I had a comment today by Maria that I thought would work great as a blog post instead of me just commenting for her. It’s about post-surgery issues in regards to going back to work. Here is her comment & questions below:

Thank you for all the useful comments and info.

I miss 1 major: I am in business, and would like to know:

1. When could you be again efficient in work? I need to be highly productive asap, and not be miserable
2. How to deal in business dinners.
3. By being over 10 hours per day at work, my colleagues see me more than my family. Q: How can you keep the procedure and the new way of eating discret w/o too many comments?
4. How many weeks after the surgery is reasonable to have business trips (fly abroad)?

Take care and your answers will really help
Maria

Great questions Maria and thanks for commenting! I want to answer all these but let me state this first on my work. I run a business, which is a IT consultancy business for financial institutions, and spend a great amount of time running the business, spend lots of the time on the computer, and with clients on site. And it was pretty important to me to be able to get back to work ASAP.

OK, let’s get into her questions:

When could you be again efficient in work?

1) My doctor suggested giving yourself at least a week AFTER you get out of the hospital before getting back to work related activities. Now, if you’re working construction or something very physical it might need to be longer but for me, he suggested a week.

What I actually did was since our company is a technology company and are very web-oriented I was able to work out of the house from the day I got home. I did have to take more breaks than usual during the day but I was at least able to get stuff done.

How to deal in business dinners.

2) I actually had this happen to me twice within two weeks from my surgery when I was on a liquid diet at the time. The first time I just didn’t say anything and tried to say I wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t all that hungry, stayed chatty. The second time I took another approach. I was completely honest about it. I realized that I can’t be ashamed about my procedure, I have to embrace it. So when the waitress came up I said, “Hi there, I just had gastric bypass surgery and can only have liquid based food, what do you recommend?” I ended up with French Onion soup (just the broth)…the clients were totally cool with it.

How can you keep the procedure and the new way of eating discret w/o too many comments?

3) I know how you feel there, I feel like my employees are part of our family. Again, I would just be honest about it, they are going to notice the weight loss anyway (I promise you). If you aren’t honest about it, they might start thinking your anorexic or on crack!

How many weeks after the surgery is reasonable to have business trips (fly abroad)?

4) You might check with your doctor on this one because my doctor wanted me up and walking around at least every hour so a real long trans-atlantic type of trip might hinder your healing. You might could get up and walk the aisles I suppose but I felt ok to do that sort of stuff after a week or two.

I should also mention that my procedure was laproscopically done, if the surgery is a fully open surgery, your healing time will be far longer.

Anyways, great questions and I hope that helps out!

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