Surgery Went Quick, Recovery A Bit Less So
Reflections on postponing work, meetings, classes, and commitments
Today marks my third day of recovery after undergoing a surgery to have my gallbladder removed. Given my earlier conversations with the surgeon, I had anticipated a somewhat quicker recovery, at least in terms of being able to resume light work. Doing anything physically demanding is out for a while. For the time being, I’m not to lift anything more than 10 pounds, but I was encouraged to be up and about, climb stairs, and even take short walks if I felt up to it.
In general, I’m a fairly active person, but I was prepared for these sorts of restrictions on exercise and physical work, knowing that it’s important to heal up properly. I anticipated that other sorts of less bodily demanding work might be difficult to engage in for a bit, for example shooting new videos standing in front of my chalkboard, so I strove to “bank up” a few videos in advance of the surgery.
I didn’t think it all that likely that teaching online classes or holding events, sitting at my desk in front of a computer and microphone, or meeting with clients virtually, would be all that difficult. More tiring than usual, to be sure, but doable on the days after the surgery.
Things didn’t turn out entirely as I’d hoped. They did start out well, though. Checkin for the surgery was scheduled for 6:30 AM, which meant I’d have an entire day to rest and recuperate. The surgery itself also went well, as I had confidently expected. As I’d find out later, my gallbladder really did need to come out, and was in worse shape than previously thought. The recovery within the hospital, however, took a lot more time than anyone had anticipated, and I wasn’t released to go home until the late afternoon.
It’s actually quite fortunate that we can get surgeries like the one I underwent done as laparoscopic procedures, with just small incisions, rather than having to be cut wide open as people did decades ago. I suppose I probably underestimated the extent of trauma still imposed upon the body that is still involved in this milder mode of surgery. Perhaps another dimension of underestimating stems from me forgetting that the body I live in is a middle-aged rather than young one, and that it has endured and been affected by considerable past hard living, stress, illness, and injuries. So I probably shouldn’t assume bouncing back quickly will be a default for me anymore!
I realized during recovery in the hospital that there was no way I would be up for teaching my online class session for the Ancient Philosophers on Friendship course the next morning. During the surgery, I was under general anesthetic and as a routine safety measure, they intubated me. At that point, the effects of that were just a sore throat and difficulty talking much. The pain at first was pretty serious, particularly in my shoulder (a well-known side-effect), but also, as expected, in my abdomen, but by the time I left the hospital, it was definitely manageable. I felt dead-tired as well. So, my wife Andi sent out a message to that class, postponing that 90-minute class session to a week later.
I had hopes that by today, I’d be further along the road to recovery, since I had two things scheduled. The first was a online 90-minute class session for a different course, Stoicism and the Cardinal Virtues. The second was an online livestreaming in my Understanding Anger 2.0 series. By yesterday evening, it was clear to me that while I could try to show up for these commitments, and push through the pain, fatigue, and difficulty talking, it would be quite irresponsible on my part to do so.
What I really need most to speed up recovery is rest from anything strenuous, and my highly engaged, intensive, interactive manner of teaching and presenting does indeed fall under that. When it comes to my students, I don’t really have a problem showing up and teaching classes at something less than 100 percent of my capacities. We all do that. But there’s a threshold of working sick or hurt where it’s unlikely that students are going to get out of the class what they had hoped they would. Given that I’m still coughing from the earlier intubation, and I have no idea how long my voice could last, it’s more responsible to postpone any long class session.
There’s a third party to whom I also bear some responsibility, and that is my wife. She got me to the hospital, waited while I underwent surgery, sat with me in recovery, got me home, and has been taking care of me in many ways since we got back. As she told me with each subsequent decision I made to postpone or cancel a class, event, or meeting the last three days, she knew I’d need to do that, but she also knew that those had to be decisions I arrived at on my own, rather than imposed or demanded by anyone else.
I’m not someone who “idles well”, so to speak. At any given point in time, I have a number of projects underway, commitments made, books to read, and various stuff lined up on the calendar. It takes a certain measure of prudence to balance getting to the work one rightly wants to do with the legitimate needs of a convalescing body. I did go through something along these lines a little under two years back, though, and I’m getting better at managing these matters.
A year and eleven months back, I got hit with Covid, and it laid me out for a couple of weeks. Nearly all of my work had to be put entirely on hold. After I recovered, I struggled with some serious fatigue for months (if you’d like to hear about that, I produced a video with my reflections). By then I could indeed work, but could never get to all the work I intended to. I took that as a sign and opportunity to start rethinking my workaholic tendencies. And, in smaller measure, I’d say I’m doing the same at the moment as recovery from my surgery takes a bit longer than I’d hoped.
Take care of yourself. I look forward to being in class when you are feeling better
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