Anyone else had a crash after a surgical procedure?

@dawg, I'm tagging @samiam1949 on this discussion. They live with long COVID and are awaiting surgery (lung lobectomy for lung cancer) and are concerned about recovery.

Dawg, how are you doing now a few days later from your skin cancer surgery? What do you wish you had known before surgery?

As skin cancer (Basel cell) is a slow growing cancer, I wish I’d postponed. I was feeling pretty good prior to the surgery. I’d Uber to get a massage each week. I’d help around the house as much as I could. Get my own breakfast and lunch and clean up kitchen after my wife cooked dinner. When I got the surgery I had two places on my face which had to be numbed extensively and required internal and external stitches. A lot of stress to my body initially and normal stress and pain when the numbing wore off. I still felt good overall the day after surgery and went back to normal routine-possibly normal +. It was the following day I crashed and became bed bound. My wife has had to help me wash my hair and change my bandages. Brings me all my meals, etc. Today is my 6th day of crash and while the last couple of days has been better still staying off stairs and being served my meals. I feel like I’m coming out of the crash, but don’t know how long it will take to get back to the me of only a week or so ago. I get stitches out on Monday. Shouldn’t be near as traumatic as the surgery but I intend to come home and get forced rest. Again, I’d have postponed altogether, but I had that luxury based on what it was. Other than that, I just wish I would have considered the likely stress to my body and spent the next couple of days on the sofa vs what was my normal routine. Pretty sure this was sort of self inflicted. Hope that helps.

@dawg ,I can relate! I had cataract surgery which is ther simplest surgery but the next day for a week,I felt like I'd been run over by a Mack truck! Hard to even left my head off the pillow! I'd forgotten all a out that!
I am sorry that you paid such a price for your skin cancer surgery.
I guess the answer to my question is I also will pay a price for my lobectomy. Long covid screws everything up, doesn't it?I am focusing on all of my many blessings. One of the biggest ones is there a really good chance all of the cancer will be gone!
Thanks @colleenyoung . I am grateful to you and to @dawg

Good luck to you on the surgery. Wishing you a great result and minimal recovery time.

I recently had robot simple prostatectomy and my LC symptoms came rushing back - or so I thought/think. I say that because with any major surgery your body does go through various levels of trauma and so my LC symptoms may have flared or my body is reacting to what was fairly major surgery. We will see.

Iḿ hoping that you are already back into a pattern of improvement, with each passing additional day post-surgery. My reply, here, will be a bit off the beaten track, I think.

I had minimally invasive spine surgery about 4 months into my lingering COVID syndrome, and I was genuinely terrified about the surgery triggering some steep decline. My gut told me, though, that the surgery was the only measure I could pursue that would enable me to stop the neuropathic pain drug I was on when I caught COVID, and because that drug was a good candidate for contributing significantly to my post-COVID symptoms (mostly respiratory), I took the leap.

To my amazement, I did not lose ground after the surgery, and also got the benefit of getting off of the drug I no longer trusted (gabapentin), albeit after a lengthy withdrawal process.

So my thinking is that when we take a dip or crash after some intervention, like surgery, this may or may not be caused directly by the intervention. In this connection, it may help to look at long COVID as something that befell us not purely coincidentally, but, rather, as a consequence of some medical vulnerability that made COVID particularly noxious for us. That vulnerability, in turn, may be just as responsible for crashes after surgery as is long COVID itself.

Thinking this way helps me to choose treatments that have the potential to address not only the long COVID, as a syndrome, but also whatever syndrome/symptom may have predisposed me to long COVID. Sometimes it takes some deeply probing thinking to figure out what our vulnerability may have been, but if we can come close to clarity about that, we may be able to arrive at strategies that have really good chances of success. For my post-COVID respiratory challenges, therefore, I rely on symptomatic care (in my case, proteolytic enzymes) as well as a protocol for repleting and maintaining normal B1 levels (since all of the health issues I had long before COVID (both respiratory and non-respiratory) can be associated with B1 deficiency or B1 malabsorption disorder).

I had a minor surgery in February of this year. Then had to have a second surgery as there were complications. The first surgery did cause me to crash. After the second surgery, my neuropathy went insane. I was in so much pain I did not sleep for three days. I take 900 mg of gabapentin daily and 120 mg of Cymbalta. I was also prescribed oxicodene but it was like I had no medicine at all. I added CBD and it did help. I have a CBD liquid to take daily and a CBD sleep gummy. Luckily it helped. It does reduce some of my symptoms when other issues occur such as barometric pressure changes. Good luck to anyone whose autonomic nervous system has been impacted by LC. And to everyone, as I think that we are overwhelmed with managing the current trauma to our system so that we can't handle any other trauma, good luck. Be prepared and have someone to take care of you. My 72 year old mother is in better shape than me and was able to take care of me. Certainly not the way things should be. Good luck and God Bless!

I had a crown put onto a back molar recently. I was in the dental chair for three hours. The stress caused a terrible reaction in my body. The muscles in my left shoulder started to spasm and then spread to my whole body. It was almost like a seizure. I don't know how long it lasted. The dentist gave me oxygen and the spasms slowly subsided. This is nasty stuff.

I am aa living with Long Post Covid Vaccine Syndrome. It’s been a year and my body is not what it used to be. I had a procedure 2weeks ago . The fatigue I felt was just like I had another vaccine. I’m scared of any drugs now. I have all the long Covid symptoms. Some have gotten better but others not so much. I’m sorry everyone has to go through this.I am very grateful for this sight. It has helped me cope.