Four weeks ago when the surgeon was briefing me on what to expect from my lung operation, he said, “This is very painful surgery.”  That’s about as heartening as hearing the pilot of your airplane say, “Oh shit!”  You expect the worst.  Well, the surgeon was right, to an extent.  Actually the surgery was painless, I didn’t feel a thing and I was pumping myself with so much morphine the first night I don’t remember much of that either.  It is when you leave the hospital armed only with a little bottle of pain pills you have to administer yourself that your duel with pain begins.  The first couple days I was popping two pills of oxycodone every four hours, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to do so.  But then the pain reached what I considered a tolerable level so it was down to a personal battle between pain and me.  I don’t like to take medicines. So in defiance, I stopped the pills because the pain was no longer continuous.  It only came unexpectedly with really horrendous stabs in my back.  Because I decided not the take the oxycodone it reminded me of the old joke:  “Why are you banging your head against the wall,” the first guy asked.  “Because if feels so good when I stop,” the other guy responded.  Well, the sharp pains are over quickly, it feels good when it stops and I am still standing so I win.  Now the bigger problem is just an annoyance.  The surgeon said he was going to “freeze” the nerves in my chest area which supposedly make it less painful.  But what is has done is given me the annoying sensation that I have grown an upper beer belly that is pressing against my breast bone.  What bothers me is that I have a new beer belly without the benefit of drinking the beer.  Now that is really painful.