Pain after colectomy

I do not want to sugar coat it, the pain after surgery is pretty intense. Mine was mostly cramping initially, but in the days following, there was a lot of pain at the incision site. That said, I was up and moving within 24 hours. The hardest for me, was the initial moments after waking up - I didn't know what to expect. The other really difficult part was getting up from the bed the first few times. Step 1 was rough for me, simply because I didn't know what to expect (I had a 3 step jpouch procedure). I had a variety of medications, Diludid, muscle relaxers and a nerve blocker directly into my abdomen. The pain team managed the pain quickly after I woke up, then I slept. To put things in perspective, three days later, I felt well enough to go home.

You also have to take into consideration, people have different pain tolerances. Mine is high. Also, people have different individual situations that can make surgery easier or harder and you will not know how your surgery will go until they open you up. Mine was pretty textbook.

I had an epidural with an open colectomy (they had to cut me fully open), I was surprised how little pain that I had, it was more just stiff to move and definite discomfort. I was off all pain meds pretty quickly and back at work the following week. 4/10

When I had my j-pouch built then I was in a bunch of pain the first 48 hours but then it gradually went away, I'd say 7/10 and I had an epidural.

I don't know what you're doing whether it is just a colectomy or if you are a candidate for a j-pouch and having that done with your colectomy at the same time.

YMMV about the pain judging by our 3 posts but we all survived.

With good pain management you should never see 10/10 pain or anything close. With bad pain management, there is every chance you will. That's the sort of thing I imagine private hospitals do quite well, but NHS hospitals fall short on: it's too rigid and bureaucratic. Also, the pain relief schedule was ridiculous: you'd get your last pain relief of the day at 10pm and then have to wait until 8 or 9am for your next dose, which is far too long a gap for severe pain. (And believe me, having your stomach muscles sliced open is pure agony and will remain so for a week afterwards. The other posters obviously got decent pain relief the entire time.)

An epidural is the best painkiller of all; I felt absolutely nothing, not even the smallest twinge, when I had one. Then the needle worked its way out in the middle of the night and the incompetent night doctor took hours to get any pain relief to me...

A morphine pain pump is good, but my hospital whisks that way after about a day. Then you're left to the vagaries of the drug round and hoping it's not two hours late.