Lobectomy Pain 5 weeks post surgery

Hi Bb20258265d1 I am sorry to hear you are still in pain after your lobectomy.  Everyone’s experience with surgery is different, but you have had major surgery, so I am not surprised you are still sore. Hopefully the naproxen will help. You did the right thing going to the doctors, any new pain you are experiencing or if this pain gets worse, do seek medical help again just in case there is an infection. 

Hello Bb29258265d1, I'm sorry that you are experiencing pain and glad you've seen a doctor. I hope the medication is working. With my surgery I found the drain site most painful, with the damaged nerve pain sore and troubling. My doctor gave me some lidocaine cream, which helped. But whilst I was reluctant to take pain medication I had to give in. My physio gave me very gentle exercises to help get me moving and they really helped.

I asked my doctor on Wednesday if there was any cream she could prescribe. She said they discontinued it. 

Hi lovely, I know exactly how your feeling as I am 1 year post RLL, The most important thing is to get your pain under control, I was at my worst 6 weeks post Op. Walking back and forth to the bathroom was a chore in itself, I was still on morphine but reduced it myself and  to oramorph but took paracetamol regular, before the pain set in, Every ones experience is different also depends what surgery you had, ( I have a lovely scar across my right shoulder)Everything is healing from inside and then theres the nerve pain which contributes to it all, 

Its really getting me down. Nothing helps. I just feel so upset. 

Hi,

Sorry to hear you are in pain, it will get you down having ongoing pain.

I had something similar and I completely understand what you are going through, but that was 36 year's ago. I had stage 2 right breast cancer that had spread into my lymph nodes. I could not raise my right arm for about a month after surgery, which was a wide local excision and removal of axillary lymph nodes. I needed to be able to raise my arm to enable the radiotherapy beam to do its job in my right armpit. I had daily physiotherapy, which was very painful, this entailed the physiotherapist physically forcing my arm in an upwards position, that lasted for three weeks before I could raise my arm just enough to be able to have the radiotherapy. I also had longstanding neuropathic pain which felt like electric shocks going across the breast, shoulder and right arm. Apparently I had a lot of nerve damage in the breast tissue and armpit.

Fast forward thirty odd years, I was diagnosed with left upper lobe lung cancer stage 1 in August 2023. I was offered surgery, but, because of past experience with surgery and recovery time, plus I now live alone, I refused surgery and requested radiotherapy alone as I did not want to go through that again. I was lucky in that the lung cancer was early stage and I was able to have targeted radiotherapy (SABR), eight sessions done over two and a half weeks, which produced the same positive result, so my oncologist told me, than the invasive surgery.

I hope things begin to settle down for you soon, although the neuropathic pain will drag on as the pain sensors in the damaged nerves need to heal. I know you will not be able to visualise it at the moment, but there will come a day when all this discomfort and pain will be a distant memory.

Very best wishes.

Ann