Not being a big user of pain meds I usually try to take ibuprofen or something much less mild for pain than the painkillers they give you in the hospital. I had a nasty accident with anangle grinder chewing into my left index finger and middle finger over the weekend. I saw the surgeon yesterday and am having surgery on Friday to re-attach a nerve to the proper place. Apparently the angle grinder didn’t think I needed sensation in my left index finger.
Anyway, they gave me Dilaudid and percocet - The dilaudid is for when the pain is really bad, the percocet is for when it is just bad. I have seen Drugstore Cowboy and know Dilaudid can be highly addictive, Im not too worried about that, but I am concerned about functioning on either of these. Can anyone tell me what I might expect?
I received an injection of Dilaudid in the hospital ER when I was having unbearable pain from a kidney injury. I went from excruciating pain to a sense of total, utter relaxation in about 2 seconds. Then I was a little groggy for a while.
I’m glad they didn’t send me home with a bottle of that stuff. It would be tempting.
If you take either one for more than a day or so, you can expect your bowels to slow down. YMMV of course, but that was my experience. Moderate amounts of fiber and perhaps OTC stool softener were recommended by medical types.
I wouldn’t want to drive or do other potentially dangerous things on percocet; at least I would advise not planning on it, though you might find yourself perfectly alert.
I was prescribed Percocet when I had surgery recently and was told not to drive if I had taken any. Fortunately I never needed to (take any of the med, that is).
Expect to be groggy. It may also screw with your appetite. You may start eating everything in sight or you may hate the sight of food, depending on how you react.
Sorry about your fingers, that really sucks pet pet pet
Ouch, sorry to hear about your angle grinder’s intolerant attitude.
IME from taking Vicodin for several days after laparoscopic surgery (it’s not just the incisions that hurt, it’s your insides that are mad at being messed with) - and Vicodin is supposed to be a wimpier opiate than Percoset, let alone Dilaudid - definitely take at least one kind of stool softener. TMI alert - I went something like 5 days without going, and that’s with taking stool softeners starting day 3 and tapering off the Vicodin.
Make sure you don’t have an allergy to Dilaudid. They gave me an injection for that after my surgery and my face turned tomato-red and it felt like the arteries in my throat and the side of my neck were clamping shut. Very unnerving sensation, and it was probably less dramatic physiologically than I’m portraying, but still…Not cool.
Jebus man, that’s not an angle grinder, it’s an immature chainsaw!
And now that it’s tasted human flesh . . . well, frankly, when it grows up you’re doomed!
CMC fnord!
Who lives in fear of his power tools, especially the table saw that whispers “You won’t even feel it when I take your fingers off” as it revs up.
Dilaudid made me puke, which, after I realized the drug name (hydromorphone), made sense to me (“Ooh, yea, it makes dogs puke too!”). And it did crap for the pain (fracture).
Percocet, though, made me much more happier and better (fracture? what fracture?). And no puking!
I had Percocet after surgery last year and was told I could drive when I was off the stuff.
In my case, I think that means 24+ hours off the stuff. I had a dose at 11PM one night, and drove to a nearby shopping center at 3 the next afternoon, and realized I didn’t feel as alert as I needed to. I went straight back home. Similarly when I had it after oral surgery back in the early 80s - I had the surgery on Friday (wisdom teeth), took a last dose of Percocet on Sunday afternoon, tried to go to work Monday, sat there staring at the computer like I’d never seen it before… so I went back home.
Next time I have narcotics for anything, I’m going to give it at least 36 hours before attempting to do anything more challenging than changing TV channels.
That said - if you need either of them for the pain, and don’t need to be “functional”, don’t tough it out. Once pain sets in, it’s harder to get control of it.
Percocet can have different effects on different people. I took it, and vicodin for about a year and a half. I was able to function just fine. I was definately addicted and it took about 10 days of misery to kick.
Excellent advice … it was almost 48 hours post operation that I felt like doing anything more involved than snuggling with hubby in the hospital bed and watching tv or sleeping both when I had my parathyroidectomy and my hysterectomy.
Prunes, prunes are good when chopped up and added to oatmeal. Trust me …
I was given Percocet after delivering my daughter to deal with the tearing and siatica. It didn’t even touch the pain.
I had taken Vicodin years prior and it laid me out high as a kite for several hours. Not as fun as it sounds. I was literally terrified to leave my couch.
As others have said be sure to take stool softeners along with whatever pain meds you take if they are known to cause digestive issues. I took them at the same time as the Percs in the hospital.
While the Percocet did little to nothing at all for me they made my mother-in-law hallucinate when she took them. She said she saw pink elephants dancing around the room.
Good luck! Hope all goes well with the surgery and recovery.
My brother was on Percocet after wisdom teeth surgery and it seemed to help the pain considerably but he was. . .not all there. I’d have a conversation with him and 3 minutes later he’d have no memory that we’d talked. He couldn’t watch the Simpsons because he couldn’t focus long enough to understand the plot. He was also very lethargic but he ate like a horse.
He had a prescription for Phenergan to take beforehand to help with any potential nausea, which is apparently a real bugaboo of Percocet. He was never sick that I recall.
That was my exact experience with Percocet. It managed the pain effectively but gave me the attention span of a gnat. I tried to play Hearts online and made a mess of it because I couldn’t remember what had happened two hands ago. I’d watch a half-hour program and get lost 20 minutes in because I had no idea what the plot was anymore. Reading anything more than a page was useless. I got off it as fast as I could handle just to get back to having a brain.
Strictly speaking, you probably weren’t addicted per se, but rather just physically dependent. There’s an ocean of difference. Physical dependence is just the body developing tolerance to a degree that when the medication is stopped, somatic withdrawals set in. Lots of people develop physical dependence on opiates, without ever becoming technically addicted.
Full-blown addiction, on the other hand, is a complicated brain disorder involving physical as well as psychological dependency, impaired judgement and self-control, and an inability to stop using despite serious negative consequences.
I was prescribed vicodin (which I believe is the same as percocets – I’m sure I’ll be corrected if not) for a couple different surgeries last year. They didn’t really do a whole shit-load for the pain, more like just let me relax through it a little bit better.
But maybe I’m jaded. I’ve taken vicodin’s recreationally (but not to an addictive level – maybe five times total in my past) and they don’t lay me out or anything.
Dilaudid, on the other hand, is of the devil if you ask me.
When I was in the hospital suffering through complications from gall-bladder surgery, they mostly had me on something else, I don’t even know – could have been a morphine drip for all I know – and they decided they wanted to try dilaudid on me. That shit wasn’t in my veins for ten seconds before I was puking up like a drunk. And not having eaten anything for several days made that quite the fun-fest.
pet pet pet
