“You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (Even Take the Dog for a Walk, Mend a Fuse, Fold Away the Ironing Board, or Any Other Domestic Shortcomings)”
Longest song title on the UK charts, Rod Stewart and the Faces.
Spent yesterday at a symposium on osteoarthritis in dogs and cats. All very interesting especially the hip replacements that they do in dogs and most interesting was the discussion on pain management.
I do a lot of sterilsation work for animal welfare and am always amazed to see how quickly these animals seem to recover from surgery. A dog that is spayed will be up and walking, admittedly they all receive a pain killer injection, within 30 minutes of surgery and the next day will be running around as if nothing has happened (obviously my post-op instructions stress that exercise is to be limited but try telling that to a labrador!).
However, when the same surgery, an ovariohysterectomy or usually a hysterectomy, is done for a human patient there is an extensive 6 week recovery period and even at the end of those 6 weeks many patients are still in pain at the op site.
So studies were done on dogs post surgery and this showed that the body was having a pain response with all the associated responses in the body for at least 3 weeks post surgery even though these dogs do not show any signs of pain or discomfort.
So applying what I learnt yesterday to my achilles surgery, there will be a pain response from the tear in the achilles and from the surgery that was done to repair the achilles which also involved cutting through skin and subcutaneous tissue so therefore even more pain. Because we are in pain, we guard certain muscle groups and because we are initially not weight bearing we are underusing some muscles and overusing others. This results in myofascial trigger points developing in these muscles (basically a knot in the muscle fibres that further impairs muscle function which in turn creates further knots………..). So these myofascial trigger points create a constant path of pain impulses that then leads to referred pain, pain in another part of the body. So then the body starts guarding these areas where the pain is which leads to further changes in muscle use and flexibility which leads to more myofascial trigger points which leads to more referred pain……..I think I’ve painted the picture.
My pain management post-op was extensive. I was asked to score my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, initially I was moaning 11 and it took a huge amount of medication to get me comfortable and for the whole time I was in hospital I received pain medication every 6 hours, even when I said that I felt fine. I took anti-inflammatories and painkillers for the first 3 days at home and then just took anti-inflammatories as I didn’t have any pain from my ankle. I just accepted that my other muscles would be sore, part of the healing process I thought but actually I was just winding my body up with pain triggers. A very vicious cycle. My treatment plan will now include drugs for the pain and a combination of acupuncture and trigger point massage from a physio.
In a nutshell, your body will heal better if you keep it in a pain free state.
