Dreadful Nonsense

The days following the epidural:

This post is very much for my future self, when I’m facing another epidural injection and I’m reading back through my entries to remind myself of what is now lying ahead.

In the hours after the epidural, while lying in bed and attempting to read and/or listen to my walkman and/or sleep and miserably failing to do any of the above, I kept commenting to Mum about the weird numbness caused by the local anaesthetic. They inject it into the injection site immediately you reach the operating theatre, and from then on you’re blissfully unaware of the canula and the other needles and malarkey that’s happening behind you. It kicks in so quickly, so that they can get this procedure over as swiftly as possible, something I’m keen on them doing.

The anaesthetic then starts to wander all around the region into which you have had the injection. If you’ve watched the helpful animation linked to below, you’ll know that this area is quite low down in terms of your back. It’s your lower back. Now, imagine being numbed from there right down to the tops of your legs. And involving all areas in between that. Imagining that? It’s disturbing. Very disturbing. This is not an area in which you’d normally welcome numbness. And the numbness can last for up to four hours, with areas suddenly coming back to life, announcing their return by producing sensations that feel like spiders are crawling across your skin. Not pleasant.

The injection site also tends to stay quite tender and sensitive for about four days after the epidural. It feels initially like someone has kicked you in the back with some serious force for a couple of days, like you’re carrying around internal bruising. Sitting down in any kind of straight manner is a challenge, and because I can’t sit all twisted up in a chair thanks to my back, my options for about three days after the epidural stretch from standing to lying down and back again. This can become old quite quickly.

Finally, the feeling that you’ve just been beaten up, or stayed up for about 70 hours straight, or have run a marathon, or all of those three along with some heavy drinking will hang around for about three days afterwards, even though most of what you’re doing is lying down or standing up and wandering softly around the house speaking quietly to dogs and then lying down again. This is absolutely normal, as is the slight feeling of nausea about 30 minutes after you eat anything. I’ve come to the conclusion this is down to the steroids, but this also doesn’t last more than a couple of days after the procedure.

And then! Then! The being able to walk! The rapid recovery time from serious pain to being upright again! The shopping! The drinking! The socialising! It’ll all come flooding back!

God Bless The Epidural.

This entry was posted on 10 July 2004 at 10:11 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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