It’s been one week since I had surgery to repair my hernia. This is considered to be about the most minor surgery one can have. I was in the hospital for less than four hours, and on the table for 45 minutes. I went into the surgery expecting to be out of work for a couple of days, and back to working out within a couple of weeks.
Reality check: This past week has been about the most miserable week I can recall in my adult life, physically speaking. The first three days I spent stoned on Percocet, in pain, and unable to move. Every night when the percs wore off, I would wake up in agony, and drag myself into the bathroom to take more pills. After three days, I stopped taking the Percs because the unpleasant side effects(constipation, nausea) were bothering me greatly. The next few days were spent in more pain. I walked one block on Friday and felt like crap afterwards. I went out with friends on Saturday, and putting on pants was excruciating. Yesterday, I saw my surgeon, and he removed my staples. He told me that I was healing up nicely, and that I should not work out for the rest of the month. He said that in January I could go back to my normal routine.
When I asked him about the research I did online, and the ‘minimally invasive surgery’, the shorter recovery times, and so on, associated with the mesh technique he used, his response was, “They do make it sound glamorous, don’t they?” For reference, this guy is the chief GI surgeon at the hospital, and a teaching surgeon for a few universities. He went on to point out a few things that I had overlooked in my zeal and quest for a solution:
- Surgery is still surgery. You need time to recovery properly, or else you won’t heal right. Oh, and it hurts, too.
- The phrase “normal activity” does not in any way refer to what you and I, as athletes, consider to be normal. From the perspective of a regular person, I am back to normal activities; that is, I can drive, walk around, and do most anything that does not involve lifting.
- I am in “at least the top 5%” of people the surgeon sees, from a health perspective. Therefore, the surgery has a much greater impact on me than it does on someone for whom physical activity is not a major part of their life.
Another lesson learned is that all the internet research in the world will not help you in some instances. You can read all you want, learn as much as possible to go into a situation with your eyes open, but ultimately, there are some things that can’t be browsed away, some things are unpleasant, but must be endured. Having surgery is one such thing. You can perform the due diligence necessary to give you piece of mind, but you still need to realistically prepare yourself for what will inevitably be an unpleasant experience in the short term.
I look forward to swimming, biking, and running, but for now, I’m glued to my PS2.