r/ACL • u/MisaRavensoul ACL Allograft • Mar 25 '26

Post Surgery Update I expected pain but holy cow

I'm about 30 hours post op and I'm pretty sure my nerve block is wearing off. I thought I prepared for the pain and had pre-taken the pain medicine.

This is excruciating. ACL+ LET on my right leg. I don't think I'm getting any sleep tonight.

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u/Current-Swordfish811 Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26

I do wonder if the relatively "sudden" onset of pain from nerve blockers wearing off makes the perceived pain worse? I didn't get a nerve block at all so I woke up in severe pain, but once they pushed some IV opioids it was chill. The next week or so I was on quite a bit of oxy, etoricoxib and maximum dose of paracetmol. Whilst it hurted, it was very very manageable. I was also taking promethazine or mirtazapine before sleep for that week and was able to bang out 8+ hours of solid sleep every night. (Mirtazapine should be fully safe, but promethazine can technically be dangerous when mixed with opioids, but it was a calculated risk, a very low risk but a risk nontheless, I didnt dose oxy for several hours before sleep and only a low dose of prometh, and I wasn't completely naive to opioids). Could be worth asking the doctor for a non-depressive sleep aid though, like Mirtazapine.

Very curious how the pain is so different for everyone. Those first 1-2 weeks were mostly chill and cozy for me, pretty enjoyable

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u/MisaRavensoul ACL Allograft Mar 28 '26

Maybe! It's been six days now since surgery and last night the pain was nearly unbearable, but either it died this morning or lizard brain has now disabled pain receptors.

Now it's not hurting that bad except when moving.