No matter who you are, there is one constant. Everyone is afraid of real pain. What makes the fear strong is knowledge. If you have no choice. You get caught in an accident. The unexpected arrival of pain is something to deal with. Once the shock wears off, it is there and you cope as best you can. But if you are scheduled for major surgery, you know this caring doctor is going to cut you open, mess with your insides. You cannot help it. You are worried about how severe the pain is going to be after the operation. Although you read that pharmaceutical companies have produced better painkillers, that hospitals have become more caring places, that doctors and nurses are better trained, it is natural to be worried. So is fear justified?
There are a number of studies to guide us through this discussion. The first general thread tells us that people whose pain is controlled tend to recover more quickly and have fewer complications after surgery. To some extent, this is a psychological issue. If the pain is under control, you start moving around and rebuilding your body’s strength. You can focus on getting better. But if the pain is strong enough to make breathing difficult, then any kind of activity will be impossible. Muscle tone will be lost over time and healing will be delayed. So pain management is a balancing act. If you are only pain-free when full of drugs, you will not move around. If you are in too much pain, you will not move for fear of making the pain worse.
The most powerful response to pain is intravenous medication. The drugs drip through a catheter into your body alongside fluids. For short periods of time, the opiates and opioids can reduce even the most severe pain to a dull ache. Many hospitals allow patients some degree of control over when the drugs are administered. This empowers you and helps the mind cope with the pain. There are also techniques for reducing pain in particular parts of the body. These involve the use of an epidural or spinal anesthesia to deliver painkillers into the spinal chord, and nerve blocks to prevent pain messages from traveling through the nervous system to the brain.
The problems with all these approaches is that people come out of surgery and start taking pain medication from scratch. That is why the latest research suggests the better approach is to start taking the painkillers two days before surgery. This allows your body to build up a stable level of the active chemicals in your blood stream before the surgeon cuts you open. The research actually confirms that the use of a less powerful painkiller such as tramadol hcl is as effective as the more powerful drugs taken after the surgery. Think of it as being like preparing to play football. You strap on all that body armor before going out on to the field and letting strong people knock you around. Taking tramadol before surgery is like protecting yourself against the pain. There is also the advantage that people are less afraid. People who go into the operating theater believing they will come out feeling pain turn the experience into a self-fulfilling prophesy. Taking trusted painkillers before surgery means less stress and faster recovery.