@cindiwass : Excuse my additional comment here - I did not see/read your original post until just now. Regarding prescription pain killers, I really do not like them for their side effects, but I found it necessary to take them for a few days after major surgeries. Especially the shoulder surgeries, which were extremely painful afterwards. Tylenol does not really do much, if anything, for me, so I relented and took the Hydrocodone, Oxycontin, whatever I was given. But: once I decided I needed to take them, I did it on the set schedule - it is easier to keep pain at bay then to wait until you can’t stand it anymore, and the try to catch up. For me that extreme pain lasted about 4 - 5 days. There certainly!!! was a lot of pain still, but not to the point where it was all-consuming, so day 5 I started to stretch the daytime intervals to 6 hours, kept 4 hour schedule at night (after 10). Easing up more every day until only 1 Oxy at bed time, then done. Lots of ice, lots of mental tricks (listening to great music while doing the painful PT exercises, doing brain teasers to distract when pain hit), using lots of ice to keep surgery area numb. It is everyone’s choice whether to take opioids or not. For me the short period of using/needing them was the right decision.