Oh, the pain

Mary has been very quiet and has slept almost non-stop since my arrival 11-ish. She is feeling pain that was not present yesterday and is not as alert, active and bright eyed. In fact, she is a bit of a stone today--other than when Dr. Visser visited at noontime. No sitting in the chair, no walking, and no bantering with me or the doctors.

The pain doc was here. Mary was feeling pain this morning and they wanted to eliminate it. They gave Mary dilaudid with her consent because it was via the epidural and they did not expect the nausea that happens with IV delivery. Reasonable thesis, results clearly were wrong. The pain doc is working on other things such as neurontin which will block the nerve rather than the action of the opiates (Mary really gets sick on those) or the NSAIDs which need to be avoided because she had liver surgery.

It turns out she was not self-medicating aggressively enough with the fentanyl so we need her to push the button more often.