Anne held hostage, day eight. My pain threshold is high, but I wasn’t prepared for the mind-numbing-waking pain directly behind my knee cap. Post-surgical mending is tentative at best. Relenting after wimping out of the painful throb, I pop the Codeine and then, poof! I feel groovy and the love. The pain subsides and I am a nice, complacent woman, hear me whisper. I managed to self-clean (complete with shaving), help my son coherently edit an essay and I became more of the mom my kids dreamed of: The “Yes-mom.” After all, we had dinners coming to us from my super-mom friends, what did I have to complain about? Unfortunatly, a lot of the meals consisted of gaseous-inducing foods which led to more of my following problem.
If only someone, anyone had warned me that Codeine is cumulative and constipating. About the third day after surgery, I felt the urge to visit a room normally reserved for contemplating the universe. My first indication that the second movement of the Anne Wycoff Concerto wasn’t going to happen was that two hours in the think tank only produced a numb butt. I attempted to visualize some inspirational scenes from movies: Flushed Away, obviously the entire movie gives enough ‘think-brown’ material. Jurassic Park, when the guy ran from the car and sat on the pot to unsuccessfully hide from the T-Rex. Sparticus, the scene of all the Roman soldiers lounging around the steam room. 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Dr. Floyd reads the directions to the anti-gravity toilet. Along Came Polly, Ben Stiller going through everything that can and will go wrong in the bathroom.
It’s funny what your mind races to in times of desperation. I made the mistake of then flashing to Dirty Jobs. One would think that of all the sewers, wrong ends and poop-infused scenes in all of America Mike Rowe has visited, those scenes alone would warrant some reprieve from my porcelain bus torture chamber. But alas, since I do have a major crush on Mike Rowe, the effect was opposite and all I could do was fantasize that my crush and I were holding hands along Pier 39, eating ice cream. Remembering the real reason why I had time to relish in one of my favorite fantasies, I turned to concentrating on more pressing matters. My face contorted to something between a combination of Roseanne Barr singing the National Anthem and Brittany Spears appearance in last years MTV awards as I attempted a push that only succeeded in convicincing me that I gave birth through my back-end to a small African Elephant---ugly! Finally, with the help of Weird Al Yokovic’s song: Constipated (reluctantly, I admit, I know all the lyrics) I managed a small, short-lived success of butt air emission. On a scale of one-ten the fart was a five, emitting not only good tone, but more important, adequate relief. I sat for another hour, waiting in anticipation that the fart was a prelude to something more grandeur. Sadly, it wasn't.
So, my new mission because I chose to take it is to warn any and all pain relief users and abusers: Constipation, it can happen to you!
So tonight, although the wonderful cheese and broccoli casserole my friend Cindy made for us looks delicious and tempting, I am going to indulge in a carrot smoothie.
If you happen to get in on the wrong end and pitfalls of Pain Killers, try going to the following for inpiration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76knh7D_0QY
http://www.imeem.com/alkalyne/music/BfMrRS_f/weird_al_yankovic_a_complicated_song_constipated/
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Oh yes, the joys of pain medications and female bodies. It is amazing how we always seem to reat differently to the "wonderful little friends", when one compares it to our husbands. Our husband get to take a pain medication and he just sees the pleasant end of things, we are the ones who have to pick up him as he lives in a different world. We get to take a pain med and while it works for awhile, we always ending finding a way to wonder which is worse: the orginal pain we are trying to avoid or the medication that is supposedly helping and all of the problems that it has decided to create for, just in case we didn't have enough. I often wonder where it is written that life for women is supposed to be harder than that for men (and what did we do to get that honor?). All we can do is to keep smiling and think before we have tempting helper or if we do, start enjoying less solid and more liquid forms of our veggies to help try and prevent the inevitable.
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