RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure: Devolution of Pain Into Annoyance as a Pain Management Tool

Imagine on day 28 after your hernia procedure the pain remains unwavering. It is on the low level of let’s say 4 or 5 out of ten. You have given up on your over-the-counter pain meds as how much more can your body tolerate and at a certain point they don’t seem to annihilate or lessen the pain.

Does your pain denigrate to an annoyance as you are so accustomed to it? Is this your mind’s way of pain management? It is a tool in your pain management kit. Good for your liver and kidneys? This presupposes annoyance is preferable to pain.

Sounds inane, does it?  Try it. You have nothing to lose but pain itself.

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure:  Recovery from Inguinal Hernia Surgery: The Terror of Anticipated Pain and Opioid Pain Relief

Dr. Google/ChatGPT explain the over-the-counter pain relief medications and the big guns like opioids the latter instilling, perhaps rightly so, terror of opioids.

I am sure you have your personal perceptions of the evils of opioids. On a scale of 1-10 my view is I’ll take post hospital when my pain scale is a 12/10. I had two doses of 2 mg Hydromorphone in the surgical recovery unit. They worked their wonder. I was asked if I wanted a third dose and declined. Two were the perfect remedy and a little light bulb popped in my head “warning me” another dose might take me a place I have never been before. I am uncertain what this meant but it was a warning.

I walked away from the hospital with 10 days of “over the counter” pain meds and some Hydromorphone. I took the entirety of the over counter pain meds and for the most part they effectively kept the pain at a 4/5 but one bad day at 8/10 all day long and at three in the morning it was tempting to crack open the Hydromorphone vial.

The terror of anticipated pain and of its remedy.

RKS Literature: White Police: Black Men (James Baldwin)

“Because I’m black and they paid to beat on black asses. But, with a kid your size, they just might get into trouble. So they let us go. They knew you weren’t nothing but a kid. They knew it. But they didn’t care. All black people are shit to them. You remember that. You black like me and they going to hate you as long as you live because you’re black. There’s something wrong with them. They got some type of disease. I hope to God it kills them soon.”

James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.

RKS 2025 Wine: A Graciano from Spain’s Navarra Appellation

Graciano is a spicy aromatic, intensely flavoured grape and is less tannic than Tempranillo and tends to oxidize easily. It is not capable of ageing for any extended period. It prefers cool clay-chalk soils and mild damp climates and dislikes drought and intense summer heat.

We try an Agramont Graciano from the Navarra appellation in Northeastern Spain.

Aroma: Big blast of blackberry, raspberry and black cherry with a hint of dark chocolate.

Palate: This Graciano has some tannins to it and it is a solid Boxerlike wine if this was “Animal Farm”. To the point. Not elegant. An entirely food worthy wine. Think of chalky raspberry. A bulky solid finish.

Personality: I am far from elegant having a non pretentious solidity built for food particularly lamb over the spit.

Cellarbility: Consume no later than Easter 2026 with lamb of course. Or with a lamb burger anytime!

Price: $16 CDN.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 89/100. Natalie MacLean Community Score 91. Decanter 2024 World Wine Awards 95.

(Agramont 2022 Graciano, D.O. Navarra, Agronavarra, Murchante, Spain, 750 mL, 14%).

RKS Literature: Eyes Upon Me (James Baldwin)

“These were the eyes of children stronger than me, who would steal my movie money; these eyes were the eyes of white cops, whom I feared, whom I hated with a literally murderous hatred; these eyes were the eyes of old folks who thought I was a sissy and who might wonder why I was on this avenue by myself. And these were the eyes of men and women going in and out of bars, or standing on the corners, who certainly had no eyes for me, but who occupied the centre of my bewildered attention because they seemed, at once, so abject and free.”

James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.

RKS Literature: The Younger Brother (James Baldwin)

“I think it may be easier to love the really helpless younger brother because he cannot enter into competition with one on one’s own ground, or on any ground at all, and can never question one’s role, or jeopardize one’s authority. In my own case, certainly, it did not occur to me until much later-to compete with Caleb. I could not have questioned his role or authority because I needed both. He was my touchstone, my model, and my only guide. But there is always, on the other hand, something in a younger brother which eventually comes to resent this. The day comes when he is wiling to destroy his older brother simply because he had depended on him so long. The day comes when he recognizes what a combination of helplessness, and hard-hearted calculation go into the creation of the role, and to what extent authority is a delicate, difficult, deadly game of chance.”

James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure: Recovery from Inguinal Hernia Surgery: PAIN AND SUFFERING

There would seem some consensus as to some of the temporal aspects of pain after inguinal hernia surgery and the bottom-line conclusion of expect some pain is not debatable! What is not so easily ascertained is the length and severity of the pain.

Pain is a relative concept. The degree of pain experienced by those in the Hernia Club graduating from inguinal hernia surgery differs based on many circumstances. How adept and experienced was your surgeon, your individual tolerance, your physical condition, your age and your mental approach to pain and suffering?

I have yet to encounter any commentary to the effect you jump off your bed post surgery pain free. The conventional wisdom is day one you are numbed out with anesthesia and perhaps some opioid relief immediately after surgery. Day two and three are supposedly the worst it is going to get and gradually by week six you are close to normal. You will discover the veracity of these pain generalizations. Odds are with the passage of time pain lessens but how quickly only you will discover. If it worsens time to contact your surgeon.

It may not be the case a younger person with a buff physique hop, skips and jumps through “the ring of fire”. The cut through a flabby body may be less of a shock to the body!

If you have experience with pain it perhaps you bear it better than a novice to pain.

As for pain avoidance after inguinal hernia surgery there are no free passes. There are pain management techniques.

RKS Literature: Your White Skin is the Problem (Andrea Levy)

“You know what your trouble is man?’ he said. ‘Your white skin. You think it makes you better than me. You think it give you the right to lord over a black man. But you know what it make you, man? It make you white. That is all, man. White. No better or worse than me-just white.”  

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Literature: A Venereal Gift From Calcutta (Andrea Levy)

“In the light of day, locked behind a toilet door, the enormous throbbing sore had produced a hat of pus. I felt it pop like a grape in my pants as I sat down to another meal of potato and sausage. It was ringed with a blue line clear as if drawn with a pencil. Once I saw its seeping pus matted into my pubic hair. And the next time I wrapped the sore in a bandage. It was unbearably itchy and clammy inside this wrapping. And useless-a small spot of yellow brown muck had soon stained it through. When I eventually unwrapped it, the bandage clung like paper to a sticky toffee. I bit the leather of my belt to stop me yelling out. I knew what this angry pustule on my penis was.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Literature: Syphilis WWII Style?

“The medical officer, on the boat when we first came out east, had warned us RAF recruits. Ulcers, inflammations, colourful discharge, swellings. All the result of sexual relations with the wrong type. He’d given us lectures. Colourful pictures were passed around. Lurid photographs. Quite shocking. Parts of the body unrecognizable as human. Turned some of the chaps a sorry shade of grey. Had them worried. Frowning. Thinking back. Stopped their bragging. One of them I recall, fainted-blamed seasickness. ‘Always use this, the MO had said. Took a sheath out of his pocket. Waved it around in the air.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.