Wow! What a great strain of responses! Thank you everyone who replied. This is such a great question. First, I am sooo happy that your daughter's surgery went so well. Thank God! Second, I had a very similar experience. Part of it is the pain medication. Not that it masks the pain of the headaches. Rather, opiates work on the pleasure part of the brain. Hence, for me, once I started weaning off the dilodid and then the vicodan, all the emotions hit. And yes, Beeba is absolutely correct; this surgery is a very, very traumatic experience. Hence, part of it is facing the post-traumatic stress - which it sounds like you and your daughter are doing in a very, very healthy way! Yet another sign of her resilience! You might want to just look over some of the dynamics of post-trauma experiences at this website to familiarize yourself and have a frame of reference for how people respond psychologically to trauma: http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/dsm-iv-tr-ptsd.asp The difference is: your daughter does not have a "disorder" ... she is simply experiencing the stress after a very, very traumatic experience.
For me, it was hard because everyone around me was so happy that the headaches were gone and I "looked great" and "hadn't been so good in years." Then, all of a sudden, I was an emotional train wreck. I went through periods of elation followed by feeling like a beaten dog from an animal shelter waiting for the next swat (or headache and unrelenting fatigue in this case). All the feelings of helplessness from the surgery came flooding in too.
At this point, I am feeling a lot of grief resulting from the past four and a half years of illness, being dismissed and devalued by the medical community, family, and friends who (with good intentions) constantly told me to suck it up and get over it. And, the grief over the loss of at least the last two years of my professional life and four years of my personal life. Now, the emotional responses of your daughter will be different, like maybe the loss of having "normal" teenage years, but the losses are real none-the-less. This is called ambiguous grief. These are losses that are hard to quantify and name but they are very, very real. Remember the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. These do not happen in a linear fashion. But you have already seen the denial pre-op and the depressive download of crying, if she gets angry at some point ... help her channel it into healthy outlets and not point it at you (we tend to dump our anger in the safest places – the ones that we love the most). So, all of the emotions are completely “normal” and that she is expressing them, sharing them, and processing them, texting them, is absolutely real and healthy. All you can really do is be present, let her dump her bucket, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY EMPATHIZE WITH HER.
If the onslaught of feelings seems like "too much, too fast" emotionally, valium happens to be a great muscle relaxant and might help her manage the anxiety and process all of the emotion a little more incrementally. However, you might want to ride it out a little before making that choice. Also, taking short walks, outside if possible with the weather, will help her brain chemistry get back on keel. Most of all, since she just has surgical pain, maybe this is a blessing because if she was still amped up, it might be hard for her take it slow and let the physical healing continue. Wishing you deep peace and your daughter continued healing, Fr. D