So let's say you have the foot surgery on Monday. Though you've heard there's a lot of pain afterward, it turns out to be a not very big deal; you don't even feel it at first, and you think, for the millionth time, how you are a lot tougher than most people, how most people are wusses, and do you take the Vicodin once you get home from the hospital? No you do not; you do not need it! Your foot really feels fine...
Until about 8 PM, when there is what might be described as a niggling pain, really not much, so you take one Vicodin, and you fall asleep, with your foot propped up on two pillows so that sleeping is a little awkward, but heck, you sleep.
Until midnight, when you wake up to pain, what might be described as a really terrible pain, and you squint at the Vicodin bottle by the light of your cellphone, because you do not want to turn on the bedside lamp and wake up your husband, and you see you can take a pill every four hours, so it's time. But a whole pill? No, you do not want to do that. So you take half, and are awake again at one, when you take the other half, and at two-thirty, when you take a whole one, because you are in agony, and you think, for the millionth time, how dense you are, to not have realized the local anesthetic had not worn off when you were casting the rest of the human race on the unter-mensch pile.
At six, you're up, and things are terrible. You're whiting out, you're covered in cold sweat, your foot is throbbing and you really have to pee, and maybe barf. You wake up your husband and ask if he can bring you some bread, because the Vicodin is making you nauseous, and he helps you to the bathroom and then goes downstairs and brings you up a slice of bread, which you try to eat while sitting on the toilet, but your hands seem to have turned into bird claws, so you wind up making confetti of the bread and getting what you can in your mouth and then chewing while shallow-breathing; you think you might faint. You get back in bed and take another Vicodin.
During the next 24 hours, you sleep, waking only to take more Vicodin, which makes your face buzz and your brain thick and your lips chap and, maybe, causes the skin on the roof of your mouth to shred. Who cares. You sleep 16 of the next 24 hours, and when you wake up on Wednesday, you feel human, the pain has lessened; you can now alternate the Vicodin with Advil, and you have a really good day, until later in the day, when it occurs to you that you haven't gone to the bathroom since... hmm, since when? But it's not a big deal; it's not as though you're going anywhere, you're not even allowed out of bed, so you don't worry too much about it.
Until Thursday, when it's not so much a worry as an issue. Things that should be happening, are not. This is noticeable. Very noticeable. And so, in an effort to make things happen, you drink a lot of coffee, which, on top of the Vicodin and the Dramamine you have been taking for the nausea and to sleep (and which are chewable and orange and tiny and so you have probably taken one or three more than is absolutely necessary) makes you feel as though you're a electric sign on the fritz. You don't know if one eye is opening and closing spasmodically but it feels that way; you might in fact describe the way you feel as Scratchy on The Simpsons, just after Itchy electrocutes him.
Which is just about the time you get a call from one of your best friends, who wants to visit. You love this friend, and he's been out of town for months. You and he loll on your bed, where he tells you stories of his travels, hilarious stories, wonderful stories about food and women and wine, and you're lying there smiling and nodding, while inside you are thinking, when in god's name am I going to poop? And that the only feeling you can compare this to is when you were having a baby, except this time, the baby wants to be born out of your butt.
Thursday afternoon passes, slowly. You lie in bed trying to figure out what is going on. Do you have a waystation inside of you, a gathering point of which you've heretofore been unaware? A point that can fit something the size and density of a bowling ball?
Since there is no one with the possible exception of your mother who wants to hear about this issue, you call your husband and in your sweetest, lightest tone say, "Honey, darling, love of my life, on your way home from work could you pick me up some, um, laxative?" He chuckles, and says sure, and comes home with something called Women's Laxative, in a little pink box. You take two pills, and a third, for the heck of it, but no more Vicodin, no.
The next morning,the birds sing, and things that should have previously moved along, move along. And over the next few days, when friends call and email to ask, "How's the foot?" you say, fine, fine, all good, you haven't even taken any Vicodin since Thursday, which is good because of the, well, the side effects. Which is when every single friend says, oh my god, you mean the... And you say, yes, that, and why didn't anyone say anything?
So you do.