This is a question I get asked a lot!
First off, everyone's experience is different, but for the majority of people I've talked to the answer is an overwhelming "no."
I've had a lot of surgeries over my 45 years including:
- Impacted wisdom teeth at 15
- Exploratory emergency abdominal surgery for a long ruptured appendix at 19
- Hand surgery for Dupytren's Contracture at 33
- Bilateral varicose vein removal from both legs at 35
- Nasal surgery for septum repair and turbinate reduction at 36
- Right shoulder rotator cuff repair at 38
- Surgical biopsy of the right lung at 41
- Double lung transplant at 43
Which one of them hurt the most? Believe it or not, the rotator cuff repair was by far the worst pain after surgery that I've ever had, lung transplant was a walk in the park (pain wise) compared to the rotator cuff.
I remember the first morning I was awake after surgery (maybe day two?) and a doctor asked me "On a scale of 1 to 10 how much pain are you in?" and I held up a ZERO sign with my hands (I was intubated and unable to speak). When it comes to pain, I'm not a tough guy--especially if I'm in the hospital, but I truly felt zero pain after my surgery where I had an incision across my chest that went armpit to armpit...I was even surprised!
There's a few reasons why, medications, advancements in surgery, and little hero called a nerve block, where a medication is administered to block all signal from the nerves that might be sending pain signal from that area.
In fact, day after day went by and I still had no pain. Granted I was being given pain medications even though I wasn't asking for them, but I truly felt no pain from the incision site. Later on when they lowered the medications and I started being more mobile I did notice that I had some substantial rib pain in a few spots, especially when I coughed, which was due to some cracked ribs that happened during the procedure. The surgeons try to be nice, but lung transplant is an incredibly invasive procedure and sometimes things like broken or cracked ribs happen, and cracked ribs are not fun when you need to cough, which you will do many times during your recovery (it helps clear mucus.)
In fact, to this day, 14 months after my lung transplant the area around my scar is almost completely numb, with no sensation for an inch or two around the scar. I can't feel one of my nipples, and the other I have only slight sensation...as a man this probably won't bother most, but women might be affected by this (hey, we need to be real here). I don't know if the incision site is different on women, but for me it is about 1.5-2 finger widths beneath my nipples.
Now, I don't want to guarantee that it's going to be completely painless and a cakewalk. Everyone's experiences vary. Lung transplant was by far the most difficult thing I've gone through in my life, but the pain itself was the easiest part, and remember, for me a rotator cuff surgery done through 3 tiny holes was significantly more painful!
I will say that the worst part of the hospital part of lung transplant recovery was being so incredibly weak and being generally uncomfortable from being hooked up to so many machines and laying in bed most of the time for the first week. But, that's not pain related!
