Answering Questions about Bearing the Acute and Difficult Pain

A friend (Pam) asks:  What do you do when in such severe and protracted pain?  Can anything distract?   Temporarily?  What do you do physically?  Damn, I wish I could help.  Also wish they'd DO MORE for the pain!!!   Pain amelioration is not an advanced science, for sure.  More damn !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I answer:

During the super acute phase of the pain, I stand in the bathroom applying hot compresses to my butt leaping around crying.  This lasts like 40 minutes (or more) after every poop, and though the hot compresses seem to help a little, they do not help enough.

Nothing distracts.  The pain is too intense--It is all there is.  It seems unbearable.  (But I am, of necessity, bearing it).  I stand by the sink, apply a hot compress with one foot up on the toilet and then repeat over and over.  I leap about, run back and forth, sweat profusely, cry and scream.

Eventually, hopefully, the pain fades a little to semi-acute stage.  During this stage, I run back and forth from the heating pad to the bathroom to repeat above, only with groaning and moaning instead of screaming and crying.  Sometimes, during that stage, I can walk around the house or even outside BRIEFLY, before returning to the hot compresses.  I am having pain, which is pretty bad, but the walking helps some. 

That stage usually doesn't last more than about 20 minutes.

The next stage is the sitting on the heating pad stage, which at first hurts so much I can hardly sit, but then the pain gradually fades after 15-20 minutes and I can sit and work on the computer.  It still hurts!  The distraction of the computer helps.  At this point, there is still too much pain to say, cook or prepare a meal or do anything away from the heating pad.

With every poop, the whole cycle repeats again.  Depending on the timing and severity of the poops, I may never get past the acute or semi acute stage before the pain is ramped up by the next poop.  Each poop is progressively worse and I've been averaging 3-4 a day (which the doctor says is NORMAL.)

Another thing the cycle the pain is the pain meds.  I am taking both Ibuprofen and acetaminophen and trying to do it so they overlap each other.  It’s a complicated schedule, but as the various doses wax and wane, so the pain, to some extent.  Even if I am on a FULL DOSE of BOTH MEDS, the pain during and after pooping is still nearly unbearable.  And the poops seem to like to schedule themselves at one of the waning points of meds.

If I am lucky, the pain fades to the point where I can stand long enough to prepare a meal or maybe take a walk or do some exercises, or some small chores.  Yesterday I never got that good.  So far today, I have not had breakfast.  I am on the heating pad, but the pain is fairly bad and I am thrashing around.  I have not been able to do anything yet today.   Yesterday, as I was trying to relieve the pain on the heating pad, by shifting one way and then the other, I knocked the chair over with me in it.

The doctor (Barbe) tells me there are no stronger pain meds that do not cause constipation (or, all stronger pain meds cause constipation).  (Earlier today, I wanted to go to the hospital and beg for morphine.)

Always, there is the fear of the next poop.