Hi everyone,

I just got a surgery date of Sept. 1. Now I'm just praying my insurance approves it. It should, but you know, something could go wrong if I don't worry about it 24/7, right?

My mom is planning to come up to be with me for the surgery and afterwards. How long do you think she'll need to stay assuming everything goes normally? I'm young, otherwise healthy, and the surgery is laparoscopic. I know I'll be in hospital for a couple days but after that, I mean.

Also, I'm a grad student and i'll be teaching two courses. My crappy department doesn't allow us to miss and if we absolutely have to, we have to find subs but nobody will sub. So the less I can miss of teaching, the better. All I'd have to do is sit in front of a class for about 3 hours two days a week. Do you think it's reasonable to expect o return 1 week after surgery?

Thanks for your advice!

Caroline

10 minutes ago, Caroline125 said:

Hi everyone,

I just got a surgery date of Sept. 1. Now I'm just praying my insurance approves it. It should, but you know, something could go wrong if I don't worry about it 24/7, right?

My mom is planning to come up to be with me for the surgery and afterwards. How long do you think she'll need to stay assuming everything goes normally? I'm young, otherwise healthy, and the surgery is laparoscopic. I know I'll be in hospital for a couple days but after that, I mean.

Also, I'm a grad student and i'll be teaching two courses. My crappy department doesn't allow us to miss and if we absolutely have to, we have to find subs but nobody will sub. So the less I can miss of teaching, the better. All I'd have to do is sit in front of a class for about 3 hours two days a week. Do you think it's reasonable to expect o return 1 week after surgery?

Thanks for your advice!

Caroline

Not sure which surgery you are getting, but going back to class 1 week after surgery *MIGHT* be a little much, but not "undoable"... as far as help, I didn't need much at all. There have been a handful of threads like this, most folks state they didn't need much help after returning home.

I didn’t need any help after surgery. I was in the hospital for only 18 hours and then I was released. An hour after surgery I was up and walking. The gas pain was so bad I walked the whole 18 hours with 15 minute breaks after each lap of the floor. I also didn’t get any medications to take home which was fine. I used Tylenol for about a week and didn’t need anything after that.
I will tell you I had planned to be out of work for 2 weeks, but I was actually out 3 and 1/2. I was just exhausted! It wasn’t pain, I was just tired all day, every day. It’s been 77 days and I still have less energy than I did before the surgery, but it gets better every day.
I had the sleeve, so I’m not sure how it was for people doing bypass or the switch. And everyone is different. But for me, there was no way I was going to be able to work 2 weeks after.
I wish you all the best!

Hi! I would say if there’s a lot you can do beforehand, such as shopping for foods you can eat, making sure you have plenty of water, vitamins, etc you won’t need too much help. If you are taking the pain medications you can’t drive, but I only did a day of that.

That is assuming all goes well. And as the person above noted, the biggest adjustment might be how dang tired you are from healing and eating low calorie. You will also likely have a lifting restriction.

In summary, you likely won’t need a lot of help for the first week since you’ll spend most of the time resting. It’s hard to plan to go back to work so soon because everyone reacts differently to the adjustment, but if it was for short periods of time you should be OK.

My mom helped me for about a week. I live alone so it was nice just to have someone there for moral support, to check on me, to bring me water,shakes, and popsicles from downstairs; and to figure out what meds I needed to take & when since I had all these new things to take (pain meds, nausea meds, gallstones prevention, acid reflux, stool softener...vitamins). I could have gone without help and recovered alone if I had to, but it was nice to have someone take care of me.

As people have said, everyone’s recovery is different. I had pain for about two weeks, but pretty manageable by around day 5. I was not expecting the first few days to be so rough. I think I thought it was going to be like getting a cavity filled, obviously never had surgery before lol. The first few days of gas pain in your chest and neck/ shoulders are NO JOKE! Nobody told me about this beforehand ... probably a good thing. Mom can give you shoulder rubs

I took off two weeks but probably could have physically managed the couple hours you are talking about in week 2 if I really had to. I was super tired, though, so work requiring me to put in a ton of prep and a lot of thinking would have been really tiring, if that makes sense.

Best of luck with your approval and surgery!