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Jennifer, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I DID NOT know that about anti-inflammatories after surgery. Ibuprofen is what I have primarily been taking, round the clock! Combined with Tylenol for 10 days. Since reading your message my husband and I have looked it up. Sure enough, they say studies have shown that it is particularly important NOT to take anti-inflammatories in the initial stages after surgery! This is how this came about. After the surgery my friend came and visited me the day after in the hospital. My friend is an infectious disease doctor. She saw that I was experiencing a lot of nausea from the Hydracodone. She recommended I change to Ibuprofen and Tylenol...she even talked to the nurses about making the change. She obviously should not have done this and I'm not sure why the on-call doctors did not check up on it! I'm pretty upset and have a call in to my surgeon's office but have not heard back yet.
Your suggestions regarding the leg pain at night are good ones. The recliner and the ice pack are my good friends, also the pillow between or under my knees at night.
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. If you had not said anything this might have gone on and apparently it could really set back the success of the fusion, I hope it hasn't already.
Replies to "Jennifer, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I DID NOT know that about anti-inflammatories after surgery. Ibuprofen is..."
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@red3 Ruth Ann, Fusion is a very slow process and really takes at least 3 months to begin. When your body creates bone, first the inflammation sets the stage, and the first thing created is a matrix with cartilage cells, and later the cells are converted to bone cells that start depositing minerals. The matrix has to grow through all of the space first to link it to existing bone, and then that matrix tissue will be converted to bone. The bone matrix that comes from donor bone is what has been deposited by the bone cells, and those bone cells will have been removed from it in the sterilization process. Your body will repopulate that matrix with new cells that later become bone cells that will take over maintaining the bone. My X-Rays at 3 months showed a fuzziness as mineral was starting to deposit between the vertebrae where the bone spacer was placed. At one year, it showed a transparent line linking the outer edges of the vertebrae together, and still transparent because minerals had not deposited yet. That really takes a couple years post fusion to complete and become solid on an X-ray like the other bones.
Important lesson.... always check with your surgeon to make sure that anything you take as far as medications or supplements will not jeopardize the healing of the fusion process. Supplements like turmeric are powerful anti-inflammatories that can interfere in the fusion success. I asked my surgeon's nurse about that and was advised against it. I felt lousy from Hydracodone too, and they also gave me anti-nausea medication. I opted not to take any pain medicine after I left the hospital from my surgery, and I found I could tolerate the pain without. I just stayed as calm and relaxed as I could. Maybe not everyone can tolerate it without pain medicines, but it gets better. The first 2 to 3 weeks were the hardest for me. I'm glad you responded and shared this so everyone else can learn too. You do have to take charge and ask. Doctors are just too busy to be thinking about what you might be doing, so you have to take responsibility and ask about everything. The nurses to ask are the surgical nurses who work directly with your surgeon. They handle things so the surgeon is not overburdened, and they should know. (They are the ones who gave you pre-surgery instructions.) If they don't know the answer, they should ask the surgeon directly and relay that answer to you.