Scoliosis stories: How much pain did you feel after the surgery?

Making the choice to go ahead with scoliosis surgery is a big decision. These families and teens share what their toughest parts were of the scoliosis surgery experience.

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

On a scale of one to ten, when I first woke up the pain was like a zero because I couldn't really feel anything and I was on so much drugs that it didn't. I didn't. I was just lying there and just looking at everyone and I didn't feel anything. A couple days later when I was still in the hospital, the pain on a scale of one to ten was about a three or four just because I was still like on medication, but like after a few days the pain went away and away and away and I didn't have to take any medication. So, I was feeling good. I was happy. The pain number when I was home was like oh like, oooh! It was like five, six, seven. Just cause I didn't have like the medication that I had when I was at the hospital. So when I was at home it was more like Tylenol and that. Eventually that wouldn't work anymore so I just had to deal with it - with what I was given. So, before the pain settled down it took about a couple of months probably, the end of summer but, then when I went back to school it started all over again. Carrying books and jus walking around and sitting down. Um, but again I took Tylenol so that kind of relieved it, so I just kind of got used to like the pain I was dealt with. It was. It probably went down after a couple of months to like a one, so. Today I basically have no pain. It's just like everyone else, like when they lift something heavy, that's the pain I have. Or like. Yeah pretty much just lifting something heavy or doing something that I don't normally do, but other than that I have no pain like in my spine or anything.

The medicine. Like everyone said that it would make me feel like really weird. For the first week it was kind of strange and like I was always sweating and like I had really weird dreams, but then I think my body got used to it and like cause when I went home, I was home for like two weeks or a week maybe a week and a half. She came off of her medicine very quickly. Well like it wasn't that hard to come off of it cause everyone said that was gonna be difficult for me because I was gonna want to keep taking it. But I didn't really because it kind of made me nauseous and. I was worried about that. Yeah. Weaning her off because I had hear so much about morphine and because she was on hydromorphone. She came off of it very quickly and her pain tolerance was diminishing very rapidly once we left the hospital. And she was down to extra strength Tylenol and and then it was over. Uh-huh. I actually remember really clearly, like right when I woke up from the surgery, I remember um cause I don't know. The pain was actually. For me, I was on so much medicine I think and I was so out of it when I first woke up, that like the pain for me was probably only like a two or three like. I was really happy when I woke up. And then it didn't start to hit me, the pain, until like like two days later or something you know. The first few days in the hospital, well one of the days was um. They told us day three was going to be our horrible day. Yeah. And day three we cruised through. I think it was day five. Day five was a very bad day. We, neither of us will ever forget day five because she couldn't get hold of her pain. And once she got it, it got hold of her, it wasn't good and it turned out that they actually had to make an adjustment. But once it got under control, that was the you know, it was managed again. I don't even remember. Like it was all a blur. I just remember I was like crying and she was crying like that and because they couldn't do anything until the doctor came to see me, but like. So, we had to wait and that was, that was when I started taking the pills, right? Yeah. That worked a lot better for me. I liked it more. The pain pump, but I think I was in more pain when I started taking the pills because I liked it because I could feel them working. And like I could know when I should take them and like how much I need. Whereas with the pump you don't really know how much medicine you're getting and it's weird.

Even though Adrienne was in pain, like after the surgery, you would try not to take the morphine. Most of the time he was trying to like try to get over it on his own without relying on the medication, which was good.

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