Thanks folks, I'm asking this because mom is very concerned with the pain meds given my history with addiction. Furthermore, my MO seems to think that someone like me should have less pain meds as opposed to more. When actually, after using a narcotic pain med for only a few days, an addict will be right where he was while using as far as tolerance is concerned. This is not to say that precautions should not be taken, but suffering through this for the last 3 weeks is not the way to go. In hind site what I should have done was to hold off for as long as I could at the beginning, start pain management with tylenol, move to an Ultram type of alternative, and only go narcotic when it was borderline beyond necessary. That might have shaven a week off my total time on the opiate.