I had my third and most extensive lumbar back surgery involving L3-4-5 and my coccyx with disc stabilization and replacement. Now I am still experiencing pain, and nerve pain across my entire lower back. I was on opioids/Vicodin 10-325 every 8 hours . Helped a lot the first month and I was active and happy, month 2 less helpful and increased to every 6 hours still not like month one but helpful, month three hardly helping at all, increased to evert4 hours. With that my lower body and abdomen became very swollen, and I was short of breath. I didn’t connect it immediately to the medication until I looked it up. I stopped it and with 7 days I lost 8 pounds of fluid and was relieved of my constipation and shortness of breath. The amazing thing is my pain was better off of it at this point. The same with long term prednisone the side effects were horrible so I stopped that too. I’ve changed my diet, meditate and take rest periods. I’m contour with gabipentin, a muscle relaxer and Advil, heat and ice. So far