Pain tolerance varies on so many different factors. People don’t really understand there’s two pains that come from this surgery. One is the pain from the trauma, and two is the pain from the lengthening. Day after surgery I was on morphine and floating, laughing, and goofing off with all the nurses.
Day 2 they cut off my morphine and I felt the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Mind you - I have broken ribs, my nose, torn ACL’s, had my jaw shattered, etc. I have NEVER felt a pain like this in my life. The worst part? They wanted me walking day 2. Even the smallest slip of the walker would make me feel a shooting pain up my legs and my hips. Now, with that being said it got bette after about 5 days.
Then the lengthening pain came. At about 20mm my feet ballooned up, I was taking Percocet 3x a day and was still in remarkable pain. The nerve pain started after about 30mm, that felt like someone was electrocuting my legs from my tibias down to the points of my toes.
The worst part for me was the pain on top of the weird reaction I had to the pain medicine. I tapered off the Percocet, but was vomiting for 3 months after - morning and night. I lost 45lbs and I turned greyish/yellow from not eating or drinking anything. To this day my doctor claims he has never seen this in a patient. I was put on every damn anti nausea medicine that a doctor could prescribe. Nothing worked. Eventually it subsided and I could eat again.
I had to stop at 78mm because of a leg contracture in my left leg. Mind you I was a femur patient and I’m 9 months out, and still can’t bend my legs past 120 degrees.
Surgery pain 10/10
Lengthening pain 9/10
Throwing up: hell.