Duration of Severe Pain Following Robot Assisted Upper Left Lobectomy

Hi everyone. I started this thread and wanted to give you an update on my recovery progress. I am now 4 weeks from surgery and am walking over a mile per day. I am doing some small chores around the house and cooking again. All activity restrictions have been lifted by my surgeon so it is up to me to do anything I can tolerate. I currently take a couple of tylenol (1000mg) mid day to help with the nerve pain and I take 300mg of Gabapentin and 50mg of Tramadol before bed. I am finally getting a good night's sleep and sleeping through the night. The numbness in my stomach area and side is beginning to shrink in size but I am now experiencing a sharp pain in the area which used to be numb. I am assuming this is a side effect of the nerves mending. The pain is not constant and it comes and goes but it gets your attention. I have also developed a nagging dry cough, especially when talking. I will discuss all of this with my lung oncologist when I see him next week to set up my chemo. I have also agreed to participate in an immunotherapy test trial for Stages 1, 2A & 2B adenocarcinoma patients. The test trial with Stages 3 & 4 patients was very successful by significantly raising the survival rate and they now want to see if this will also help the lower stages. It was an easy decision for me to agree to the trial with the risks as this will hopefully help future lung cancer patients.
Thank you all for you kind words and participating in this thread.

How old are you? I am 67 and having my surgery (TLL) on September 25th at the Mayo. Where did you get yours done? I am not a fan of pain...

I'm 73 and had my surgery at St Francis in Hartford, CT. I wish you all the best in your upcoming surgery. After surgery, walk, walk and walk some more. It really helps minimize the duration and severity of pain. The day I got home, I started walking around inside the house every 2 hrs. First once or twice around and then worked up the distance each day until I was able to begin walking outdoors.

Thanks for the info, I will walk and walk and walk and tell my wife how I am felling every few minutes.

Hello, I’m 6 weeks out from a wedge resection RATS surgery with lymph node sampling. I had 6 incisions total. My nodule, was thankfully benign.
I’m 52 and with only a wedge resection, I needed oxycodone for at least two weeks, mostly at night just to sleep. I am finally off of the narcotic, but the rate of recovery is not linear, at all, which can be really frustrating . For a reference to my pain tolerance threshold, I have had a hemorrhoidectomy after the birth of my first child. I have also had a C-section and just regular childbirth. I would say that the hemorrhoidectomy was the absolute worst pain of my entire life. The wedge resection pain for me is high, but manageable with pain medication.
Initially, I was slowly getting better, but occasionally I would have some kind of relapse where I needed the pain meds, again. That was really aggravating.
Another problem that I had was extreme nausea. I would take simethicone for that, and it seemed to help a little bit. I didn’t really get a good answer for my surgeon on why I was so nauseous but I’ve heard it’s very common. I am also only eating small meals a few times a day because I just don’t seem to have the room in my stomach now without getting acid reflux. I had not experienced acid reflux in about 15 years prior to the surgery.
I also tried sleeping on the side with the incisions, but that would make me more nauseous. As if I wasn’t miserable enough, I developed sciatica because I could only sleep on my left side which aggravated my hip. Some people experience constipation because of the pain meds, but I just took magnesium pills and that wasn’t a big problem for me.
One thing that really helped with my pain when I was walking, I put an ace bandage snugly wrapped around my incision areas, not too tight though. This helped me because when I walked it felt like everything was jiggling on the outside and inside which exacerbated the pain. This also helped to reduce the need for pain medication. I also thought the compression would help decrease the swelling and inflammation. I would run it by your doctor though, because nothing can interfere with your breathing recovery. I am still wearing the ace bandage today, and it really does help a lot.
I am still numb on my stomach and I do have these weird sharp pains that stop me in my tracks sometimes, but I just try to slow down and take it easy.
At first, you will need to sleep in an upright position for several days. If you lie straight down on your back, it is really uncomfortable. I could not figure out how to get back up because the incisions had apparently cut some muscles in my stomach. I would do a side roll on my good side to get out of bed and that was easiest.
I also put an ice pack on my belly close to, or on top of my incisions because my entire belly was burning up on the side of my surgery. It’s like you have a sunburn and that is one of the problems with the pain for me. I also thought that the ice would help reduce swelling inside of my belly for a quick recovery. I do think that this helped me recover quickly but who knows?

Please make sure you have someone to help you with food, drinks and your medications. I bought a tray size medication dispenser which really helped a lot. I pre-filled it so that it would be all ready to go just in case I needed it in the middle of the night.
I also used a Pill Reminder app to help me remember which pills I took and when. I uploaded a picture of the app I used. It helped me so much. It also has alarms on it to remind you when to take your pills. I was by myself a few days after my surgery because my husband had a baseball tournament, but this really saved me.

Good luck with your surgery and especially your recovery. Just keep in mind that you will get better, but it’s going to take a few months. I hope this information helped you.

Gabapentin sounds great. Is it normally prescribed after surgery for most lung patience at most hospitals? I wonder if I should get on the Mayo Clinic portal and send the Thoracic surgery team a message reminding them to make sure I have a scrip for Gabapentin. I had Shingles 12 years ago and it was misdiagnosed for 6 days with the wrong meds. I have never been in so much pain for so long, a repeat scares me. I don't want to go thru that again because someone forgot to give me the right meds.

Same thing happened to me 12 years ago in Ames, IA. Miss diagnosed shingles by our local nurse practitioner for 5 days and put me thru hell. She said she thought I was a drug seeker and prescribed erythromycin. When I started to go blind I went to the ER and they took care of me, but the damage was done. Since then I have had 3 shingles vaccines and 4 jabs for Covid. Pain scares me too. My robot left lobe surgery is at the end of September up at the Mayo, let me know if the Team prescribes Gabapentin and how long your pain lasts. They won't let me use THC or CBD during Chemo & Immunotherapy, I wonder if they will let me have gummies after surgery.

How old are you? I am 67 and having my surgery (TLL) on September 25th at the Mayo. Where did you get yours done? I am not a fan of pain...

I had my surgery at Mayo Phoenix last Nov. in order to remove my right lower lung lobe due to a stage 2 adenocarcinoma. The surgical staff at Mayo is excellent along with the hospital after care. The procedure was explained very well and they used a nerve block to alleviate the after surgery pain. I was released after only 1.5 days in the hospital and was also on a regimen of Lyrica for the after surgery pain treatment. I don’t believe I used any of the other pain meds after the first day home. So they surgery aspect went better than expected. Walking as much as you can each day does help! The resulting chemotherapy was a different story but everyone handles that experience differently. Best of luck….you’ll be in good hands at Mayo.