calm down I'm finding it's more-or-less the same persistent dull ache as I had with The Cyst Itself.

It's worse, as I've said, on urinating. Also worse with activity: the stents are coiled at both ends, in the kidney and the bladder, and jostling them causes irritation: I can expect to see more blood in my urine if I'm more active. I seem to be able to do ten to fifteen minutes of Not Sitting Quietly at a time before it starts ramping up.

It is Extremely Useful to have already thought a lot about chronic pain, okay. Because some of it (left side being worse; how familiar it feels) definitely has a neurogenic component: these nerves have been sensitised to interpret any and all stimulus in this particularly narrow fashion, so given stimulus they're reporting What They Expect. And there is actual, ongoing, physical damage, which is caused when I move. And there are the interactions, and and and...

Pain management looks like: deliberately drinking lots of water (instead of getting avoidant about hydration because going to the loo hurts). Gentle movement, including -- as of yesterday -- extremely gentle Pilates (a very slow twenty minutes of warm-up/rehab). To facilitate movement: routine analgesia, reintroduction thereof, because nobody is actually concerned that the stents are going to cause me significant damage (apparently pissing blood doesn't count), so facilitating (gentle!) movement is a much better idea than... not.

While abdominal muscular rehab definitely needs to happen, it's... frustrating that my biggest problem at the moment is The Stents. Theoretically they come out in about another four weeks. I am really looking forward to seeing how I feel without them.