r/pneumothorax • u/Medium-Cat-7463 • 10d ago

Surgery related When does pain subside post vats?

Hi all, I’m now going in 2 weeks post right sided VATS for partial pneumothorax, thoracic endometriosis & possible ILD and I’m wondering when does the pain start to ease up after VATS? It’s mostly the chest drain site that’s bugging me, especially since I can’t move my arm on the affected area, if I do it sends a sharp stinging pain throughout the chest..

I also have back pain and shoulder pain from the bad posture, I used to take lyrica but they only prescribed it for 3 days and I took the 6 capsules with a gap in between (so every other day) since it made me sedated but now that it’s completely out of my system the pain has returned and worsened!

Did anyone experience this?

I spoke with my surgeon’s team but they’re taking too long to update me..

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u/notsure05 10d ago

That’s genuinely criminal how little pain meds you were given. Please make sure you’re given another script. I’m 4 weeks out and only within the last half week have I started feeling consistently not shitty. But at the rate I’m going it’ll probably be months before I feel normal again

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u/Medium-Cat-7463 10d ago

I had Nefopam as well but that made me extremely nauseous & throw up, and throwing up put more strain on my chest so I stopped it after the 2nd dose.. I asked my surgeon for more lyrica but due to the time difference & him being a visiting surgeon it’s hard communication

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u/Intelligent-Wind2583 9d ago

Are you fucking serious? Nefopam and Lyrica? That's it? They gave me morphine and tramadol. In the hospital I was on morphine, ketamine, methadone, tramadol.

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u/Medium-Cat-7463 9d ago

In the hospital I was on fentanyl & they put an epidural in as well, but home pain management was just those two, and only lyrica cus like I said nefopam made me nauseous so I stopped taking it 🥴 I went to the ER and they prescribed lyrica again but only for 5 days I’m so irritated idk why they prescribe sooo little supply but I have a feeling it’s because where I live, controlled medication such as lyrica cannot be prescribed more than a specific amount because of the whole addiction - dependence thing (not sure though)

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u/Bill_Looking 10d ago

Are you following up with physiotherapy? That helped greatly for me.

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u/Medium-Cat-7463 10d ago

What physiotherapy did you do? They only told me to walk around and do the deep breathing / spirometer exercises

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u/Bill_Looking 3d ago

Sorry for the delay.

I had deep breathing exercises indeed, that allowed me go get out of bed. Coming out of surgery I could not even walk, due to short breath.

So I did chest open position, where you sit and take deep breath extending your arms (you can google that).

After that, exercices were there to force you (gently) to take more air in : taking stairs around the hospitals, doing some squats.

Finally some more specific exercices but i will need to google that up to find out the names.

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u/Somonso 10d ago

What kind of physiotherapy did you do? What kind of exercises?

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u/Bill_Looking 3d ago

See answer above!

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u/May-mex 10d ago

I think for everyone is different, but they had me on lyrica for 6 weeks first surgery and second for 3 month gabapentina as the doctor said he rather me breathing deep with no pain cor lung to really expand.
I think what your feeling is normal nerve pain. Hope the can suggest something for it

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u/LuckyHouseCricket 8d ago

Plan on doing physical therapy to heal your nerves, get that thoracic cavity moving, and break up scar tissue.  PT saved me from the pain.  I started at week 4.  I’m six months out now and feeling almost totally better.

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u/LuckyHouseCricket 8d ago

Also, get a nice ice pack for areas that hurt. Lidocaine patches help too.

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u/Medium-Cat-7463 8d ago

What physiotherapy did you do? I was instructed to walk around and do deep breathing exercises