Pain after Left Upper Lobectomy

Hello @spikeb1 and welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. Glad to hear you are progressing well and seem to be in good physical health and active! It is understandable that you may not want to rely on opioids long-term. I wonder if your doctor has offered any other suggestions that were appealing to you?

The NP suggested ibuprofen which I have tried. I also took Flexeril with the oxycodone while in the hospital. By itself, it didn’t seem to do much. I have no pain during the day. I don’t foresee relying on opioids long term as I’m assuming this will be temporary. However, I’m not sure if temporary means weeks or months. So, I’m looking for alternatives that I can take at night. This morning, I woke up at 3 AM, took 1 oxycodone without effect. An hour later, I propped myself up in bed and applied heat but had to resort to another oxy at 5 AM. Just got up for the day. I realize that if this is my only complication, I am lucky but it is taking a toll.

Sorry you are going through this.
My husband had exactly the same problem with back pain and not sleeping . He tried different pain and sleeping prescriptions and even CBD with no results. Finally he tried acupuncture and it has been wonderful . Gradually has gone to no pain. I really hope you can try this and it works for you too .

I had two lung surgeries in the past 6 months. Right lung lobectomy, left lung wedge resection. Left lung pain management was helped by using pregabalin (prescribed by surgeon) - worked much better than flexeril, which I'd used with the first surgery. Sorry you are going through this...

Thank you for your response. If the discomfort continues, I will definitely consider that. Good to hear that your husband is now pain free.

Thank you! And sorry you have had to go through this twice. I hope you are doing well. I had to look up the medication and recognize it under brand name Lyrica. If this continues and doesn’t respond to other meds, will discuss with the physician. Stay well!

I had almost no pain with my right upper lung lobectomy until about a week later. Then I was in agony. It started at night and it took an incredible amount of time simply to sit up. I can't tell you exactly where the pain, it was so overwhelming.
Part of the cause may have been a tube that was inserted below the lung up to my shoulder. The purpose was to get rid of bubbles. Obviously the bubbles rose to my shoulder. But the only exit was below the lung. I'm sure there was a good reason even though the physics of it don't seem to add up. Anyway after loading me up with oxy on doctor's orders, a friend got me to the hospital. They took out the tube and I was fine. Of course, I was also pretty high by then.
I also had excessive drainage that the visiting nurses found very unusual, but at the time there was no pain. Just great difficulty in keeping up with the drainage. I don't know if that was a symptom/cause of the pain that followed after a week or not.
Not sure if this helps.

Thanks so much for your reply. I’m not quite clear on the tube you had. I assume it was external and hooked to drainage but it would be odd to have one outside of the hospital. My primary tube was removed on post op day 1 and. “Pigtail” was left in place. Shortly thereafter, I started to have pain as you described. Got lots of meds and was able to return to bed. Looking back, I’m sure the pain was related to the position of the tube and had I been able to move and get back to bed, it would have resolved. After removal, no 10/10 pain. Hope you are well.

@spike1 My surgery was a thoracotomy with lower right lobe removal in April 2020. My upper back pain started in the hospital. I found I could not lie down even in the hospital bed and slept in the chair at the hospital or I would wake up in horrible pain. At home I found sleeping in a recliner after surgery where I was not laying flat helped. Once I started sleeping in bed I used some large pillows to sleep at a 45 degree angle. I actually still sleep that way. I have found laying flat to sleep causes me to wake up with upper back pain. I take gabapentin and am scheduled to see a pain doctor at Mayo to see if anything else can help. I hope your pain soon goes away or you find the right medication to manage it.
Take care,
Juliette

In May I had a left upper lobe lobectomy with robotic surgery. My pain — which was intense — was from nerves that were activated. I did what you are doing, but also found that sitting in a shower and having the warm water flow over the impacted area was soothing. Good luck. You really will start to feel better