I am curious how long you got off from work after the lap band?

I have very good disability through work and want it to last as long as it can, but I am also curious how long it took to feel good enough to go back to work.

It depends on many factors...you, how quickly you recover, how good your surgeon is, how physically demanding your job is! You really can't judge by us, but your surgeon should be able to give you an average of how long his patients are out (and how long he'll sign off for, so you can get your "disability")

I was attending nursing school (53 years old, top weight 405) when I got mine and I had surgery on Friday, was back in class that next Tuesday. I had a VERY easy recovery, though (even though it was my 2nd surgery in a month.) Not all recover so quickly.

I have to say after reading a lot of peoples stories on this site I vastly underestimated my recovery time. Luckily my surgeon will not approve anyone to return to work until their two week post op appointment. I could have worked a week after surgery, but I'm glad I took the extra week off. I would say take as much time as you can- even if you feel great physically there's a lot to get your head around mentally after surgery. Good luck!

I've read posts where quite a few people go back to work after a few days. I even read where one person went back to work the next day! Everyone's experience is different. If I HAD to, I probably could have gone back to work after a week, maybe even earlier. Its easy to push papers around on a desk job. But a second week was nice. My head was still a bit foggy from the anesthesia, which cleared up after 3 weeks. For me, beyond that is vacation.

I took 10 working days, which wound up equaling (sp?) 16 days off for me with regular days off in the middle. I was going to go back sooner, after the first week. But I had a complication, my body decided it didnt like the dissolvable stitches. So you know how when you heal, it itches? Well, I thought thats all it was at first. Then it got insane! I went in and they gave me a short few days worth dose of prednisone.

My job is sitting on the phones all day, so it's not like it's physically strenuous. But mentally... it can be from time to time. 911 calls, you never kow what's on the other end of the line.