The Day After

Day 2 Swelling

Surgery may be easy (at least for this patient), but the day after was not. I've continued to ice and elevate my hand and forearm, but it's clear that the hospital meds have worn off. Yesterday I got by easily with one hydrocodone-acetominaphen every four hours. Today's pain swelled over the morning. By the time of my 1:30 PM dose, I knew I needed to increase to two pills. Even that did not fully remove the pain. Beyond that, there's not much else to do but tough it out.

The second prescribed medication is Naproxen, a long-acting anti-inflammatory. I'm not crazy about that one since I've felt a bit nauseous after taking it each time. Tomorrow I plan on switching to Ibuprofen on a leap-frogging schedule with the hydrocodone. That worked well for me during last year's foot surgery. I expect that I'll be able to reduce the hydrocodone to one pill---my goal being to eliminate the heavy drugs as soon as possible!