There is a time and place for this, but be careful!
The other day, in yet another abortive attempt to organize stuff around here, I was rooting through the things on the top shelf in my medicine cabinet and stumbled across that old bottle of ***Vicodin Painkiller*** again. This keepsake from surgery a few years ago shows no sign of going away. I'm afraid to empty the contents down the toilet and I especially don't want to take a chance tossing it out with my garbage as I have been told that ***Vicodin*** is a "hot" street drug, that some people will almost kill for it. As for me, I wouldn't touch this stuff again with a ten-foot pole. ***Vicodin*** is effective as a painkiller but the side effects can be so severe that I don't understand how someone can live long enough to really work up a serious ***Vicodin*** habit. **Pain Killers are Important Today** There was a time, years ago, when it was understood that a person who had been operated on would regain consciousness in a state of pain. This pain was to be expected and the patient remained in the hospital, sometimes for days at a time, to be nursed and especially monitored as far as use of painkillers were concerned. You could only have so many drugs and only at certain times no matter how you might plead or whine. In this modern age of same-day surgery (where a patient may leave for home within a couple hours after an operation), painkillers are especially important because it is of vital importance for a patient to be able to get up and walk out, usually clutching a prescription for ***Vicodin*** in one hand and a few tablets to get through the night or until a friend can get the prescription filled. Part of the post-op routine today is to be so sedated that pain doesn't kick in at all until several hours after the operation. All this is well and good but does entail a certain amount of risk. Some drugs, like ***Vicodin***, can be very dangerous. **What We Have Here** Each ***Vicodin Painkiller*** white elliptical tablet contains the active ingredients Hydrocodone Bitartrate and Acetaminophen. Inactive ingredients are colloidal silicon dioxide, starch, croscarmellose sodium, dibasic calcium phosphate, magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose, povidone, and steric acid. **Side Effects** No one can deny that ***Vicodin*** is an effective painkiller but it also packs dangerous side effects, foremost of which is that it is extremely addictive. Take too much and getting enough ***Vicodin*** may be the sum and purpose for the rest of your life, long after your surgical wound has healed. Also lining up as potential hazards are dizziness and nausea. Here's another thing you might not find on the Internet under this drug's side effects -- when i was in the hospital, the nurses warned me that ***Vicodin*** could cause serious constipation. I pooh-poohed this (pardon the expression) and didn't really think it would happen to me but it did. Though I only took a total of three Vicodins during the course of two days, I still ended up being constipated for more than a week! It sounds funny, I know, but I thought that I was literally going **to die from being constipated**. **Just Between You and Me** I'm **not** a doctor and even if I was, I wouldn't presume to give anyone but my own patient medical advice on post-op recovery but here is what **my** doctor told me, just between him and me -- that Extra Strength Excedrin works just as well as ***Vicodin Painkiller*** and is much less dangerous. That's the only thing I took during recovery from my last surgery and it worked out beautifully.
AnnaBanana
Oak Park, IL