My grandfather was an open-heart surgeon. In the days following surgery, he would always insist that his patients get up and take a short walk. They would not want to, but he insisted that this was an important and valuable part of recovery (in several dimension) and that they needed to push past resistance and force themselves to do it.
Later in life, he underwent a surgery requiring general anesthesia and found himself in the same position. He said, "If I had known it was like that, I would not have made them do it."
So I think the surgeon's personal experience of the situation is -- in fact -- highly relevant in practice, even if not in theory.
I'm not sure we should forgo pain management after major surgeries, but the benefit of getting up and walk even just 50m a few times a day is well documented. So no, it isn't fun, but it is a highly beneficial thing to do.
As human as that anecdote is, there are a long list of issues here. In particular, was the original idea that it would be a valuable part of the recovery in error?
It is easy for me to imagine a pain that I would never voluntarily experience or inflict (this isn't even a very profound level of pain, I don't like suffering even in small doses). This threshold is regularly breached and I often come out of it as an improved person.
Sometimes, and I'm thinking doctors and the military when I say this, people end up in situations where choices must be made. The situations are not emergencies and the choices affect other people in ways that the decider might not willingly accept for themselves. This is an unfortunate fact of the world not being a nice place.
I had my gallbladder removed a few years ago. It required a major incision and I was in the hospital for five days after surgery. I had to get up and walk a lap around the hallway a few times a day. I felt it get easier every day, but those first few times were excruciating.
It was good that they made me do it—by the last day, I was starting to develop nerve pain from so much sitting, propped up in the hospital bed. Walking was torture, but so was sitting.
I was reading "Dr. Mutter's Marvels" a while back. The eponymous surgeon was working around the time that anesthesia was being invented in the US, and it talks a bit about how some competing traditionalists believed that pain needed to be part of the actual bone-sawing surgery itself. (Also a natural part of all childbirth, with biblical overtones.)
Note that this is the exact opposite of the advice given in the article: you're told to ignore the pain and take walk, whereas the article states that the pain warns you to not disturb the healing process.
My grandfather was an open-heart surgeon. In the days following surgery, he would always insist that his patients get up and take a short walk. They would not want to, but he insisted that this was an important and valuable part of recovery (in several dimension) and that they needed to push past resistance and force themselves to do it.
Later in life, he underwent a surgery requiring general anesthesia and found himself in the same position. He said, "If I had known it was like that, I would not have made them do it."
So I think the surgeon's personal experience of the situation is -- in fact -- highly relevant in practice, even if not in theory.