surgery woes

My surgery date is June 16th. I am scared. I have never had surgery or children for that matter. I hope I can handle the pain. I am having a lap RNY. I am a nurse. I wonder if I should be able to go back to work after one month.

I think it is very normal to be scared. I'd never had any major surgery before, either. I had a morphine pump in the hospital and then liquid lorcet for pain meds afterward. I had the most post-op pain from a cut sensory nerve that lead from my back, around my left side and stopped at the largest of my 5 incisions. That was intermittent, lasted around 3 weeks. I'm betting you will need more time than 1 month due to the nature of your work. You need to be able to lift, and I would think it might take more time to fully heal before you do too much of that. good luck, Sue O.

Hey, Emily. I'm a fellow nurse and I live very close to you, too. I had lap RNY 3 weeks ago now and I'm going back to work next week. I work in long term care right now, which is pretty physically demanding, but I think I should be able to handle it. The main issue I think is FATIGUE! I get tired pretty quickly, and I think that's going to be difficult for a while, but I live alone and really need to get back to work. Money is a GOOD thing. E-mail me sometime and maybe I'll go see you while you are in the hospital.

On the pain issue, they were giving me morphine at first while I was in the hospital and it was helping. Eventually they moved to liquid tylenol with codeine and it worked pretty well too. I went home with liquid lortab, and it tastes nasty. I took it for a few days and have been okay since. If you want an angel, I would be willing to be your angel.

I had open RNY and went back to working the trauma room within 3 weeks of surgery. I am a RN as well. The pain for me even with open was minimal and I quit pain meds in the hospital. That being said, we all know everyone is different. I have had other lap procedures and the pain was annoying but not debilitating. Good luck on your journey! Traci

My surgery date is June 15th, I'm also having the lap RNY. I'm not scared YET. For me, I work at a factory and my surgeon said that I probably wont go back to work for 6 weeks. Good luck.