Following the ablation procedure I had on Nov. 16th, I wrote that I didn’t have any of the predicted complications. Turns out I’ve had some unpredicted challenges.

I’ve been having a lot of pain in one spot in my lower back for about 5 days. It started out only at night, and then became continuous. Of course it got worse on the holiday week-end when no doctors were working. I filled my Norco prescription and it helped a lot, but I still wasn’t able to sleep at night because of the pain. Seems like the pain is worse when I’m lying down so my best remedy is to walk around or sit at my computer.

I talked to the on-call doctor on Saturday and he told me to take more pain meds and call the office on Monday morning. If it got worse, go to the ER. A friend stayed with me Saturday and Sunday nights in case that happened.

Monday I had a CT scan and saw a doctor. He said the pain is from the sensitive lining of my lung that is trying to deal with the dead tissue from the ablation. It’s irritated and inflamed. There is also some fluid around the lung. I got some stronger pain meds (Percoset) to take at night, and was told it should get better in 7 to 10 days. I also need to take Ibuprofen to help lower the inflammation. So I’ll be taking three different pain meds and shouldn’t drive or make any important decisions this week.

My own doctor isn’t working this week so I saw one of his partners on Monday. He seemed to think this was a pretty normal reaction to the ablation. When I see my doctor next week, one question will be why he didn’t warn me about this possibility. It was pretty scary to go through the week-end without knowing what was causing the intense pain.

I’m writing this at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning as I try to lessen the pain by not lying down. The stronger meds didn’t give me much more sleep. I have an appointment to see Lisa, my magical physical therapist, Tuesday. Hopefully she can give me a strategy for activating the healing process. Your prayers are appreciated.