Hi Everyone,
I am due to have a hearing implant fitted in my head/skull next week. I will be put to sleep during the surgery and I'll be able to go home on the same day as I am a daycase, so we aren't talking major surgery here!! But still, it doesn't take much to trigger a Lupus flare as we know!! So was wondering if any of you have any lived experience you could share about minimising the risk of a Lupus flare post-op?
I had ear surgery last year which unfortunately triggered a massive Lupus flare in me postoperatively. Ideally, I'd like to take as many precautions/steps as physically possible to avoid this happening again as it was awful and it lasted for months - admittedly I wasn't on any medication for my Lupus at the time though, this has now changed.
My rheumatologist has advised my surgeon to add a shot of steroids when they put me to sleep for the surgery, so that's one thing covered. I am having 1.5weeks off work to recover from the surgery - this is what a 'normal' person should have as recovery time apparently according to my Doctor, but I suspect it will take me longer - as it always does - but I've decided that I'm not rushing back to work if I still need time to recover, those 'rush back to work due to the guilt' days are long gone!!
I take a daily maintenance dose of 7.5mg prednisolone, so that should help too. I also take 200mg Hydroxychloroquine twice a day.
Anyone any thoughts? Any post-op experiences where they've successfully managed to dodge the dreaded flare?
Any help/thoughts/advice will be greatly appreciated
Sarah xx
Good question! Glad you asked! Am preparing for neurosurgery and would’ve posted asking this if you hadn’t. I have heard we should up our pred a few days before surgery...am on 10mg maintenance pred (+ 1000mg myco + hydroxy + other meds for other aspects) and have the ok to increase to 20mg for several weeks before tapering back down again when i need analgesic help re L4 nerve root stenosis. So am wondering whether this protocol applies to surgery...
Looking forward to following your discussion ❤️🍀 Coco