crutches question

[Cirobi]

Hey all,

This post is actually not for myself but on behalf of a college buddy of mine who just had knee surgery. She's taking percocet for the post-op pain and actually at a point where she's not needing to take it as frequently as the recommended dosing suggests. She's also on crutches for probably obvious reasons.

She posted on her LiveJournal asking if any of her pals had noticed while taking percocet any weird soreness in the shoulders and the back of the neck and this morning it spread to her shoulder blades and up into her forehead and cheeks. I wrote her back suggesting it might actually be from the crutches causing some kind of spinal disruption.

So, when I thought about it, I thought to myself "hey, maybe the lovely folks in the ADR community have an idea!" and thus I'm here.

If any of you have any thoughts on this, I'll pass them along to her. Thanks in advance!

~Sara

[Justin]

Hey Sara,

I hope your friend has a speedy recovery from knee surgery. IMHO, it sounds like the crutches are the reason for her complaints. They place the body in a very unnatural position and put a lot of stress on the shoulders, upper back and, of course, the thoracic and cervical spine.

Is she having any other problems? Any flushing, fever, etc? Is she on any other medications besides the percocet?

I hope she starts to feel better and I hope you are doing well too! Happy Holidays!

[annapurna]

I've spent as much as eight weeks at a time on crutches recovering from knee surgery. At the end of that time everything hurt. The surgeon released me to come off crutches two days after I started having problems with trigger finger due to pain and damage to my hands from the crutching. If she's still got a significant amount of time on crutches I'd suggest that she rent a set with a completely different configuration. I used forearm crutches mostly but had a pair of the conventional underarm crutches that I used occasionally to change the loading around and let parts of my body rest a bit.

[Cirobi]

Thanks to both of you. My friend says thank you as well. She actually hadn't thought that the crutches might be causing her discomfort but it made sense when I relayed the suggestion that it was. She's only taking the percocet and an occasional ibuprofen, so she's pretty sure it's not a weird drug interaction.

Thanks again